“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities”

Hello :-)

‘The Fault In Our Stars’ is the only book I’ve ever recommended to people on the basis that “it will kick your heart in the arse… in a good way”.

I read it 18 months ago, after catching on characteristically late to how awesome the Vlogbrothers are. This led me to John Green’s books, all of which I love, but ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ (TFIOS) has a particular place in my heart. As I’m an unashamed fan I went to a preview ‘Fan Screening’ on 12th June a week before the film’s general UK release on 19th June.

‘The Fault In Our Stars’ is the story of Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year-old coping with long-term thyroid cancer. At her mother’s request she begins to attend a cancer support group and meets Augustus Waters, an boy who had osteosarcoma which is in remission but has led to the amputation of his leg. The two bond over the book ‘An Imperial Affliction’ and, as they get closer, try to seek out the Author to find out what happens after the story ends.

Just a disclaimer, I am a massive fan of this book. I’m going to try my best to be objective but, if a little bit of fangirl sneaks in, you’ve been warned.

On the surface (and definitely on the posters) ‘TFIOS’ looks like it’s going to be a Nick Sparks film. Factor in the cancer element and to all the world it might look as though you have ‘Dear John’ meets ‘My Sisters Keeper’. This could not be further from the truth.

‘TFIOS’ is smart, witty, romantic and never somber. I won’t lie, there is a level of melancholy to the film but it doesn’t come off as depressing, I think it’s dealt with beautifully. Crucially this is not a film ‘about cancer’ it’s a film about people with cancer, falling in love. I love that illness isn’t what defines this story and it is ultimately hopeful.

‘TFIOS’ has stayed remarkably close to the source material. A few characters are left out and some events aren’t realised at all, but the tone of the book is still there, as are all the essential plot points. Aside from the fact that if they had mucked the story around, thousands of TFIOS book fans would storm the headquarters of 20th Century Fox like Gaston and the villagers in Beauty and the Beast, the story doesn’t need any embellishment. The book always struck me as very cinematic and it’s translated to screen with the greatest of ease thanks to the writing of Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. It borrows some key dialogue directly from the source but for the most part the script is new and appropriately clever and lovely. 

As much as I loved the film, it isn’t without it’s missteps. One scene where Hazel and Augustus visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam is a little jarring. Hazel has difficulty breathing and has to wear a nasal cannula to give her oxygen, unfortunately the Anne Frank museum doesn’t have a lift so she has to climb the stairs to get to the famous attic. This is a huge struggle for her and she has to keep pausing for breath, over the top of these moments the director plays in audio of a girl reading extracts from Anne Frank’s diary about struggle and hope and how it sucks that sometimes young people have to go through some really awful situations. This did feel a little like the film was jumping up and down shouting,

“HEY! HAZEL AND ANNE FRANK BOTH HAD TO GO THROUGH SOME SHIT BUT THEY REMAINED POSITIVE PEOPLE!”

Thankfully this is the only point where the film tries to ram any kind of message down your throat. The movie ponders the question of what it means to love someone when you know you have restricted time and the futility of trying to limit your part in the emotional suffering of those around you. As you may well have heard, the story doesn’t so much tug on your heartstrings as punch them repeatedly in the face (word to the wise, don't forget the tissues), but this really is balanced out by the humour laced throughout. It has a dry wit and a darkly comic undertone, meaning that, despite the bountiful tears shed, the characters are by no means self-pitying.

John Green’s creations are perfectly cast. Nat Wolff has a small but very funny role as Augustus’s friend Isaac, a testament to the fact you can lose your sight but you don’t have to lose your sense of humour. Laura Dern and Sam Trammell are the caring, understanding, funny parents we would all like to have (Dern especially is a delight) and Willem Dafoe is perfectly miserable in his supporting role as Hazel’s favourite Author.

 Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort head up the roster as Hazel and Augustus and I really couldn’t think of anyone better to do the job. Elgort brings to life everything that I adore about Augustus; his charm, his wit but also the innate goofiness that’s captured so perfectly in a scene where he goes on his first flight in an aeroplane.

