I went and watched a rather interesting vampire film last night. Which makes me chuckle because I have made some quite strong claims recently that I would never see any the influx of the fanged-teen-angst-wank infecting our cinemas at the moment.

Luckily this was a film written and directed by Park Chan-wook, the guy that brought us the ultra violent Oldboy. So there was no over-quaffed-vampire-twats in sight, hurray.

The film is about a priest who goes to a Catholic sanctuary where they are trying to cure a fatal disease. He volunteers to be infected so they can find a cure. However for some reason that must of got lost in the subtitles, he gets a blood transfusion from a vampire donor.

He makes an astounding recovery but with some obvious side effects. From here on you would of thought you could of predicted the outcome and you probably could have done if the film wasn't from South Korea.

Now starts the craziness as he discovers sex, murder, Mahjong and a mental new girl friend and her soon to be paralysed mother. I won't spoil the plot, although in all honesty I'm finding it hard to remember a lot of what happened. Least to say it's not your everyday vampire movie. Although it is about love and there is a lot of blood drinking.

Sasha came along to and I think she enjoyed it, although she did miss some of the best bits, her coat had some how made it in to a position that completely obscured her view...not sure how. Later, after chatting over some paella. It turns out that bones snapping out of arms, people being burned alive and fingers being bent back until they break aren't some of her favorite things to watch.

All in all it's a great film, not AS good as Oldboy but worth a watch if you like listening to over exaggerated slurping noises...I know I do.

I watched the original film and I have absolutely no recollection of the plot.

This leads me to believe that there wasn't anything of any significance in that department and this sequel has no connection to the Ong Bak I watched apart from the "Legendary Tony Ja".

However I then remembered that it's a martial art's film and a plot can, and usually does just get in the way of the fighting.

Then I watched the trailer and smiled.



Tony Ja (the protagonist) has been likened to Bruce Lee. He does all his own stunts and knows how to use his fists, head, shoulders, Knees and toes.

If you're a fan of martial art's films then watch it, if you hate the sight of grown men fighting then go pick some flowers...hippy.

Hey look it's me being made in to a zombie!



There is a reason for the zombification process - the world’s biggest mass participation zombie movie at The Big Chill.

Here is the gist of it from the official website.

It's 2018 - six years after a virus was released at the 2012 Olympics. Zombies dominate the earth and humankind has been mauled, torn and eaten to extinction.

The problem is there's not a lot to do now that there are no humans left to rip apart... cue the first post-apocalyptic music festival curated by the undead.

Film4 and Warp Films bring you I Spit On Your Rave, a mockumentary by director Chris Boyle about the first post-apocalypse zombie music festival, and we want YOUR living corpse to take part.

All the filming will take place at the Big Chill festival, and shooting starts on Thursday 6th of August. We want thousands of zombie-costumed ticket holders to join the cast numbers, and enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the "Most Amount of Zombies Captured on Camera".

A short promo of the film will be screened at the end of the festival before we release it online here for free.

If your off to the big chill this year then you should definitely take your zombie makeup. If being in a movie isn't motivation enough, how about being in a movie with Noel Fielding as your zombie king!

Just realised that I've not yet posted (as promised) about new-for-Autumn American shows The Vampire Diaries and Human Target. Sorry. I will get to them soon, but so far the pilots have not inspired me to write paeans to their brilliance. Anyway, meantime I thought I'd do a quick one on a couple of films I've seen recently.

First up - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen In a nutshell, pretty disappointing. I thoroughly enjoyed the first film - great visual effects, plenty of humour and enough development for both human and machine to make you care what happened to these characters whilst still getting plenty of oohs and aahs out of cool shit being blown up/ cars etc morphing into robots. Sadly, with the second instalment in this sure to be long-running franchise, the only thing that got bigger and better is the budget. Sure, there are some pretty spectacular FX on display, and a new set of shiny robots (both Decepticons and Autobots) but it feels longer and somehow flatter.

There are some funny bits - Sam's parents (scene stealers Kevin Dunn and Julie White) are still as fabulously embarrassing as ever, and his mother accidentally getting stoned off a hash brownie when they drop him off at college is damn good, as is the scene where his hapless roommate Leo (Ramone Rodriguez from The Wire) manages to accidentally taser himself. One of the fight sequences, in which Optimus Prime takes on a resurrected Megatron (yep, of course he's back) as well as a few other Decepticons is exciting and engaging.

