Kevin Muldoon

Great stuff from Peter Serafinowicz.

I had to laugh when I read about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swifts acceptance speech at the MTV Video awards to tell the world that Beyonce should have won.

I’m really not sure who to feel embarrassed for : Taylor, Beyonce or Kanye himself. Seriously, the guy is delusional. I honestly think he has mental health issues. Either that or he has just spent too much time with people kissing his ass.

Manners cost nothing and class, I’m sorry to say for Kanye, cannot be bought.

I went to see the new Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds this afternoon with some friends. The reviews have been a little mixed but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s arguably his best film after Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.

Brad Pitt’s accent was a bit over the top for my liking, infact his whole character was a bit ott. The star of the film was undoubtedly Christoph Waltz, the Austrian Actor who played the German ‘Jew Hunter’ Hans Landa. He has already picked up Best Actor at this years Cannes Film Festival and I have no doubt that this will be followed up with an Oscar nomination next year. He was beautifully charming one minute and then disarmingly hostile the next. Fantastic performance.

If you enjoy war films I recommend seeing it, at least to see Hans Landa and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) in action!!. Tarantino has went against the norm of following facts and figures to a T and has instead written an alternate timeline, which gives him an enormous amount of room to play with. It isn’t a film which takes itself as seriously as Thin Red Line or Saving Private Ryan though it is by no means a comedy either

Although many people were’nt huge fans of it, I really enjoyed Will Smiths I Am Legend when it was released two years ago. It was based on a book on the same name which was released in the 50s.

Like many book to film conversions, the screenplay differed from the book. In particular, the ending was changed for this version. If you have not seen the film and don’t want to have it ruined, please stop reading now

I am Legend

The film is set in the near future where most of the people of the world have died or contracted a disease which makes them like zombies. Will Smith is one of the last humans alive and wonders around New York city during the day time with his dog catching these zombies so that he can take them back to his house and do experiments on them in order to find a cure.

At night he padlocks all the doors in his house and waits until morning, as that is when the zombies come out. When is dog is caught by the zombies he goes out at night to find him and is saved by lady and her son. Unfortunately, she took him back to his home and the zombies find out where he lives. When nightfall arrives they arrive in their thousands and break into his home.

The end of the film sees him trapped in his basement behind a bullet proof type door. He sneaks the woman and child out through a secret door and when the zombies are ready to smash through he charges at them with a grenade and blows up dozens of them, simultaneously helping the woman and kid go free, who both end up finding unaffected humans up the coast of the US.

This film ending is not what actually happens in the book. In the book the main character Robert Neville realises that the zombies are not evil per say, they are simply part of the new race. Zombies are now at the top of the tree and he is the last human alive. He realises that he is their nightmare.

Basically, Robert thought that he was trying to save these ‘monsters’ but what he was actually doing was killing dozens of them every day and capturing others to use for testing. In the book, he befriends a zombie called Ruth who explains everything to him. He is imprisoned and sentenced to death but she takes pity on him and gives him a pill to make his death easier.

Before dying Robert realises that he is the last human alive and has a laugh to himself and says ‘A new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.’

They actually shot an ending similar to this for Will Smiths version but the HollyWood big wigs decided after a test screening that audiences wouldn’t like this. Thankfully, this ending was included in the I am Legend DVD. You can watch it below courtesy of FirstShowing.

I much preferred this alternate ending and I’m surprised that it wasn’t used. Over the years there have been many successful films which have added a twist at the end of the film (Usual Suspects, Sixth Sense, Unbreakable etc) so I don’t know what they didn’t take a chance with this one.

The ‘proper’ ending highlights that the zombies were just trying to get one of their own back and showed that Will Smith was actually the menace, which I think is a great twist and would make the film enjoyable with a 2nd or 3rd viewing. However, the ending they used means the film is a standard hack and slash zombie type film. I did still enjoy the film but think that they missed out on making this film a lot better.

Have a look at the alternate ending above and let me know what you think.

Kevin

Me and my friends are big movie buffs. We sometimes have long pointless discussions about mistakes and holes in a films plot. My friend Joe was telling me today about the discussion he had with my other mate Div about The Usual Suspects, one of the best films in the last 20 years.

