Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Shut it. I'm a fan of Nicolas Cage through and through and this film is a testament to his talent......which is then smothered in poor story and direction.

Ok, overview. Cage is Joe; an assassin who is completely removed from life, people, relationships everything apart from the job. He has 4 rules he sticks to, the same old "hard man" ethics that Stathem, Oliphant and Jones do so much better. Joe is asked to do 4 jobs in Bangkok, the films begins with him setting himself up with a stately home, a few super bikes and a local contact, Kong, (Shahkrit Yamnarm) a street dealer whom Joe pays for deliveries and information.

This thread of the story is good quality action film material. Everything, however, goes a little Soviet-Constructed-Reactor when writers/directors Pang & Pang attempt to introduce romance to BOTH Joe and Kong at the same time. Kong hits on a stripper, Joe awkwardly attempts to bump uglies with a deaf or mute (i can't tell from the film) pharmacist's assistant. This is awful. No other way to put it. It's obviously an attempt to show a human side to Joe as well as a caring more romantic side to Kong. Quite honestly it detracts from the gravitas of the film, effectively showing Joe in two very different lights which don't mesh well at all.

The "local talent" of Thai actors are the saving grace of this film. Mob bosses, support actors and general cast are all very talented actors and deserve credit for their performances in supporting Cage through this difficult film. Interestingly enough Cage is listed as a Producer. This might explain why his role in the film is less the "classic Cage" we know and (I) love and more emotionally accessible.

It's an 18 for 4 scenes of bloody violence in the film and nothing else, nearly no sex, very little swearing etc which raises the question why not play the gore card more? There are plenty of opportunities to make the shoot-outs more like "Lucky Number Sleven" or "Shooting Aces" - in my opinion it should be a 12 if you wipe away the blood splatters.

The action elements, chase scenes, gun fights etc are adequate but clichéd. A motorbike chasing a boat along a tight river is not exactly The Matrix style originality. The final sequence however is different, very well acted and very well directed - a gleaming gem in the film.

A film for torrenting if action films are your thing, i wouldn't pay money for it in cinemas nor rent it. Defiantly not one to add to the Cage Collection of Gold though, which for me contains the National Treasure films, Next, Ghost Rider, Face/Off and Knowing (feel free to hate me from a distance for those choices)

Psychoville

From the dark and frankly disgusting minds of Jeremy Dyson, Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith, the creators of "The League of Gentlemen" series comes this new 6-part dark comedy.

It is indeed nothing short of horrific. David and Maureen Sowerbutts are mother and son serial killers attempting to cover up David's accidental killing at work. Mr Jelly the one-handed grumbling children's entertainer who drives a banged up hearse and who's life is constantly overshadowed by Mr Jolly, another clown. Robert a psychic dwarf in love with Snow White. Oscar Lomax, a blind old man fighting with conjoined twins over a Beanie Baby collection with the aid of a community appointed helper whom he calls Tea Leaf, and last and most disturbingly Joy (Dawn French) a midwife convinced her doll is her son, little Freddie Fruitcake, and her attempts to bring him to life.

The story is sickening, and at some points downright vomit-worthy. AND STILL i laugh out loud at every episode. The amount of humour injected at the most gut-wrenching bloody moments manages to captivate me.

For example, David and Maureen's characters have agreed to meet David's old boss in a waxwork museum of serial killers (David is obsessed with serial killers) As he is deciding how to snuff his old boss the manikins come alive and give him advice. One says acid, one says drowning and eventually they burst into full song and dance over the matter. This is so hauntingly eerie and hilarious at the same time. Its almost perverse humour, you find yourself laughing and yet feel the same feeling one might get for taking delight at an old biddy tumbling down concrete stairs. Its not funny......unless she got paid £200 for the clip by Jeremy Beadle (God rest his soul)

This series is still available on BBCiPlayr, with the finale next Thursday night at 10pm on BBC1, though i would stress you have to be a fan of the old "Edward and Tubbs" characters from The League of Gentlemen and their brand of humour. A Butcher who secretly serves human meat, a transsexual cab driver and a pair of shop keepers who have lock their son in the basement.

It's so far removed from most main stream comedy available at the moment it's brilliant. I must admit i am a slight magpie for the shiny new and different things in life and so i might be a little infatuated with Psychoville but i still think it's worth a watch or at least a try.