But much of the second half is just flabby - it takes way too long to get everyone to the Egyptian desert for the final showdown, which in itself never really awes in the way it should. Probably since it goes on way too long. Oh, and look out for the bit when Sam, Mikaela (Megan Fox, hot as ever) and a couple of others are basically teleported into the desert...one second Shia LaBoeuf is fine, next minute there's an inexplicably large bandage over one hand (THAT car accident he was in, remember?). Frankly, they could have done a little better in working that into the plot. Then again, the plot is almost non-existent (there's a hidden key called The Matrix which can switch on a hidden machine capable of draining the sun for the robots to use, thus destroying Earth yada yada), serving only to link the action set pieces.

But - if you're a diehard fan, there's probably just enough to entertain you for it to be worth the price of a cinema ticket. Probably. Just a bit of shame that what should have been a brilliant summer blockbuster leaves you - well, me anyway - feeling rather unsatisfied.

Thankfully, the opposite is true for excellent comedy The Hangover.



The premise is straightforward - four guys go to Las Vegas for a stag night. Waking up the next morning, they have no idea what happened the night before. And the groom's missing. Plus the wedding is in 24 hours...

It would be entirely unfair of me to give anything else away, suffice to say it's very, very funny and you should absolutely go and see it. Unless you're underage. Or offended easily. The great thing about this movie is that although there are certain jokes/ bits I didn't find all that hilarious, there are plenty of others I did, meaning that most people will undoubtedly be amused most, if not all of the time. There's only one misjudged moment as far as I'm concerned, and it's the Mike Tyson section which not only doesn't especially work on a comedic level, but also seems to wrap up with a pretty repellant insinuation. You'll see what I mean.

Anyway - that aside, this is hugely enjoyable and boasts some of the best ever end credits I've ever seen - totally in context and a brilliant pay off to what's come before. More than worth the price of a cinema ticket!

I'm making up for lost time and blogging like it's 1999, but when something like this comes along you just have to splash it all over the place like tits in a lads mag (wow that was gross).

GAMER is a new effort from the creators of CRANK. I love those films, they are immense and really capture that no holds barred action kind of feel I remember of films in my youth. GAMER follows on the tradition of RUNNING MAN and the recent DEATH RACE remake (which was actually quite enjoyable, I know I'm a bad man, so I like mindless violence, I also look at girls boobs (theme?) far too much when I talk to them, I do have testicles you know), man on death row fighting for his freedom. Only this time it's not him who is fighting, it's some spotty teenager...



I'm loving the all out action feel, was only a matter of time before this idea was really explored in a film. And if CRANK is anything to go by this film will kick the prerequisite amounts of arse required.

Sweet.

Just run across this at my geek temple over on Aint It Cool News and it really got my geeky juices flowing. Always been a fan of Noir films, I think any film student has to be by law or they send you to a planet ruled by apes that you later discover is actually a future earth ruined by war.

However, this looks like they took noir and raped it to within an inch of its life using Arnold Schwarznegger as a prophylactic, which is the point I think.



Give Em Hell Malone looks like my kind of weird.

Sweet.

Check out this fan video that has blown the Half-Life-loving internet to pieces over the last few months.

Some of you might not have played these iconic series of games so things may not make a lot of sense.

Here is a VERY brief over view from Wikipedia:

Half-Life 2 takes place in a dystopian world in which the events of Half-Life (the first game) have fully come to bear on human society, which has been enslaved by the extraterrestrial civilization known as the Combine. The game takes place in and around the fictional City 17 and follows the adventures of scientist Gordon Freeman. Freeman must fight against increasingly unfavorable odds in order to survive.

These guys have a spent a lot of time and money so it only just that they introduce their master piece:

Directed by The Purchase Brothers. (David and Ian)

Filmed guerrilla style. No crew. First two episodes made on a $500 budget, not including previous capital. Valve flew the brothers out to Seattle last year. and mentioned they were 'blown away' by the project on Steam.

Part Two is on the way. Hopefully finished by the mid May. The episode has taken more time then expected as the David and Ian are working on their careers.

Sleep Dealers

Strange film based in the near future where immigrants don’t have to leave the country to work. They can control robots via a virtual reality headset. Looks like it won lots of awards so I am definitely going to catch this.

