Hollywood Gossip With Tim Colwill

// Filed under: Random, Entertainment on Tuesday March 20th 2007, 9:29 pm

For the longest time, I thought Silverchair’s new song Straight Lines was Daniel John’s way of ironically outing himself as gay. I mean, if you’ve seen the video clip, you’ll know what I mean. Man wears a short leather vest, sports a little dainty goatee and dances like a pinky-raising fruit-platter on legs.

Turns out I was wrong, and he’s still banging Natalie Imbruglia! Who knew.

// 4 Comments

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

// Filed under: Entertainment on Saturday May 27th 2006, 12:26 pm

It’s going to be difficult for me to fully make an objective review of X-Men 3, because I have a long standing love affair with the X-Men, so anything I say should probably be taken with a grain of salt. But I promise I’ll do my best.

X-Men 3 was fucking awesome.

Sure, it’s a little slow to start with, and at some points the sheer hammy cheesiness will make you cringe but The Last Stand is by far and away, the best X-Men movie to date and makes the other two look vague and irrelevant by comparison.

I admit, I was worried. I saw the previews, and I was a bit worried. Vinnie Jones, as the Juggernaut? Kelsey Grammer as Beast? Halle Berry, not impaled on spikes and bleeding to death for being the worst Storm ever? Surely they were making it difficult for themselves. But no.

Juggernaut works, and he works well, because they treat him entirely differently to how Juggernaut should be treated. He’s beautifully and tastefully underplayed - he had such potential to go horribly wrong but they steer gracefully clear. The real Juggernaut is a front-and-centre character, a ten-foot, only-possible-in-CGI-giant who is nobody’s bitch - which is exactly why he wouldn’t work in this film. So full kudos to the creators for recognising that.

Beast? Beast is great. Kelsey does him flawlessly, both in scientific repose and in athletic combat action. He doesn’t go on any Beast-style long incomprehensible rants about random scientific data, but that’s a fanboyism I’ll have to deal with in my own manner - Beast is excellent, and Kelsey does him perfectly.

If you’re worried about Angel, too, don’t be. He’s a pithy little bit-player, which is odd considering the attention the trailer and the opening scenes of the movie give to him. But don’t stress - it seems Angel’s only real mutant ability in this film is to swoop around, look like an underwear model and swoop his way out again.

Don’t go into this movie expecting it to be “another X-Men movie”. This movie changes everything. People die. Major players die and the movie hurtles relentless on - civilians, normal people are killed in their hundreds and it’s only half an hour later when the movie crashes to its conclusion that you realise just how brutal this movie is.

Nobody is black and white. Nobody is good or evil - this movie takes what has always been a delightfully grey-shaded world and blurs the lines even more. Compared to the previous two movies, where everybody danced their way around the issues, The Last Stand is all-out and total war and the way the X-Men fight you could truly believe this is their last stand.

The Last Stand opens with some flashbacks to the happier days in the Charles/Erik relationship and it’s a beautiful thing to see these two actors together, doing precisely what they should do and making nerds cream their pants across the world. With a geniune warmth and a credible chemistry that few others could hope to achieve, Stewart and McKellen alone make this movie a pleasure to watch, even before the sheer scope of the movie and its events sweeps in and takes off.

Okay, so this movie isn’t perfect. There are some lines, some phrases that will make you just wince in your seat. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was somebody in the 20th Century Fox offices whose job it was to insert lame puns and pithy parting shots into films, because goddamn, The Last Stand is jam-packed full of them. And there are more than a few continuity problems, and okay, for a movie where everything, everything our heroes hold dear is in the balance, sometimes the tactical decisions are less than sound. Okay, sure, they made Colossus American (He’s a fucking Russian, you idiots) and Kitty Pryde looks all of 12 years old, making her combat credibility somewhat questionable, but… you don’t care. You just don’t care.

I’m not going to post any spoilers, or ruin it for anyone, but I will say this: Stay until after the credits roll. Because if you don’t, and somebody else tells you what happens, well - you’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life.

See this movie. It’s relentless, it’s beautiful, it picks you up and it doesn’t fucking stop. If this is the end to the story arc, I don’t think we could have asked for anything better.

// 6 Comments

Tim’s Movie Review Bonanaza

// Filed under: Entertainment on Thursday July 21st 2005, 8:44 pm

Sin City
Sin City can be summed up as follows: This is my new favourite movie. Of all time. Being quite the Frank Miller fanboy, although having never read the actual Sin City comics, (as that would necessitate their purchase from a comic book store, and forking out $35 each for Hellboy comics was difficult enough) I was understandably quite hyped to see this movie, which was touted as the most faithful comic book adaptation yet. And I was not disappointed. In fact I can think of nothing, not a thing which disappointed me. It was simply the most stylish, well-written and flawlessly executed piece of concentrated awesomeness I have ever had the fortune to witness.

The cinematography was beautiful. The acting, beyond compare (although Clive Owens is a bit hammy). The CGI, absolutely flawless, and breathtakingly mixed into the normal footage, especially on the car chases, amazing. And the whole thing was just so, so unbelievably stylish. That word, more than any other, captures the feel of this film. It oozes style from every frame. This movie is style. I loved it so much, I could see it again. And I’ve never said that about a movie before, but I would happily, nay eagerly, pay to see this movie again.