Hazel is a character I really love and she’s the key to this whole story. She’s perfectly realised in a gorgeous performance from Shailene Woodley. There’s a quote about Hazel in the book, “She walks lightly upon the earth” and Woodley nails that. Hazel is funny, smart and never mean and tries so desperately to minimise the impact she leaves on the world. I love her and Woodley is note perfect.

It’s really hard for me to gauge what non-book-reading audiences are going to think. The screening I was in was a preview screening for book fans so we all laughed and cried and whooped and cheered in appreciation of the film and remembrance of the book. A really positive thing I took away from our screening was that it was almost entirely made up of girls. Obviously girls like all kinds of films, but having lots of girls turn out for a film like this with a fully developed, witty, three dimensional female lead such as Hazel is an encouraging thing to see in a medium thats been male-audience orientated for so long.

I thought ‘TFIOS’ was wonderful. Emotional but never depressing, sweet but never cloying and with a gorgeous hint of gallows humour.  This film? It’s more than okay.

'The Fault in our Stars' goes on general UK release on 19^th June. 

Now I need some…

Reasons to be cheerful :-)

1. New, sexy ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ posters! I’m SO excited for this film! The only annoying thing is that I’m on holiday when it opens! I really love the advertising campaign on this, it’s cheeky and fun and looks like it's going to be a colourful departure for Marvel.

2. So Jurassic World is a thing that's happening. Some photos have come out which is always nice (Yay! Chris Pratt's continued employment!) but the thing that interests me the most is the Director Colin Trevorrow has been talking about the plot. It's a really interesting premise and I can't wait to see it materialise next year.

That's everything I've got for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 

“Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn't mean they can't be saved”

Hello :-)

X-men stands alone in the Superhero movie arena as a bit of an oddity. The franchise has been going continuously since its debut film 14 years ago (oh god… that makes me feel so OLD) where it can be credited with kicking off the genre’s renaissance. They’ve managed to simultaneously prequel, spin-off and continue the series without completely dispensing of the core cast. Where Spider-man, Superman and Batman have all been recast over the last decade and a half, Huge Action is still there, wielding his adamantium claws. The latest from the franchise is the trickily titled ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ (I can’t be arsed with that so lets just say DOFP) and I was there on release day.

This review contains SPOILERS for ‘X-Men: Last Stand’ and ‘The Wolverine’.

‘DOFP’ endeavours to bring together the original X-cast and the more recent X-men Babies cast. We begin in a Matrix-like future where mutants and humans alike are rounded up and killed by nigh on indestructible machines called sentinels. A last bastion of hope comes in the form of some of our favourites Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Storm (Halle Berry), Shadowcat (Ellen Page), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Colossus (Daniel Cudmore) amongst some less familiar faces. The team decide the only way to survive is to go back in time, change events and prevent the sentinels ever coming to fruition. Through some Shadowcat related jiggery pokery Wolverine heads back to the 70’s to try and reconcile young Xavier (James McAvoy) and young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to bring down the sentinels before they take hold.

Firstly, there is no way you could go into this film without existing knowledge of the X-universe and fully understand it. In a similar way to the latter films in the Harry Potter franchise, I think you could go in as an outsider and enjoy it, but when you have a well-established world such as this it’s just impossible to bring everyone up to speed. Not that I think that’s a problem; I think when you’ve reached the 7^th instalment of your franchise you’ve earned the right to do away with recaps.

‘DOFP’ is an impressive feat and I think that bears a direct correlation to the return of Bryan Singer. If I was in charge of 20^th Century Fox I would be crawling on my belly, giving that man every penny he wanted to make him stay. He just ‘gets’ it. There is a lot more to the plot that what I’ve ham-fistedly described above and it’s to Singer’s credit that he manages to hold it all down and channel it into a cohesive story.

The key to ‘DOFP’ is marrying together the ‘future’ and ‘past’ of the ridiculous title which I think is done well. The opening scenes set up the future aspects nicely and as we’re plunged back into the world of ‘X-men: First Class’ we begin to see how events are going to come full circle.

