(Written and published Fantastic 4’s soon return is causing many divided opinions,
yet this is far from the only reboot scheduled to arrive soon, even 60’s
childhood classic The Clangers will will return to British
television this week. Reboots are running wrought through this
generation’s media but why is this the case? Is it laziness, Or a genius
use of nostalgia? The announcement of the Ghostbusters reboot, despite the
originals already expansive continuing story via video games and comics,
made many question the need of such remakes. The fact that countless
films such as these are being announced with each passing day could be
seen as a massive indicator of the draining creativity of Hollywood
today.
Is their inability to create revolutionary new intellectual property
being made up for via the recycling of anything that made even the
slightest impact upon the cinematic scene in previous times?
The major issue of these retellings is that they lose the emotion of the
initial experience, often becoming mediocre attempts to recapture
excitement on rather outdated concepts. A prime illustration of this
would be Total Recall, the 2012 reimagining being a rather bland experience for all involved.
The modern day special effects, bland acting – not having the
extremely entertaining magic of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s amazing
overreacting – and the 90’s quality of special effects made it a perfect
example of this era of action movie, thus far more entertaining than
the modern day film’s less than impactful debut.
Old films aren’t like food, they don’t go off overtime. If anything
they are more like a time capsule of their era, ready to be reopened,
should one want to be taken back.
However, despite my distaste of remakes I can appreciate their good
points. Some remakes being of films so long forgotten the only way they
are drawn to light is via these retelling. Another key factor is that of
nostalgia. Parents are able to share the adventures they remember from
childhood with their children, something the recent return of the Thunderbirds to ITV allowed for in spades. Jurassic World was a very good example of positive
reintroduction, being connected to the originals yet distancing itself
enough to be a fresh insight into the franchise. Connective successors
are far more appealing than that of reboots as they allow for years of
content to still feel relevant.
This is something that the new Ghostbusters film – in its
yet announced connection to the originals – lacks, feeling somewhat
lacklustre in its payoff. A return off the remainders of the old team
would have been a much more exciting premise.
People find comfort in familiarity, myself included, but reboots
needn’t be the answer. new ideas should be top priority over any kind of
remake.
Some films just need to be left in peace, they aren’t going anywhere and are just as exciting as ever.
As Blurred Lines comes on the radio for the umpteenth time I begin to think to myself: “is this all there is?”
Music today seems to be a restricted industry of songs limited to
mindless sex to eternal love, with few without focus on these seemingly
all important issues taking much hold within this world of endless
streams of shallow sex based media and coitus fixated culture. A mere glance at the charts would seem to support my worries. As I
write this the top 20 singles containing 17 relationship based songs,
varying vastly, from Carly Rae Jepsen’s really liking someone to the
lyrics of Hey Mama discussing the “dirty rhythm” as they want it in the “worst way”.
Some may claim that music is about the art, but the fact that such
songs as Blurred lines are doing so amazingly well continues to fuel
this unrelenting torrent of generic similar trash – as the McDonalds of
music – it is easy to churn out and even easier to consume without
thought for quality or taste, clearly shown with this track from Thicke
being the third highest selling singles of this millennium.
However, one could never deny there is enjoyment to be found in songs
of love and sex, there are some truly great songs of this now all
encompassing genre; Pulp’s “Common People” was both a protest of the class system and an amusing little romantic tale; “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric, managing to be heart-warming yet feel original in its styling.
The over sexualised packaging that today’s music comes in seems to be
taking an ever increasing hold on today’s society, the ever decreasing
amount of clothing employed in today’s music videos being often seen as
necessary to sell, yet think back to the then ground breaking
extravaganza employed by Queen in their eternal success of Bohemian Rhapsody,
despite the lack of sexual content it was mind-blowingly successful,
their amazing music combined with the artistic visual being paramount to
their legendary status.
So next time you tune in and listen to the latest heart throbbing
sensation, take a minute and think about whether you are bored of
hearing the same ideas over and over again, or whether you think music
should be exploring more areas, like the classic Bohemian Rhapsody, and remember that music should be about quality and not rhythmic beats to club and gyrate to.
