Sunday

For some reason I wanted to see Bulletproof Monk when it came out. Perhaps it was merely the combination of Chow Yun-Fat and Sean William Scott, produced by John Woo, that seduced me. Whatever the reason, I only actually got round to seeing it last night. It's pretty bad. There were a lot of special effects - someone spent money on this movie - and sometimes they look good, but sometimes they also look very cheap. All the blue screen action looks terrible. The fight scenes just weren't quite good enough and felt awkward, especially when compared to The Matrix (which this obviously emulates). Chow Yun-Fat is a great comedy actor, but it's unfortunate he can't quite deliver the lines in English. The plot itself is absurd, more like a TV movie, or an episode of MacGyver. There is a scroll that can give whoever reads it all the power in the world. One chosen monk has to guard it, he will not age while it's near him, and he has currently been pursued by a Nazi for sixty years who has set-up an evil empire in its pursuit fronted by the Human Rights Organisation. See what I mean? The acting of everyone but the main characters is awful, and I'm sure some of the voices are dubbed. I suppose this could have been an interesting buddy-cop type film, but it fails dramatically.

Saturday

It may seem like I'm slowly falling behind again this week, and that is entirely true, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. Meanwhile, I thought I'd entertain you with another of my completely useless reviews. This time it's the Jude Law version of Alfie, made in 2004. I only saw parts of it, my concentration kept drifting, and I've never seen the original starring Michael Caine. All I can say is that it seemed to be pretending to be cooler than it actually was. It was more like a 90 minute fashion shoot than a movie. Jude Law just wasn't quite engaging enough. The problem was always going to be updating this film to modern times, and I don't think they succeeded. It still felt out of date. Alfie's philandering doesn't entirely seem plausible, and getting our sympathy is difficult. But there is something engaging about the film - what it was will have to wait until I actually watch it properly. I did like, however, the bravery of the director and the actor to leave the camera on Jude Law for a long time at the end. It's not often in a Hollywood movie that someone is just left to act, with no dialogue and no action, to express conflicting emotions, internal conflict and decisions being made.

Friday

I've been hearing about Stardust for a while now. The first I knew was that it was written by Jane Goldman, the wife of Jonathon Ross. For a long time this coloured my opinion of it. A few months ago they started showing trailers in the cinema. It looked fairly bad. Recently, however, I discovered that the story is actually written by Neil Gaiman (and Charles Vess), and merely adapted to the screen by Goldman (and someone else). Entirely influenced as I am by names and reputations, I then began to think more of this film. The premise sounds vaguely entertaining, but of course also very predictable. The problem was, and is, that this seems like a film out of time. Perhaps it would've worked in the 1980s, but we're just not interested in fairy-tales at the moment. Maybe the studio is hoping this movie will revive our interest in fantasy films, but I very much doubt it's going to do so. The title is awful, and the mere fact that it has so many stars in it makes an audience suspicious. Stars should be hard to obtain for a film, and to see so many cheapens them, in a way. So, it is not top of my list of movies to see, but I will attempt to do so, albeit sceptically.

Thursday

In his interesting comment yesterday, Adrian said how he'd seen Clerks 2 on a plane, and he wondered if that made any difference. The answer is a wholehearted 'yes', but how and to what extent is difficult to answer. I've been told that studios edit movies for planes, and they also have to adjust the format, I believe. Some directors resist this kind of thing, but even if the movie was shown exactly as it appeared in cinemas there are of course still differences. The size of the screen, the sound through the headphones, and the commotion around you. In many ways, I suppose, a plane is like a cinema - especially during a long flight when the lights will be dimmed. I first watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World on a plane, and I quite enjoyed it. The problem is, I found, that you keep drifting in and out of consciousness, and the film is normally on a loop, so that you'll watch it three or four times but not all together. I'm not sure how much thought studios put into showing their films on planes. Do they expect to make money at all? One thing I know is that, although it will never happen, it would've been great to see Snakes on a Plane in a plane.

Wednesday

After watching Clerks yesterday I decided to visit the IMDb trivia page on the film. I wonder if there is such a thing as knowing too much about a movie? If there is a picture you particularly love, I'd advise against viewing its trivia page. What I found out about Clerks was that it seemed to be entirely an accident. Almost every piece of trivia points out a different direction that should, or could, have happened, but due to chance didn't. For example, Kevin Smith and his friend Scott Mosier made a pact that whoever of them began a film first, the other would produce. It was just luck that Smith started first, and Mosier has produced all his movies since then. All the main characters were initially cast differently. The only reason the shop's shutters are down is because they could only shoot at night. The film was going to end with Dante being shot in an armed robbery of the store. And even the title was going to be different - Inconvenience. It often astonishes me how films are made at all, and how they get to the finished form which we believe they were initially conceived as. It frequently seems these people have no idea what they're doing, but somehow, sometimes, their collective creative efforts and accidents occasionally produce a good movie (although I am being unfair, the basic script for this film is ok). Anyway, only the very greatest directors appear to be able to force through their ideas whole from conception to completion.

Tuesday

Would you be as surprised as I was to learn that Clerks came out in 1994? And was thus made in 1993? Perhaps I was astonished by my own ignorance, because I only became aware of and watched this film probably in 1999-2000, and it felt contemporary then. Anyway, I watched it again last night for perhaps the first time in about five years. Undoubtedly the dialogue and the characterisation is great. The black and white felt claustrophobic and oppressive, though - even if this was the intended effect. The main appeal of the movie, really, is the character Randal - like Han Solo in Star Wars, you're not really interested in Luke, or Dante Hicks here. Randal is a character who doesn't change, although our perceptions of him may change by the end. Since I last saw this movie I've worked as a clerk, and met people who have worked their whole adult lives as clerks, so there was an extra level of enjoyment, and meaning, for me here. Otherwise, the direction is quite amateur, and seemed deliberately to draw attention to this fact, as if for novelty. The sentiments at the end are rather naive and simplistic, but I'd still say this is a good movie, alive with the force of the generation it was produced by and parodies.

Monday

You may have seen a trailer for the movie Black Sheep. You'll know if you have. It's about killer sheep in New Zealand - the kind of thing that sticks in your mind. I'd really like this film to be great. It could be as brilliant as Shaun of the Dead, or some other similar horror-comedy film. The premise is there, and the humour seems extremely black. I also have a feeling, though, that it might be terrible. We'll see. Also coming out soon is the interesting The Invasion, another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's directed by the director of Downfall, and so promises to be a bit better than your average Hollywood remake, but he could easily just have been 'shipped in' and told what to do, literally (as often happens to successful foreign directors). Again, we'll have to wait and see. The story is always a compelling one, and I hope they've treated it well. In this age of 'terrorists amongst us', the plot has a lot to offer and reveal.