They wondered what the point of the film was. If you haven’t seen the film then please stop reading as what I say here will ruin it for you (you should really go and see it).

Their argument was this. Keyser soze got everyone together so that he could kill someone who identified him. First of all, if he was so rich, why didn’t he just send in 100 bad guys to blow the boat up and kill everyone. More importantly, what was the point in his method. If he went to all that effort to kill one person who knew his face, why was did he sit in the police station for hours talking to the police investigator. So basically, in order to kill one person who knew his face, he exposed his face to half the FBI!

Neos Hair

I watched The Matrix again recently. A fantastic film was was followed by two average sequels. One thing I noticed was Neo’s hair. Answer me this : If he didn’t have hair when he was hooked up to the matrix, why did it start growing when he was unplugged? Did he find the cure for baldness?

Anyone know what direction the nearest Wig store is?

Now, I am open to the argument that the machines genetically modified humans in some way for their own benefit so perhaps they removed hair from all humans. However, if they did do this, Neo would continue to have no hair when he was unplugged. So why did his hair start growing all of a sudden? The laws of evolution apply to him as well!

Surely one of the dozens of high execs who read the screenplay or saw a first draft of the movie would have questioned this?

I watched 2 films tonight. Ghostbusters 1 followed by Ghostbusters 2.

Ghostbusters was the first film I can ever remember seeing at the cinema. I was 5 when it was released and although I loved it, I remember being a little scared at times (give me a break, I was 5!). It’s easy to look back at childhood films with rose tinted glasses but after watching it today I have to say that it has stood the test of time and remains a great film.

Sadly, the same cannot be said about it’s sequal which was released 5 years later in 1989.

According to wikipedia, the film was produced for only $25 million ($5 million less than the original) but still managed to take in over $200 million of earnings (just goes to show how much money sequels can generate!). Unfortunately, the film was a huge let down. I won’t go as far as saying that the film is terrible because it’s at least watchable. But it’s very average (at best).

The plot, if you could call it that, is incredibly poor. It starts off with Sigourney Weavers 8 month old baby chasing away from her down the street. The reason : there’s evil sludge lurking in the sewers of New York and some guy from the renaissance who is stuck in a painting needs the baby to become alive again.

Nothing really happens except from wife beater Bobby Browns awful tie-in song popping up 2 or 3 times. For some reason he also has a cameo though the cameo makes no sense at all and has nothing to do with the plot at all.

I’m a huge fan of Dan Aykroyd and have nothing but admiration for the work that Harold Ramis has done (he did help write Ghostbusters 1, CaddyShack and Animal House after all!) but I can’t but feel incredibly let down with this film. The film has a rushed feel about it but this film was released 5 years after the original so surely they were under no immediate pressure to get a film made regardless of the quality of the screenplay. I have no doubt that if the 2nd film was a bigger success, we have seen a trilogy.

Instead, we will have to make do with a remake in a few years with some cameo appearances from the original cast.

I appreciate that sequels are difficult to write for, rarely meet expectations and are usually worst than the first film (excluding Empire Strikes Back, Godfather II etc) ; but surely they could have done more with the Ghostbusters brand.

Perhaps I am being really harsh and I’m stuffering from post film depression. What do you think of Ghostbusters 2 : do you think it suck balls as much as I think it does?

Kevin

Really looking forward to Modern Warfare 2. The last call of duty game was ok. I downloaded all the additional maps for it but I just never got into it, it just isn’t a patch on COD4, which is probably the best game released for the PS3 or 360 to date in my opinion.

Although, I’m not happy with them charging more for it than other new releases. Tis the nature of the world I guess!

I went to see Sacha Cohen Barons latest film Bruno tonight. As expected, there were a lot of outrageous scenes that made you squirm.

It is very similar to Borat in many ways. It’s shot in the same way, has a similar story about going to America (Los Angeles) and once again he uses his character to expose the ignorance, bigotry and stupidity of some people.

If you liked Borat I would recommend seeing it. It’s probably not as good but it’s still worth watching. If the naked fight scene in Borat made you feel uncomfortable then I wouldn’t advise seeing Bruno as there are lots of, shall I say, gay scenes!

Anyone else got round to seeing this film yet?

Kev