"I'm not a dwarf, I'm a lesbian!" - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week, Thursday 23rd july 2009

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen The Video Game (2009)

The film was epic. Possible review coming later so the less said about that the better.

On the back of every even mildly successful film there is a game franchise lurking, ready to strike unsuspecting parents in the wallet to the cries of "but look daddy, its got Wall-e on the front like the film that kept me quiet for nearly 2 hours!"

It would seem the development team, made of Beenox, Luxoflux and Vicarious Vision, amongst others, have managed to pull a gem from the arse of Activision that isn't covered in the stinking shite of another Spiderman franchise game or the putrid blood-the-colour-of-money of another way to make America look like massive dick-waving super-soldiers of the Western Front.

I like this game, as with reviewing stuff myself i get to have my opinions broadcast to the world and you can't do anything about it.....unless i get moved to China. In which case the only people reading my rantings about the latest State made game, "Communism Chang Takes His One Child To Pay Respects To Mao," mandatory in all households, will be the censor office.

The game is 3rd person balance between hack and slash, shoot 'em up and to an extent driver. All three aspects are balanced well and the fluidity between them is key to the enjoyment factor, something severely lacking from some games these days *cough Sims 3 cough* Luckily this has been done exceptionally well, and looks good as well. For example to transform to vehicle mode the player must hold R2. This then acts as the accelerator with L2 as handbrake and L1 as brake. The right pad then alters to accommodate vehicle action buttons; X is now for Boost not jump and Square to fire vehicle weapons, with triangle and circle remaining the same as when in walker mode. To transform back simple release the R2 button. Doing this in conjunction with several other buttons adds an attack, AOE attack or jump to the transformation. This is done, as i have said, exceptionally well, both in physics and aesthetics.

The melee is based around 4 principles. Mashing square to pull of simple 3 hit combos, holding square to charge a directable attack and using vehicle mode to either impact one foe or AOE several. Whilst most of the combat focuses on ranged weapons this aspect is still necessary and can, with some of the larger characters, be an effective way of dispatching enemies. However it feels like the development team did the bare minimum necessary to get by and focused more on the ranged combat. Understandable, but disappointing.

Ranged weapons and special abilities are the same on both sides near enough, just allocated differently. For example Breakaway, the Autobot flyer, is equipped with a sniper rifle (one of my favorite weapons in the game) The Decepticons have Sideways, the sexual Audi R8 model, who also has a sniper rifle but different secondary and special weapon. Ironhide and Grindor can both deploy auto-turrets as their special weapons and Ratchet and Longhaul both act as team medics. This is cheap, but has been done to ensure online multiplayer teams are balanced and all slot requirements filled.

Vehicle handling is adequate. Flyers move too slow, even with boost, to avoid much flak. Fast ground vehicles such as Bumblebee and Sideways are useless to manoeuvre at speed whilst Longhaul and Ironhide are too slow to escape when health is low. This is design, and not design flaw, i just find it irritating.

During the two campaigns, Autobots and Decepticons, the player is tasked with several side missions in order to loosely follow the film plot. These missions are just repeated but from the other side's perspective for the opposite campaign; in one Autobot mission Ironhide was tasked to defend a power station and TV tower from a numbered Decepticon force, in the Decepticon campaign Starscream is attempting to destroy both targets with a respawning amount of Autobots AND kill Optimus Prime.

The upgrade and unlock system is standard concept art, multi player skins but with the added bonus of 6 original full length episodes of Transformers for completing 6 different achievements available. I thought this a nice touch for the die-hard Transformer fans.

See, i own a ps3, and fellow owners will understand the draw of trophies. They are WHY i play the same game 3 times through back to back, for a chance at that Platinum Trophy *slobbers* Transformers has plenty of trophies, most of which however can be achieved by just finishing both campaigns or with a short stint playing online. The online community seems to consit of me and 3 kids from Germany at the moment, matches are always 1v1 and its a rare occasion to actually find someone online, but then the game has only been out about a month. What is it with Germans and servers? COD4, COD5, BFH, Transformers they all have angry German players on them!

Overall i paid £24 for a brand new PS3 game that has lasted me nearly 2 weeks of pretty much solid play, for a normal socialite that equates to about a month and a bit of casual gaming. I think good value for money. Suggest only for fans of the films however, as it is based solely around the thrill of being both a truck and leader of a team of interplanetary transforming robots......or in Ironhide's case being a Ford and a douche.