The downside of this labyrinthine plot is that some of the characters (mainly the unestablished ‘future’ characters) fall by the wayside. Aside from his Michael Stipe eye stripe I’m not really sure what Warpath (real name Booboo Stewart… WHAT. A. NAME.) was all about. Blink (again, real name Fan Bingbing… AMAZING!) is a mutant who can create portals, which pays off beautifully in the fight scenes but other than that she merely acts as another barrier between the bad guys and our original X-cast, the ones we actually care about.

One new member of the cast that doesn’t let us forget him is Evan Peters as Quicksilver, a mutant with the ability to move and think at super-speed; he’s basically Dash from ‘The Incredibles’ but with kleptomania. I loved him :-) His ‘Time in a Bottle’ sequence was a personal highlight and I think it’s a shame he isn’t in it longer. You may be aware that this isn’t the only incarnation of Quicksilver hitting our screens. As teased in the mid-credits of ‘Captain America 2’ Peters’ ‘Kick Ass’ co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be playing the character in ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and he’s going to have to go some to out-do Peters.

Being typically awesome is Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask. It’s super fun to see Dinklage play such an out and out bad guy and getting his teeth into some serious fear mongering.

 Aside from that the core cast of ‘future’ and ‘past’ are back and firing on all cylinders. There’s reduced screen time for Michael Fassbender but what he does with the time he’s given is great (I love his explanation as to why he’s being held captive under the pentagon). Also, James McAvoy is such a charismatic screen presence, every moment with him is a joy. I really like how he humanises the previously beyond reproach X-Patriarch.

However, if ‘X-men: First Class’ was a Magneto origins story, ‘DOFP’ belongs to Mystique. Adding to the ever-mounting pile of fantastic things about her, Jennifer Lawrence nails it as Mystique. Having distanced herself from Xavier and Magneto, Mystique goes off on her own to protect mutants and seek retribution for the wrongs done to her own kind. It’s great to see her getting some amazing fight scenes and I’m intrigued to see where the character goes next.

Much like Singer’s first two X-films, the action scenes in ‘DOFP’ are really balanced and don’t overpower the narrative. Don’t get me wrong there are some stunning set pieces; the opening scene is a fight between the ‘Future’ characters and a gang of sentinels and it had me bouncing up and down in my seat with excitement. The sparing use of these scenes however, is refreshing and acts as a way to keep the story our primary focus.

There are a few plot problems, namely the fact that this movie tries to ignore some elements of the previous films. ‘DOFP’ seems perfectly happy to remind us that in ‘X-Men: Last Stand’ Wolverine killed the woman he loved but it doesn’t want to explain how the hell Professor X un-vaporised himself following the events of the same film. It would be a lie to say that this spoilt my enjoyment of the film and there is a certain element of ‘well the continuity’s shot to shit whatever we do so fuck it!’, still, a touch of explanation wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The boldest move the movie makes is its final twist. I won’t spoil anything but it’s a hugely gutsy move that makes an impact on the entire X-universe. Bryan Singer’s willingness to make massive changes to this world is encouraging and it’s one of the reasons I’m so pleased he’s back in the X-driving seat.

‘DOFP’ is an undeniably impressive, adventurous, slightly flawed Superhero blockbuster. Although it’s blighted by a couple of continuity errors you can’t stay mad at it because it’s great fun. It’s lovely to see Bryan Singer holding the reins again and I hope that’s where he stays.

So, how about some…

Reasons to be Cheerful

1. All the fun stuff happens in London which annoys me no end but I must admit this is pretty cool. The entire town of Hill Valley looks like it’s going to be recreated by the wizards over at Secret Cinema for a screening of ‘Back to the Future’. The wonderful Shiznit have covered a couple of their events before and by all accounts it seems like an excellent idea albeit with a few problems and a slightly pretentious mission statement.