Batman Begins
Hands-down the best Batman film to date. Hands. Down. It was great to finally see someone taking the material seriously, instead of the ludicrously over-played neon-lights-rubber-nipples-on-the-batsuit approach taken in recent years. Finally, a Batman that is dark, gritty and painfully human. Plus the movie had Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Liam Neeson in it. In the same movie! Surely such a large concentration of awesome, venerable old actors would have torn some kind of hole in the spacetime fabrics, but no. No, instead it was just a thoroughly cool movie which I greatly enjoyed.

Fantastic Four
If anybody ever asks you to go and see Fantastic Four, you need to immediately do the following: Kick them in the face. Hard. Then, while they’re bleeding and gasping from confusion, grab everything they’ve ever owned or touched, douse it in gasoline and burn it. Wait until their friends come to investigate the fire, and quickly push them in, head first. Don’t let the screams bother you, you’re serving a higher cause now. Now you’re almost done. Ring around and find out where all the nearby cinemas are on the same continent. Grab the leg of one of the friends of our original offender, and carrying it as you would a flaming brand, run to each of these cinemas and go through the building, clubbing all the employees to death with it. Then use this flaming brand to set fire to the cinema. Then run back to the original bonfire and repeat the process with another limb, until all cinemas have been suitable cleansed. Now you are finished and can go back to enjoying your day.

See, the real problem with Fantastic Four is that to call it merely shit would be a lie. See, calling it shit would indicate it had quality, even in a negative sense. As in, this movie has the dimension of quality, unfortunately it is of bad quality. However Fantastic Four was not like that. It was like watching a blank screen for 90 minutes, except that blank screen had stuff on it. People. Something to do with superpowers or something. Anyway, the point is: Fantastic Four was a total and complete non-event. I left the movie theatre feeling as though I’d sat in a chair and been asleep for the duration, with a vague sense of unease. I went in with no expectations, and I was still disappointed. And that shouldn’t be possible.

And von Doom! What the hell was that? It was like the whole movie was building up to this final, climatic battle and then BAM. Over in less than a minute. And full of lame lines about physics lessons. Okay, the special effects were alright but good God people, that doesn’t make up for the rest of what could generously be called a film being entirely devoid of anything remotely filmy. And Stan Lee! Why must he continue with his hackneyed, overacted cameo roles, the disgusting industry-figureheading old bag? Why? Your time is dead and gone, old man! Sure, you wrote the original Fantastic Four, Spider Man, X-Men, all that gubbins, and we love you for that but your comics sucked massive donkey balls. Maybe they were good by the standards of 40 years ago, in fact I’m sure they were since that’s why you’re so successful, but just fade gracefully out of the public eye and do us all a favour.

Conclusion
See Sin City, and right now. If you don’t see it on the big screen you’ll see it later on TV or something and you’ll kick yourself. So see it now. See Batman Begins if you’re a comic book fan, as it’s quite excellent, and you’ll enjoy it even if you don’t like Batman much, it’s that well done.

Don’t see Fantastic Four or I will hunt you down and set fire to your teeth. That is all.

// 2 Comments

War Of The Worlds

// Filed under: Entertainment on Friday July 01st 2005, 4:43 pm

So, I saw War Of The Worlds last night (only realising halfway through it that it was actually the opening night). And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thoroughly. I mean that in the most literal sense of the word, I enjoyed it from beginning to end. It was dark, it was subtle, it was powerful and it was evocative. All this in spite of Tom Cruise playing the main character. Genius, I know.

Anyway, back to lavishing praise on said movie. The storytelling was excellent. I was expecting it to be a slightly-better-than-usual-alien-invasion story, but in fact it took the whole “aliens-invade-Earth” schtick and spun it on its head, treating the whole exercise more as a documentary than a movie. It was refreshing to see the effect and the impact of a terrifying and implacable alien invasion on a family already fraught with emotional issues, and watch the way they handle it as best they can in a world already spiralling out of control around them.

The special effects in particular were magnificent. Technically they were flawless, but that was not the beauty of them - no, that lay in the fact that they were carefully managed so as to not overpower the movie itself, blending seamlessly into the storyline and enhancing it rather than replacing it.

There were only a few minor niggles I had - namely that a man, in fact several, were still able to operate their video cameras after an EMP blast which had disabled every other thing with an electrical circuit. Also that aliens have amazing technology which can vapourise people, level cities, etc, and yet they still rely on a glorified tentacle camera to find people in the darkness of a basement? Surely such an advanced race would have an infra-red scanner of some kind, or a heat-sensitive ocular device. I mean we have such devices, and we’re not capable of building walking tripod-death-machines or traversing the cold void of space to wage war upon another species. But obviously such devices are beyond the reach of this advanced alien race which has built walking tripod-death-machines and has traversed the cold void of space to wage war upon another species.

And also that, as to be expected, once aliens started invading in visible force, people just start running like sheep. Why does everybody run in a crisis? Why does nobody huddle in their basements, break out Monopoly and just go for it and wait for the aliens to stop with all the killing already? They all congregate towards highways and main streets and stumble along with their precious belongings, or desperately try to drive somewhere, anywhere, as long as they’re moving. Why? What purpose does it possibly serve? Gathering together only makes it easier for aliens to track, spot and slaughter you all in quick succession, or for a comet to kill more of you in a disaster movie, or for Tom Cruise to convert more of you to Scientology faster.

Speaking of which, the movie was totally devoid of thinly veiled Scientology references. I was very disappointed. I wish I could meet some Scientologists. All I have to make fun of is Tom Cruise and John Travolta, and they really do a good enough job of that on their own without me helping. Damn you ridiculous Scientology-beleiving jerks, where are you when I need you to help me form my own laughable cult bent on world domination? Nowhere, that’s where.

// 6 Comments

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