Mexico. The near future. Memo Cruz has always dreamed of leaving his tiny village and heading north. But when he is ultimately forced to leave, Memo finds a future so bizarre - border walls, shantytowns, hi-tech factories, remote control drones and aqua-terrorists - that it looks a lot like today.

Pandorum

Scary Sci-Fi horror. I know it’s made by the guys that did Resident Evil so it will undoubtedly be really bad, but I liked the look of the murky visuals and the voice over guy made me laugh too.

From the creators of the Resident Evil film franchise comes Pandorum, a terrifying thriller in which two crew members wake up on an abandoned spacecraft with no idea who they are, how long they’ve been asleep, or what their mission is. The two soon discover they’re actually not alone — and the reality of their situation is more horrifying than they could have imagined.

Big Man Japan

Comedy giant Japanese monster movie. Or maybe Japanese giant comedy monster movie. Anyway, it looks like a laugh.

A middle-aged slacker living in a rundown, graffiti-ridden slum, Daisato’s job involves being shocked by bolts of electricity that transform him into a stocky, stick-wielding giant several stories high who is entrusted with defending Japan from a host of bizarre monsters. But while his predecessors were national heroes, he is a pariah among the citizens he protects, who bitterly complain about the noise and destruction of property he causes. And Daisato has his own problems -an agent insistent on branding him with sponsor advertisements, an Alzheimer-afflicted grandfather who transforms into a giant in dirty underwear, and a family who is embarrassed by his often cowardly exploits. A wickedly deadpan spin on the giant Japanese superhero, BIG MAN JAPAN is an outrageous portrait of a pathetic but truly unique hero.

It's the first time I have heard about this movie which I find quite shocking as the trailer looks incredible.

I have a feeling that is going to join my list of films I’m going to want to show to my kids.



I can’t really work much out from the trailer so I looked up the plot of the book on Wikipedia:

The book is about the imaginary adventures of a young boy named Max, who is punished for making mischief by being sent to his room without supper. Max wears a distinctive wolf suit during his adventures and encounters various mythical creatures, the "wild things". Although just ten sentences long, the book is generally regarded as a classic of American illustrated children's literature.

It might be hard to base a film on such a short story, but judging by the visuals the director hasn't had a problem. I haven’t been this existed about a film since my mate showed me the trailer for Pans Labyrinth.



It looks like cross between Drop Dead Fred and Donny Darko – two of my favorite films.

I WANT TO GO AND RUN IN THE TREES AND FIELDS WITH A GIANT HAIRY MONSTER NOW, IT’S NOT FAIR, I'M STUCK IN COCKING WORK!

I get bored easily, it’s a personality flaw I realise this. But sometimes I just get bored of the same old films, the same old directors, the same old plots and the same old sequels. I need a change, I need something strange, something weird and normally it comes from Japan. Well, Japan or from the mind of Michel Gondry. Luckily enough he has a new film coming out but he has teamed up with another French guy that I’m sure that I should know and the fellow that made The Host – that scary monster horror flick. So I have managed to combine two of my favourite things – Tokyo and Michel Gondry - which I’m pretty chuffed about. Well, I say "I have" but it’s really the person that came up with the idea for this film. Which is split up in to three separate stories all based in and around Tokyo. I can’t wait to watch it as it promises to be incredibly strange and perfectly surreal – I’m rather excited.




Also on the Japanese tip, I have found a pair of rather expensive jeans made by Howies (Kaizen Jeans). Apparently you don’t have to wash them…



I’m not sure who that works but apparently the less you wash them the better they become, thus combining two more of my favourite things – not washing and things getting better over time. Here is a good fact for you, if you put them in the freezer it will stop them smelling, but you probably want to keep them away from the food. Also, I wonder what happens if you get them covered in shit? I bet you have to wash them then!

I found this really interesting, this guys explains the 10th Dimension in a way that I can very nearly understand. However the best bit is the way that he describes the way we perceive time. If we were to see it probably then it would look like a giant snake protruding out of your chest...sound familiar, Donnie Darko anyone?



So according to this guy, time travel and dimensional travel are all possible...you just have to fold some stuff. Be warned though the last time someone tried folding space time, Event Horizon happened and they opened a portal to Hell. You live and learn.

If there was ever a movie that didn't EVER need a sequel Donnie Darko was it.

But guess what? 'They' are making one! I have no idea who 'they' are but I will make them pay.