2. Fancy being written into a Game of Thrones book and having your fictional self killed off in a typically grim Westerosi fashion? Then you’re in luck! The wonderful George RR Martin is helping to raise money for The Food Depot and Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary charities in New Mexico by offering the chance to appear in his ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series. Unfortunately you do have to donate the hefty sum of $20,000 to have the chance to appear in the books but if you donate any money via Martin’s prizeo page you could be in with a chance of winning a trip to New Mexico where you can meet the author and ask him anything you like!

That’s all for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Rachel May and the DVD Hallows Part 3: There and Back Again A Bloggers Tale

Hello :-)


This is the third part of my DVD round up! Imagine, splitting something up into three long waffley episodes when it could have worked just as well as one solidly done post. As if anyone would do a thing like that…

The Wolverine 

*SPOILER ALERT* (contains spoilers for ‘X:Men 3 – The Last Stand’)

Just so we get our chronology right, the events of ‘The Wolverine’ are supposed to take place after the goings on of ‘X:Men 3 – The Last Stand’ where Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) killed Jean Grey. So at the beginning of ‘The Wolverine’ Logan is moping around the Canadian woods, feeling sorry for himself and making friends with grizzly bears. A stranger then arrives requesting the presence of Wolverine in Japan to meet with an old friend on his deathbed.


So after the colossal fuck up that was ‘X:Men Origins: Wolverine’, 20th Century Fox had nothing to lose. This most recent outing (not counting his amusing cameo in ‘X Men: First Class’) goes some of the way to making it up to Wolverine fans.


I loved the Japanese setting, it lends itself really well to the Wolverine mythology. The scenes on the bullet train and the wonderful funeral scene amongst the pagodas were great, it's just such a lovely location and goes some way to expand the X-Universe beyond the shores of the States.


Hugh Jackman is eminently watchable as the titular Wolverine and always has been. In a similar way to 'The Dark Knight Rises' he begins the story having shut himself off from the wider world and over the course of the movie tries to put himself back together again. It is refreshing to see a Superhero film where the plot allows for so much character development, especially in a movie like this that makes big decisions about its lead character that will impact on later films.

The 12A rating does make it an oddly bloodless film. The body count is pretty high but you never really see anything, especially in what could have been a particularly gruesome body-horror moment. Another thing that makes this film a bit limp in places is the utterly wet love interest. This is a gripe of mine; why oh why do screenwriters keep creating these ultra wimpy , simpering love interests for Superheroes? Mariko was like watching a 1950's Disney Princess without any of the charm.


This film also suffers when we arrive at the third act. After a fantastic scene where Logan is accosted by a team of Ninjas, the final fight scene is ridiculously OTT and not in a good way. The Viper character (an ineffective additional villain if ever I saw one) turns into Uma Thurman's Poision Ivy from Batman and Robin (NEVER something you want to invoke) and the final reveal is so utterly daft it was all I could do not to laugh.


Despite it's spineless female characters and stupid ending 'The Wolverine' is worth a watch. With some lovely set pieces, bags of character development and the most exciting mid-credits scene since 'Iron Man's intro to the "Avenger Initiative" I'm happy to report our favourite mutant can still deliver the goods.

The Wolverine is out on Blu-Ray and DVD now.

Only God Forgives

‘Only God Forgives’ is a neon tinted, mafia themed, greek tragedy, revenge thriller. Nicholas Winding Refn’s darling Ryan Gosling is Julian an American expatriate who runs a Muay Thai club in Bangkok that’s a front for a drug smuggling operation. Julian’s mother Crystal (Kristen Scott Thomas) flies in from America to identify the body of Julian’s brother Billy (Tom Burke). Crystal guilts Julian into hunting down his brother’s killers and unknowingly pitting himself against the unflinching Lieutenant Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm).


Gosling and Refn last worked together on the brilliant and brutal ‘Drive’, one of my favourite films of recent years. I’m also a huge fan of Refn’s outing with Tom Hardy ‘Bronson’.

This… this is different.

It looks ridiculously stylish, if nothing else this film is a testament to how well Refn can create an image. The neon lights of Bangkok add to the nightmarish, netherworld feel of the film and it had me appropriately on edge. There is, however, a thin line between coolly atmospheric and style over substance. For me ‘Only God Forgives’ stays too often into oblique dialogue and a general sense of ‘WTF is going on?!?!’.