Lady GaGa - The Fame (2009)

Right. So many people don't like Lady GaGa as a person. I cant see why? if you like someones music you don't HAVE to like them as a celebrity. I take this approach with artists like Michael Jackson and Eminem for example. Put me in the same room as either and, well going by recent events i might end up feeding one to the other in some sort of disgusting smoothie, but that's by the by.

There are three issues to address here: 1) her music 2) her and 3) the Internet. So.....

1) her music

I personally really like her album. The first single "Just Dance" is a cracking club tune, as is the over-played "Poker Face," the sassy "Lovegame" and the newish "Paparazzi." Colby O'Donis is a good feature on "Just Dance," having worked on other big hits such as "Beautiful - Akon" from his newest "Freedom" album (another great album) There are a number of tunes that are good for single release in the future, notably Summerboy which has a tinge of Lily Allen style lyrics regarding relationships, "Brown Eyes" and "Again Again" really show off her vocal talents to their best. Those two songs i often play to people i know don't like her and ask them to guess who the artist is. The look on their faces is usual of shock and intrigue. Hate her all you want but that girl (disputed) can belt out a good tone! The rest of the album isn't bad, its nothing shockingly good and i would be surprised if she released another single from it that i haven't already mentioned, however i like every track. I like it as an album.

2) her

Her videos are amazing. the fashion and the, for lack of a better word, razz-matazz about her performances are amazing. The one other artist i can think of who puts as much thought and effort into having amazingly shocking outfits in her videos is Kylie Minogue. We all remember the infamous bed sheet head-dress thing from "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" and the world's smallest gold hot pants in "Spinning Around." The video for "Paparazzi" is a good 8 or 9 minutes long and, whilst it does attempt to tell a story, its more just a visual aide to the song. The most striking thing about the video is the number of costume changes and the complicated nature of each outfit which really speaks volumes about her commitment to the performance not just the song. She started out dancing in the bars and clubs of New York with full visual aids of snakes, smoke machines etc etc and that attention to detail and generation of atmosphere is carried through in each of her videos.


3) the Internet

I grow so tired of the endless pisstakes about her performance on "Friday Night With Jonathan Ross." So the British crowd didn't get up and dance like she asked, and yeah she chose to do a live rockish version of Poker Face. Both bad moves, but this doesn't mean she suddenly can't sing and is a useless performer. She was on the show to plug her music and that was all. It wasn't a gig, it wasn't a true representation of her ability to perform as an artist and nor should it be seen as such. The rumours of her secret penis are just a load of....well...cock, really. She may not fit the apparent ideal look of RnB artists these days but she is no man. And, for argument's sake, what the hell is wrong with transgender individuals?! This just smacks of intolerance, that cancer than infests the Internet and its freedom of expression (not available to our Chinese audience) but I'm not here to argue with the giant colossus that the Collective......of bloggers.


If she is a man.....if, mind......do you reckon we could get her and Fergie to have baby? That would be something for Five to make a touching documentary about

La Roux - La Roux (2009)

Well lets try my hand a a little music review! I pale in comparison to my good friend the Audio Bigot and his reviewing skills (do visit and read, he is very good - http://audiobigot.blogspot.com/ )

I first heard In For The Kill when my friend Hattie said it was her "fav Radio 1 song of the week." Normally i give Radio 1 a wide berth, in fact i doubt there is any musical medium i avoid more, so i was sceptical. She played the song a few times at pre-lashes and when we were just sitting about in her room and it seemed a bit generic, i thought nothing of it. The second single, "Bulletproof", was a bit a more striking. I heard it on the radio only recently and instantly recognised it as La Roux, with that distinct mix of Debbie Harry and Enya which works so well with the non-vocal parts to each track. This, along with a good friend of mine demonstrating singing in the shower need not be a personal performance, prompted me to give the album a look-see.

One quick download later and I've listened to it back to front 5 times in the past 24 hours. Now the lyrics are samey, the songs are just variations on the same beat and structure. I'm not a musician so i don't pretend to know whats what with bpm and the like i just calls em likes i sees em. And this all sounds the same.