“Gritty” seems to be the word of the day in Hollywood. In the modern
world of media, company after company is attempting to revamp their
image to something “dark and “edgy” in order to appeal to the oh so
important youth market, blatant examples being found on the silver
screen.
Titles such as Man of Steel or Christopher Nolan’s imagining of the Batman
franchise work because much of their appeal is the dark heavy realistic
tone that is employed, allowing for the viewer to relate on an extra
level to the world before their eyes, however is this really something
that should be abused on the level that today’s cinema seems to be
sitting at?
As the massive decline in appreciation for Tim Burton’s works shows;
creating a dark and distorted world for the sake of being dark is not
the way to go, as this results in cliche environments and static
character development. For example his telling of the tale Alice in Wonderland just
recycling old themes of excessive violence and a bland element of
threat to make up for the inability to capture the escapism and
wonderment that Lewis Carroll’s original tale conveyed.
This brings to question the need of these stereotypical “mature”
films to appeal to anyone over the age of five, sometimes brighter is
better! Sometimes some of the most fun films to this date are the
colourful and engaging, such classics as The Mask‘s awesome and
maddening action being able to juggle the dark themes of violence under
possession with the funny dialogue and witty banter.
Marvel’s cinematic universe has also made use of a relatively lighter
universe to that of DC’s, while this has made some call it wish-washy it has allowed viewers young and old to engage and interact
with this phenomenon. Being light also allows for the escapism that
cinema so gives to those whom need it most, averting their gaze from
their own private issues and allowing focus upon a world more magical
and manageable in their hearts, removing the gritty elements that make
their own hardships worse in reality.
While I feel that grit is overdone I still feel it has a significant
place in our media library. Such bleak hopeless films often giving
directors a chance to truly show their inspirational views on our
society, however the over saturation of the industry with these angst
ridden titles should be carefully monitored as its growing excessively
out of control, and limits the creativity being sold to us.
With the boom of Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games trilogy, books and films alike, teen fiction seems to be more popular than ever.
There are countless volumes of angst-ridden adventurers emerging from
the wood work receiving both praise and condemnation both. Prominent
examples being that of The Fault In Our Stars,The Maze Runner and Divergence respectively, taking queue from Collins’ success to leap from the page to the silver screen.
However, are these books any good? Or are they more generic clap-trap
cycled out on the incredibly formulaic conveyor belt of young-adult
story telling?
This erotic French fever dream of a comedy thriller is unmissable. Going into this with no knowledge of the plot or genre other than that two people want to have sex in a cabin is truely a wonderful time, especially with equally confused friends. The film's plot centers around a seeming murderous imposter having a sex-crazed actress visit and demand sex and food for about a week, strangely spending the first 20 minutes flirting with her and the rest of the film denying her advances. The tone begins to feel more like a sketch show than a film with one narrative, going from one very different scene to another with little transition. It even ends in a Rambo-esque fight at the end with the main character butchering half the villains only to have the love interest shot to death, make sort of friends with the killer, find out he didn't actually kill the owner and all go their seperate ways. The film even takes the time out for a rubics cube solving scene, with in-built timer making it feel like a childrens tv show, and an amazing music video where the singer begs for the main character's "Juice", claiming to be "tired of my fingers" and "tired of my cucumber".
While the girl is confusing and annoying the leading guy can carry the whole thing on his ridiculous facial expressions alone, whether his cock his being forceably beaten off over a toy car by the chick or looking for condoms in a box of cereal he is a constant source of hilarity throughout. He also happens to be the director of this masterpiece, hence the massive quality of the project throughout. The first revolutionary step towards safe sex that we needed, but didn't deserve. An unmissable mess that comes together in all the right ways. Rating - Direction - 5/5 Soundtrack -5/5 Plot - 4/5 Characters - 5/5 Overall - 19/20 (ONLY IF WATCHED WITH FRIENDS)
Just out is the next long awaited installment of Square Enix‘s hot new sensation Life is Strange, a massively successful graphic adventure game, playing with the concepts of time travel, both the positives of day to day rewind abuse and the terribly consequences when the course of history itself is changed. Episode 4, known as the “Dark Room” is a must play chapter in the story of Maxine Caulfield’s life, with many a dark twist and turn to be found!