The performances of Kristen Scott Thomas and Vithaya Pansringarm were just enough to keep me in my seat for the 90 minute run time. Both characters are nothing short of fucking terrifying. Crystal speaks in such a way that chills me to the bone and Lieutenant Chang’s seeming indifference to brutal acts of ultra violence is one of the most unnerving things I’ve seen in a film for a long time.


I genuinely don’t know whether or not to recommend ‘Only God Forgives’, it’s been about 9 months since I saw it and I still don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t like it as much as ‘Drive’ but then I’m not entirely sue if Refn is making films with the purpose of having people like them.


‘Only God Forgives’ is available of DVD and Blu-Ray now. 

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

In ‘Alpha Papa’ we rejoin Alan (Steve Coogan) as we left him in his online mini-series, hosting ‘Mid Morning Matters’ on North Norfolk Digital. The station is taken over by new managers and undergoes an overhaul by way of a name change and the unceremonious sacking of Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney).


Pat takes this none too well and decides to crash the station launch with a chip on his shoulder and a shotgun in his hand. Pat takes many of the station employees hostage leaving Alan to step up to the plate and mediate between a potentially homicidal Pat and her majesty’s constabulary.

I’m a massive Alan Partridge fan as it is, even so ‘Alpha Papa’ is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.


Placing Alan in the middle of a police siege is brilliant. Desperate and fame hungry Alan tries to exploit the situation for his own shameless self-promotion. Coogan knows the bones of this character and the film works best when Alan is left to be the hypocritical pedant we know and love.


There are a couple of mis-fires. There are some toilet humour, (literally) pants down moments that feel out of  step with the rest of the film but these are really minor things in a generally laugh-a-minute film.


‘Alpha Papa’ is such a British film in terms of location, cast and temperament. Parochial, petty, obsessed with the mundane Alan’s dalliance with the big screen is befittingly preoccupied with the petty.

‘Alpha Papa’ is on DVD and Blu-Ray now.

Frozen


‘Frozen’ is the story of two princess sisters Anna (Kristen Bell), a cute, clumsy optimist and Elsa (Idina Menzel) who was imbued with magical powers at birth. When Elsa comes of age she is crowned as Queen of Arendelle but things go awry and Elsa steals away to the mountains to live a life of solitude. Anna, blaming herself for her sister’s self-imposed exile sets off on an journey - teaming up with mountain man Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his reindeer Sven- to track Elsa down. Encountering arctic conditions, mystical trolls and an adorable snowman called Olaf (Josh Gad), Anna battles the elements in a race to save the kingdom.

Oh ‘Frozen’, how do I love thee, let me count the ways.

As a huge Disney fan I cannot begin to tell you how happy it makes me that they’re properly back on course. It is such a lovely story with brilliant characters; modern without doing away with Disney’s heritage and really, really funny.


The songs are properly lovely. Opening with ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’ the songs all tell stories and help the narrative along while being super fun. Husband and Wife writing duo Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez have penned some wonderful songs headed up by the Oscar winning ‘Let It Go’ to which I cannot listen without it bringing me to tears.


The songs are brought to life by a brilliant voice cast. Kristen Bell is adorable as the klutzy Anna, who is possibly the most ‘real’ Disney princess we have ever had. Elsa could so easily have been the film’s default antagonist but co-directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee haven’t played it as simply as that which pays dividends. The one the kids are going to go nuts for is Josh Gad’s utterly adorable Olaf the Snowman.


‘Frozen’ is pushing Disney in the best direction they could possibly go. Both times I went to see it in the theatre I fell utterly in love with it and it really stands up to repeat home viewings (an essential quality for a children’s film!). ‘Frozen’ is a gorgeous addition to the House of Mouse , I adore it.


'Frozen' is out now, buy it buy it BUY IT!!!!


So, that's that sorted, lets have a look at some...