S.Darko



The beauty of the original was that it was filmed on a such a low budget, it seemed to keep Richard Kelly's crazy imagination in check. Something that was let loose with Southland Tales much to everyone's bemusement. Kelly isn't at the helm which is a bit silly, because if I had created some like Donny Darko, I wouldn't let anyone touch it.

I don't know if its just me but S.Darko seem a little too Hollywood blockbuster. They have swapped the creepy bafflement with explosions and teen angst. Even the sound track which pretty much defined the original leaves a lot to be desired - in the trailer anyway.

I guess I can't really have a valid view until I have watched it. Which I will, even though I know it will make me angry.

Arrgh, I know I shouldn’t be looking forward to this film but I can’t help myself, It looks good...well the subject matter looks good. I love the Terminator films, well the first and the second ones anyway. I think I just have a fascination for end of the world scenarios.

Anyway I thought that this online poster was pretty nifty. I've never seen flash used like this and I guess it goes to show what a versatile thing it really is.

I started out cynical about the Max Payne movie, but the more I see of John Moore's take on the the game the more I'm starting to like it. A promotional "live action comic" is doing the rounds at the moment. Looks like the first 2 minutes of the movie to me, but whatever, it captures the tone of the game pretty well. Unusual for Hollywood.

I love discovering new shows. Well this one isn’t really new; it came out last year on the Sci-Fi channel as one of their original commissions. It’s a modern take on the Wizard of Oz, it’s not a scene by scene remake but a original take, set in the universe. They have great twists on the all the old characters, the scarecrow is in fact someone that has had part of his brain removed because apparently he knew too much, the cowardly lion is this ape like creature that is able to connect with living things and see their future...weird. And the Tinman isn’t in fact made of tin, he’s a policeman (they call them Tin Men in central city, which is basically the emerald city)...oh and the wizard has a drugs problem!

And that leaves Dorothy Gale, or DG as she’s known. She’s the plucky 20 something who we follow as she discovers her destiny is a lot bigger and more exciting then she could possibly imagine...whoops, sorry I went al Hollywood trailer on ya there.

The world they have created is really dark and very film noir. It almost touches on the steam punk genre - especially when they reach the central city. I have only watched the first part and none of my friends seem to have the concluded bit which is really annoying.

Anyway I recommend finding this one – I’m pretty sure you can buy it on DVD now.

Pixar really have made sure that the magic dust is totally uncut for Wall-E and, in doing so, have stepped into a different galaxy of storytelling. Consider this before we move on, this company have already delivered Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Wall-E is better than all of these films. It is quite simply Pixar's greatest achievement to date.

Wall-E is the last surviving robot of his kind, left behind on Earth to clean up after it became uninhabitable for mankind, because of the amount of rubbish we'd produced. After years of being alone, Wall-E has developed a personality. He collects interesting items from the trash he tidys up each day, is friends with a cockroach and watches old musicals. Unfortunately for Wall-E though, he also has the drawbacks that come with sentience and is incredibly lonely. However, all of this changes when a spaceship arrives carrying a robot probe called Eve to search for signs of life. Wall-E falls in love and embarks on a journey that will carry him very far away.

This is storytelling at its purest and bravest, with not a single line of dialogue spoken in the first 30 minutes of the movie. You don't notice for a moment though, because Pixar's visual language is so strong words aren't simply aren't required. Pixar might have invented a new form of movie experience, but their films are grounded in the art of story and feel as magical as the fairy tales Walt Disney told to you as a child.

Wall-E also delivers a tough message for your average mainstream audience to take. That our rabbid consumption with complete disregard for the planet will destroy us. I wondered to myself what people watching the film with their mega cokes and super size popcorn buckets would make of it all. Of course we also have robots falling in love and caring enough about their masters to try to save humanity in spite of ourselves.

But enough about the serious stuff, let's concentrate on the amount in this film that there is to enjoy. Wall-E himself is a wonderful creation, all determined innocence and inquisitiveness. The rest of the robots on show are an entertaining bunch too, including a fantastic gang of 'rogue robots' who subvert their mundane programming and rebel to help our hero. There's even a lovely nod to Apple computers in amongst it all, which you'll have to listen out for.

In conclusion, Wall-E is already the film of 2008. Personally, it has taken a place on the shelf reserved for my favourite movies ever. Pixar have proved themselves the master storytellers of their generation and should be celebrated by everyone who enjoys cinema.