This episode left myself with rather conflicting emotions, mainly due to wasted potential. The end of episode 3 left us in an alternate timeline, where while she had saved her best friend’s father from an untimely demise she has inadvertently led her pal Chloe into a universe where she has lost all movement in her body in an awful car accident. The shy and fairly timid protagonist Max is also show in this alternate timeline to be one of the adversarial party brats, a brief glance through this continuity’s phone showing her contrasting rude and bratty responses to her family and friend’s alike.
However, this world is totally wasted as Max reverts to the “real” world within the first 50 minutes of this near 3 hour installment, with no return and little mention. This could have been such an interesting plot if explored, yet as my own play through of this series had led my Max to this party scene regardless so i was not devastated. Their handling of the Rachel Amber case is both exciting and underwhelming, while learning the nature of her disappearance the end result feels rather ordinary in the weird time bending world that has been established here.
Chloe, Max’s rebellious confident, is driving me to breaking point in this episode, her actions in almost every episode have continuously made me hate and despise the character; it’s clear to see that we are meant to relate to her rebel attitude in this town that is ruled by the rich and corrupt, but she is so rude and selfish in almost every instance available, insulting you, her family and anyone that would disagree with her. While this is rewarding in some instances for the most part it is direct hostility against people who generally seem fairly nice.
At first it seemed to be that the disabled Chloe would be presented in a much more positive light, as if to make the player wonder which timeline is the more favorable, however within minutes even this “Chloe 2″ begins to attempt to guilt trip you and goes as far as to force Max to make impossibly cruel choices. Even the drug dealer Frank is shown to be a much more relatable human character in all his appearances, making me much favor his well being in any presented choice between the two, something that is yet again occurring in this episode.
Regardless of the wasted ideas in the game’s initial hour, the large variety of areas in this episode are a nice escape from the sometimes confining Blackwell Acadamy. the extreme speed that the plot picks up in the last few scenes of the episode would in my own eyes place this as the most dramatic episode to date, the twist and cliffhanger, while not being totally unpredictable or out of no where, are well executed, with just enough foreshadowing to heighten the tension yet not spoil the end result. Rating
A good film should be able to be seen over and over without getting stale, for me Back to the Futureis this work of art.
In 1985 Robert Zemeckis (known for Romancing the Stone) and Bob Gale gave the world a wonderful science-fiction-romantic-comedy in the guise of this film, starring the then mega-star Michael J. Fox and the wonderful Christopher Lloyd, the pair having wonderful chemistry on stage, assisting in the immersion into this wonderful world, where anything is possible with the power of science.
Back to the Future’s premise is very simple; young teenager Marty McFly (Fox) finds himself trapped in 1955, the time when his own parents met and fell in love, when an experiment test becomes dire in the present of 1985 with the nutty professor “Doc” (Llyod) getting gunned down by terrorists before his very eyes. Stuck in this era he seeks the aid of the young Doc, whom starts very sceptical of his claimed origins; however disaster strikes when he unintentionally ruins the meeting of his parents, his own young mother falling in love with him. The rest of the film is a very funny and sweet romantic comedy, Marty having to teach his own wimpy father (Crispin Glover) to be a man, while avoiding the ever increasing advances of his own mother.
The very small scale of the film gives it timeless charm, sticking to the one town and at that only a few locations, along with the strong focus on character within the star studded cast. The inclusion of Sci-fi elements allows one to become immersed in the possibility of such an event occurring, yet their avoidance of making this the focus of the film means you doubt the believability flaws less and less prevalently.