Reasons to be Cheerful :-)


1. Amy Acker is going to be in ‘Marvels Agents of SHIELD’ :-) The Whedon regular is going to be playing Agent Coulson’s Cellist girlfriend! I’m looking forward to this, I really think ‘Agents of SHIELD’ has been picking up this second half of the season and this can only be a positive addition.

2. Last trailer for ‘X:Men Days of Future Past’! This one also has a lovely introduction from the lovely Hugh Jackman! It looks super awesomely exciting, and you know… PETER FUCKING DINKLAGE!!!


That’ll do for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

"This isn't freedom. This is fear,"

Hello :-)

Blockbuster season seems to be starting earlier and earlier doesn’t it?
Previously confined to the summer months, Blockbuster season has been creeping forward for the last few years riding on the wave created by the Marvel cinematic universe. This year it’s the turn of Captain America to kick things off.

In ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (or Captain America 2, whatever you want to call it) takes place in Washington DC two years after the events of ‘Avengers Assemble’ here our Star Spangled Man (Chris Evans) is up against a more sinister threat; the enemy within.

Events are set in motion when the Cap and his team are given a hostage rescue mission aboard a hijacked ship. Everything goes according to plan but Steve is uneasy and his suspicions are confirmed when he discovers that Natasha Romanov/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) has been assigned a special mission of her own.

Captain America begins to pull on the thread that leads him to question whether he can trust Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and S.H.I.E.L.D boss Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). As events take a turn for the worse the Captain and Black Widow find themselves on the run and in the sights of the elusive Winter Soldier.

Straight off the bat I found ‘Captain America 2’ hugely enjoyable, more so than ‘Thor 2’. When the biggest problem you have with a film is “why did they bother putting real chairs in a room full of council members that appear via hologram?” you know things aren’t so bad.

This is very much a Superhero movie for today. In a world of phone tapping, e-mail hacking and constant CCTV surveillance, ‘Captain America 2’ has more than a whiff of the Edward Snowden about it. It’s a masterstroke, it makes perfect sense. Anthony and Joe Russo (who I’m familiar with from their work on the wonderful ‘Community’) have done a nice job making ‘Captain America 2’ more grown up, it’s still funny and doesn’t take itself too seriously but there’s a reality about it that keeps things grounded.

Another thing that struck me was the updated action sequences. Whilst the action in ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ was very old fashioned (which fit perfectly with that film) everything in this movie is sleeker, more fluid, even the Captain’s fighting style has been updated. It’s a less obvious improvement but I really liked it.

I have and always will argue that what’s so wonderful about Cap is his inherent goodness. Here, Cap is still his sweet, self-deprecating, wholesome self but notably less naive which is reinforced by how Evans has grown into the role. Cap’s USP is that he’s a man out of time which is nodded to quite nicely with a glimpse into his notebook of things to catch up with (“Star Wars Trek”) and a surprise visit to and old friend. For me these touches added the right level of reverence for what has gone before.

In a way that I never expected, Black Widow and Captain America make quite the team. His patriotism coupled with her cynicism make for a weirdly cohesive pairing. I love Scarlett Johansson and I especially love her as Black Widow. She’s given a lot more to do here than in previous films and she has a nice character arc to do with her own sense of identity and all the red in her infamous ledger. I love her and have everything crossed that she’ll get her own movie.

If I was going to get picky I’d say the obviousness of some of the reveals is a problem. You don’t have to work very hard to see who the bad guy is and the identity of the titular Winter Soldier is one I worked out from the very first posters. To make matters worse, when the film does look like it’s going in an unexpected direction it does a 180 degree turn an hour later, undoing all it’s good work.

Sadly for Marvel’s most subversive film to date it falls so easily into the same routine as the previous films. The wonderful Den of Geek has spoken about this before but for the time being it looks like every Superhero movie is going to end in a big fight. I can live with that as long as you try and differentiate your smashy crashy ending from all the other smashy crashy endings that have come before. Unfortunately ‘Captain America 2’ doesn’t mark itself out from all the other banging clanging finales but there are some repercussions to come out of ‘Captain America 2’ that will effect on the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not to mention ‘Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD’ which I think is a really brave move.