HOWEVER. It all sounds the same in the respect that you can tell Freddie Mercury on every Queen song. Its because its by the same artist. Some bands/artists are too hung up these days on being varied within each album. Every band evolves. Look at two of my favorite bands, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Both have had a few albums and both are now completely different from that first crisp, new sound they first coined. MCR used to be more punky and less mainstream 12-year old emo girl pleasing. That sounded wrong. I hope Gerard Way doesn't get investigated for that comment....am i liable? I probably am.

Anyway.......oh yes! Bands change. La Roux's album is solid the whole way through with a good mix of songs that demonstrate the excellent vocal tone balanced with some which are, in all fairness, filler but still GOOD filler!

I do genuinely expect the next album to either be awful or a carbon copy and therefore unoriginal, which I'm sure NME and Radio 1 *shudder* will deam a "disappointing second appearance" blah blah blah corporate tools blah blah

Check out the Senators, British and European Drum and Band Corps Champions several years running - http://www.senators.org.uk/

Rediscovering Blogging! Oh, and Twilight (2008)

We can thank the wonderful writings of one Stephenie Meyer and her mediocre screen play for the opportunity to read the first three posts here again, they are from another time best forgot.

So then. Twilight. I acquired this whilst the grips of vampirism-obsession had me. Vampire Wars that time consuming facebook application coupled neatly with a few viewings of An Interview With A Vampire (excellent film fyi) led me to see what all the fuss was about.

Ah yes. The fuss. well the fuss is also know as Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) whom some people might remember as the equally dishy Cedric Diggery from the Harry Potter cinema epidemic. I don't know, i think girls must have a thing for an indie guy with a massive bit of wood hanging between his legs, this continues to confuse and disturb me. Moreover i found his performance to be adequate. Run of the mill. Nothing fudging special so stop swooning at posters of him and forcing me to step OVER you to get into screen 11, where a real man with real FULLY DEVELOPED MAN-TESTICLES is killing robots in the future. Honestly.

I thought his portrayal of the distant odd child at the beginning of the film was very well done, the viewer can obviously tell this kid had serious family issues and didn't act "normal" around the other highly segregated high school cliques. The leading lady however, is a different story. Kristen Stewert, who's only notable role to date was in Zathura the supposed sequel to Jumanji that caused me to pay less attention than the Iranian election's foul play committee paid to the dodgy men in black vans carrying bags marked "VOTES" in the direction of the incinerator.

One scene springs to mine. The first time the two leads meet and actually talk is during a science lesson, observing onion root tip cells during cellular replication. Now the chemistry, if that's what "that" was, between the pair is odd. She seems to be almost on the point of quivering ecstasy and struggling to get every word out. He seems to be more interested in everything else in the room (i now understand because he has the munchies) and this does kind of break the magic somewhat.

The storyline and screenplay i have no faults with, to fault both of them i would have had to read the book and i don't intend on doing that anytime soon so there we have it. Other minor nerdish issues i have with this film include the mythos of vampires. There are some blatant deviations from the core traits about the vampire. No reflections is one. Having to sleep in a coffin is another. Turning to dust in sunlight a third. But the one that truely takes the AB+ from the blood bank is the god-awful scene that actually made me rewind to watch again JUST to make sure i hadn't somehow slipped through a spacial rend and ended up in a seminar intitled "Amature Dramatics For The Emotionally Bereft" I am referring to the sunlight scene. Without ruining it for those of you yet to see the film (which i do encourage despite my hole picking) vampires change in sunlight. Ed feels he has to show Bella this, something to do with the puny emotion of trust between paramours i don't know, anyway, he steps into the sunlight and "changes." I was fully expecting a grotesque Gothic vampyre image to appear. I could not have been more wrong. His skin turns to thousands of diamonds and he sparkles. Like a freaking disco ball. I honestly thought hairy-chested, flare-sporting sex pests were going to leap forth from the undergrowth and begin accosting young impressionable girls like it was the 1970s all over again located exclusively within the vicinity of that one conveniently place sunbeam. The BEST thing, the absolute BEST part of the scene though is Bella's reaction to his new found lustre. She goes all teary-eyed and says "No.....You're Beautiful!" and runs after him. My honest thought was "GOLD DIGGER He's made of diamond and she's gonna get herself a Porche with his pinkie"

So yeah, pretty scathing for a film i actually enjoyed. Lets hope the build up of blogger in me last for a few more films, albums, games and general musings.

Who would win in a battle of the sexies; Isla Fisher or Hayden Panettiere? Does it matter? Are we just happy to watch them fight? I am. I sooooo am.