The focus on the love story over the getting home part works wonders, and allows for comedy to bloom in almost every scene, despite the very desperate nature of Marty’s situation, only having a few days to reunite his parents before he himself ceases to be. The score is very of it’s time and helps keep the time zones very distinct , The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News being the film’s major theme suits the story perfectly.
Overall a recommended see, buy and share with as many people as possible, the first in this trilogy is not something you should miss regardless of whether you choose to continue watching the film-series.
The worst part of the film this film is a clusterfuck in both English and Japanese, so no dub/sub fanboying will save it entirely. In Japan there is a bonus subplot about the original kids being all kidnapped which his dropped with some hilariously bad edits and scripting in the dub, but this adds very little. If anything the massively shortened English version makes a tonne more sense. The original is a trippy mess with strange music employed at random often innapropriete times, while the dub is made shorter and more clear of a plot, even if its barely the same one found in the Japanese script. Basically a kids digimon went corrupt and is a paedo and is turning everyone into children for a bit, they use the golden eggs and kill him. This film is set in the Adventure 02 era, and thus has a terrible cast. A massive flop all round, and unlike the prior two it's not even canon, so literal not worth a watch at all. It has a very different art style, but it's not unnappealing and is pretty nice in some scenes. Rating -
The best part of the triple bill and the best Digimon movie to date. When a virus digimon invades the 90s internet kids must combine dial up internet and digital monsters to save the world from being hacked, openly inspired by the Y2K fears. See all your favorite characters from adventure appear, Tai and Izzy and a little bit TK, return to fight the good fight, while all the terrible ones except for Matt keep a safe distance from this great plot. Amazing direction, great art style and the dub's awesome pure 90s soundtrack keeps this a joy everytime, along with the first badass appearance of Omegamon/Omnimon. Rating -
The totally unexpected attempt to cash in on the success of the original Pokemon movies - Digimon: The Movie sees the first 3 Japaneese digimon movies compressed and cut down massivly into one feature, with poorly scripted ties to link the 3 unrelated pictures together. Each one is allocated a time and I will review eac film seperatly.
Movie/Part 1 is the original pitch of the show, set years before adventure, a harmless little adventure with Kari and a larger more deadly Agumon. Some fine animation but nothing significant. Some cute sound moments with Kairi sinign the theme song, and this one at least somewhat can relate to the 2nd film, being both about the Adventure kids. The dub gives the extras some pretty funny lines as per usual and I like hearing the cast I grew up with. Rating -
I love the original Zoolander. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, with some scenes i will never forget. This was utter shite. I was almost asleep in the cinema at times, and even when awake, the plot was so dull it was no better for viewing. The film didn't have the madcap feel of the first, it just felt like a sad old attempt to recreate the magic. It seems they traded jokes for cameos, as for a good long while for anything very funny. My two favorite parts of the movie are the opening as it is genuinely fitting with the Zoolander universe, his school from the first one collapsing in days etc, and his advert as a cow-centaur. The plot is a jumble of points that could be interesting, but none were focused on enough to amount to anything. There is:
Zoolander reconnecting with his son
Hansel learning to commit to his orgy-mates
An attempt to reenter the fashion world
Interpol investigating a series of celebrity murders
Searching for the fountain of youth/garden of Eden
Hansel dealing with the fact he had no parents/finding his father
Zoolander's son being the chosen one, and fat
They form a clusterfuck of a mess with little investment going anywhere. The twists and funniest parts were all in the trailer, if anything the trailers get a way higher score than the film as they didn't waste over one and a half hours of my life. They make call-backs over and over to the first while lacking the bite or the strong supporting cast to carry the performance. Owen Wilson is great as ever, but Stiller's Zoolander was a poor recreation. The character was sweet and kind but too thick to understand in the first, here he is stupid in all the wrong ways, being a knob to lot's of people and generally shitty. Will Ferrell is great, but doesn't appear for the first hour-ish so he was really underused. Zoolander's love interest from the first is dead, and so the focus is entirely on him and Hansel, therefore there isn't anyone intelligent with them to balance them out or connect to the viewer's reactions to their strange situations. I don't even know why they killed her, her actress (Stiller's real life wife) comes back to play her ghost, so it's not even like they killed her due to her not being able to make a return. The soundtrack is good - because its just the popular ones from the first reused to relight any small glimmer of interest with nostalgia. Their budget seemed really impressive, shame it was terribly utilized on exaggerated set pieces with no comic value. Utter shite, never watch this film - If you love the first it retro actively ruins it, if you didn't watch or like the first one then half the script being references will go over your head. And this opened on the same week as Deadpool, what a fucking piss take. The film ends Hansel's story with a miscarriage joke, I feel like that is am entire accurate summary of this film. A miscarriage.