At some point during the third act it does feel as though ‘Captain America 2’ stops being its own film and starts being another cog in the machine of the Marvel Cinematic Universe but that doesn’t undo all the good work of the previous hour and 45 minutes. More ‘Mission Impossible’ than any of the previous Marvel films, ‘Captain America The Winter Soldier’ stands on it’s own as a political thriller in the age of the Superhero movie.

So, let’s have a look at some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. The red band trailer for ’22 Jump Street’ is out and it is hilarious. I joined the ’21 Jump Street’ bandwagon really late, it was the first film I watched on Netflix and I LOVED it :-) Phil Lord and Chris Miller's ’22 Jump Street’ is coming straight off the back of ‘The Lego Movie’ and it looks brilliant!

2. The trailer for ‘In The Flesh’ series 2 is here! I really loved the first series, only three episodes but I’m a massive zombie  fan and I thought ‘In The Flesh’ did something new and interesting with the genre. Series 2 is due to air in May and I’m really looking forward to it.

That’s all I’ve got for you today!

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x 

“There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that’s what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant… oh fuck it.”

Hello :-)

Wes Anderson is back after ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ his critically acclaimed and most commercially successful venture since 2001’s ‘The Royal Tennenbaums’. Mr Anderson’s newest offering is ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.

‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is a Matryoshka doll of a film; it’s a story within a story within a story and possibly within another story… it’s hard to keep count.
The story proper begins in 1932 during the heyday of the Grand Budapest Hotel, when future hotel owner Zero Moustafa (the younger played by Tony Revolori and the elder played by F. Murray Abraham) worked as a lobby boy. The fictional home of the Grand Budapest, Zubrowka, is on the verge of war, but this is of little consequence to Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) the Grand Budapest's loyal concierge. When Gustave is left a priceless painting in the will of aged client Madame D he is framed for murder and wrongly imprisoned. What follows is a crime caper the likes of which only Anderson could produce.

In the giant weighing scales of life I’ve decided I like Wes Anderson. I find his idiosyncratic directorial style charming and refreshingly simplistic in terms of editing. That said his films do does have a tendency to waffle on about not very much and I wouldn’t be the first to say that sometimes he strays into ‘style over substance’.

The main thing ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ has going for it is Ralph Finnes as Gustave H. Better known for his highbrow roles (although ‘Grand Budapest’ is hardly lowest common denominator comedy…), Finnes fits perfectly into this caper comedy. He has superb timing and a deadpan delivery that works so wonderfully here.
His partner in crime (or, more accurately, in innocence) newcomer Tony Revolori is an excellent foil to Gustave’s wonderful camp-ness. Their on screen chemistry is the films biggest draw and a source of constant amusement.
There is the standard raft of cameos you’d associate with Anderson but they’re incredibly fleeting. Its fun to see the roster play out across the sprightly 99 minute run time but the core of the film is always Finnes and Revolori.

I’ll tell you what this film is; it’s not just a Russian doll, its candyfloss. Like a massive bag of candyfloss it’s great fun while you’re eating it but all of a sudden it’s gone and you’re still hungry. That’s pretty much how I felt with ‘Grand Budapest’. It ends really abruptly and you don’t really have a lot to show for it.

This film may not win any new Anderson fans to the cause but there’s a still lot to love. It looks gorgeous and Ralph Finnes taps into his funny with eminently watchable results. It doesn’t have the same emotional pull as ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ and ultimately doesn’t amount to much; fluff it may be, but at least it’s funny while it lasts.

Right then lets do some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Frozen is the biggest animation in box office history. It’s now the 10th biggest grossing film of all time! It’s really really encouraging to see quality animation such as ‘Frozen’ making waves :-)

2. An ‘Alpha Papa’ sequel is in the works! Henry Normal, co-founder of Baby Cow, said there are plans for new episodes of an online series, Mid Morning Matters, as well as a new one-off programme for Sky, all exciting stuff :-)

That’s everything for now.

Goodbye till next time :-)
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