This amazing adventure from June 2006 sees Adam Sandler play seemingly the worst paid architect in the world, who's whole world is turned upside-down when Christopher Walken (a magic scientist/angel/Doc Brown rip-off) gives him a universal remote that literally let's him control his universe. What an exciting premise, thank God Sandler's depressed subdued acting sucked out any interest one might have in the struggles of his character. The film constantly flip flops between his jerk ass family making his work life harder, and him being a total cunt when they are being perfectly nice, meaning it's hard to feel sorry for him or his family when they divorce due to his pissing around with time. The film takes elements the Christmas Carol, The Time Traveler's wife and many more, jumbles their morals and themes together and removes any lessons to be learnt throughout.
I appreciated the massive shift in tone the film takes, while it wasn't good it was at least surprising for a Sandler film. The opening makes you think it's going to be a typical "average guy uses power to fix life and family, and after road bump grows closer", while the plot does indeed follow this rule eventually we get taken away from the suburbs and his terrible job to a weird section of the film in 2029, with him already having achieved his CEO dreams and made his life a financial success, at the mere cost of his amazingly hot wife.
While it is cool to see them go with a future world and have no one question it the film begins to look so cheap it is unbelievable, Sandler's fat cancer patient body being a horrific mix of Shrek and Fat Bastard, yet more unappealing and less realistic than both.
The main issue with the moral of the story is that it's not really clear. Early on it seems like the remote is there to give him more time with his family by helping him with work and skipping the boring parts of his day to day life. However as he grows tired of his family he starts skipping family time. The message stays the same with work being less important than family, but they totally flip his character's personality, making the remote punish him for skipping his family rather than rewarding him with family time and allowing him time to fix his life. He unintentionally skips to the end of his career, and due to the fact he autopilots when skipping with the remote he appeared so cold and inconsiderate his marriage ended. So when he reaches the "It was all a dream" cop-out ending, he gives up on the project that would let would let him achieve all his work goals to go camping. This is ridiculous as it's clearly stated the fact he was fast forwarding caused him not to be able to communicate with his wife, so if he had bothered to do the work the long way the project presumably would have gone the same way.
Anyways, the other actors are as bland as Sandler, Walken does a little singing in his introduction so that gives this a music point I guess. Oh Walken was the angel of death, so basically this film comes down to showing Scrooge a Christmas Future really slowly, on stop and start. Much better than some of Sandler's shite, take out the aggressive and constant fart jokes, maybe reduce the whorish product placement for Bed, Bath and Beyond, Sony and Twinkies and you would have just a very very mediocre sci-fi flick, a homeless fuck-witt's Back to the Future. But seriously that product placement is crazy, literally a brand is forced down your throat every few minutes, Sandler pulling a Twinkie out of no where in one scene and starting to eat it while delivering dialogue still, in the scene where he is meant to be blown away by his magic Jesus tv-remote.
The announcement of the Ghostbusters reboot, despite the
originals already expansive continuing story via video games and comics,
made many question the need of such remakes. The fact that countless
films such as these are being announced with each passing day could be
seen as a massive indicator of the draining creativity of Hollywood
today.
Old films aren’t like food, they don’t go off overtime. If anything
they are more like a time capsule of their era, ready to be reopened,
should one want to be taken back.
