Severe Jam Damage

When I was a kid certain things on telly freaked me out. The Daleks were watched from behind the sofa of course, Roald Dahls’ Tales of the Unexpected which I loved but then ended up having nightmares about (Jeremy Irons killing his wife in the bathtub and putting her body into plastic bags and burying it in the back garden anyone?) Wanderly Wagon also had its moments - Sneaky Snake was just so damn sneaky and oh god those googly, plastic eyes of his. Mesmerising.
But the show that probably freaked me out the most was ‘Monkey’. Remember that? The Monkey King flying about on that pink cloud, Pigsey with his snorting laughter and that snout, Sandy doing, er, whatever it was that he did. Ugly, ugly characters. Freaky. And lets not forget Tripitaka who was possibly the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Played by a woman, but he\she was a monk. Between that and the effeminate nose\chin combo of Zoltar from Battle of the Planets it was confusing for an 8 year old, all those mixed genders on childrens telly how did I -or anyone- grow up straight in the 80s? Actually I take that back, thinking of the puffball skirts, big hair and pastel colours I think we were all a little bit gay. (Seriously though was Zoltar a man or a woman? I still don’t know, but gawd I envied their perfect nose and lips.)
Which brings me - in my usual tangenital way - to ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’. Billed as the first movie starring Jet Li AND Jackie Chan it tells the tale of a boy who finds himself transported to the Middle Kingdom by the magical staff of the Monkey King. So here we go again, more tales of the trickster Monkey - this time played by Jet Li who appeared to be channelling Masaaki Sakai in the role. What follows is a by the numbers Quest Tale, complete with flashbacks and ‘Montage! Every shot you show a little improvement ‘ sequences. Its fun in a mindless way, lots of chop-socky kung-fu, full-face Li\Chan action (no stunt doubles here) girl-on-girl action (I mean fight scenes you pervs) and nods to every kung-fu movie ever made I think. The only jarring parts of the movie are the sequences in ‘modern time’. Michael Angarano is fine as the ‘hong-kong phooey mad’ kid, but the ‘bullies’ dress like they’ve stepped out of 1984, speak like 1950s street hoods and carry guns. Myself and Priscilla expected them to break into a performance of ’sharks vs jets’ a couple of times. The references to Karate Kid were funny the first couple of times, but got a bit cringy by the end. Overall its alright, there’s a few laughs, some good action sequences and stunning locations. The plot itself gives us nothing new although as Priscilla said ‘its a lot more coherent than bleddy Hanc0ck’.

Forbidden Kingdom gets a Buddha Palm to the chest and the Monkey King still freaks me out a little.

Look up in the sky!
Is it a comedy?
Is it an action-thriller?
Is it a vaguely art-house-style drama?

No, It’s HanCOCK.

Priscilla and I went to a preview showing last week, I got stuck sitting beside a couple of stoned, stinking crusties who giggled and threw popcorn at each other throughout the entire film. Not just one or two pieces of popcorn, this was handfuls of the stuff being flung interspersed with pouring Coke over each others head. Mind, the drink probably only helped to wash their filthy bodies. She had a habit of pulling her dreads into a pony on top of her head and every time her arms were raised higher than waist level I was overcome with stench and almost passed out. This of course put me in great humour and the occasional barks of ’shut the FUCK UP!’ were laughed at and roundly ignored.

Apparently a lot of the movie was left on the cutting-room floor and it shows. There are obvious holes where something appears to have been explained in a previous scene so that things just happen that make no sense. For instance the ‘reveal’ of the bad guy was done in such a way that the audience was (I think) supposed to share an ‘OHMAGAWD’ moment. However since we had never SEEN the bad guy till that moment the impact was less than impressive.

Jason Bateman who has spent the last few years re-building his career with his work in Arrested Development and Juno is woefully wasted here as ‘nice-guy Ray’. Will Smith has a couple of good moments (ok, I laughed when he picked up the two frying pans) but spends the movie phoning it in. Charlize has transformed herself into ‘generic hollywood blonde #3785′ and gives the flattest performance of her life.

The movie veers from cartoon violence to ill-fitting soft-focus ’small moments’ in the characters lives - where nothing much happens but we are supposed to feel that this is ‘NOT JUST AN ACTION MOVIE - ITS DEEPER THAN THAT, YO!’ By the end of it you are tired of the heroics, the jokes and the ultra-slo-mo ‘grief’ of the characters. The plot has unravelled to the point where they really should have scrapped it and started over, the characters have become hateful, even the soundtrack shares the films’ multiple personality disorder and is more ‘epileptic’ than ‘eclectic’.

Maybe I should have taken a leaf out of the crusties joint and gotten stoned along with them. THEY didn’t seem to be having the same problems with the movie that I had -then again given their behaviour I don’t think they even knew they were in a cinema.

Hancock gets one big stinkin thumb down.

You probably thought I had forgotten all about this place right? Wrong, I just haven’t had much to say about anything lately. Anyway, here are a few movie reviews…

The Incredible Hulk
I haven’t seen the Ang Lee version so wasn’t able to compare, but the opening shot of Ed Norton was enough to keep me happy. Entertaining without being cheesy, a plot that didn’t insult the audience - a couple of nods to the TV show and some pretty cool Hulk SMASH moments.
but seriously… Ed Norton in the opening scene, in the words of the Kool-Aid jug ‘ohhh yeahhhhh…..’

Wanted
This one annoyed me so much I can’t be bothered on expanding any of the points below:
Morgan Freeman only plays one role now.
McAvoy doesn’t (and shouldn’t) do yanqui accents.
I wonder what kind of roles Angie will get when her tits start going south?
Guns don’t kill people, trains do.
All the best bits are in the trailer.

Gone Baby, Gone
Ben Affleck should stay behind the camera. His strengths are obviously in writing (screenplay) and directing. Much, much better than I expected it to be. Could be an Oscar contender, although its release date in the middle of the year might put the kibosh on its chances if people forget about it before next Feb.

AdULTHOOD
Priscilla has a habit of bringing me to mucky movies. When we went to see ‘Flashbacks of a Fool’ his first comment as we exited the theatre was ‘Damn, I thought there would be more sex in it.’ He’s off the booze at the moment so I guess he has to get his thrills somewhere. I gave him a dead arm for that one, but at least when he suggested AdULTHOOD I had a vague idea of what I was letting myself in for.
I hadn’t seen kidULTHOOD so Pris gave me the short version of the plot as we chomped popcorn waiting for the movie to start. Priscilla is pretty shit at explaining things clearly so I was even more confused when he was finished.
‘There’s these two girls and one of them kills herself and it all takes place over two days. And the boys just spend the time taking coke and one of the girls finds out she is pregnant and then this guy kills the father at the end - and he’s the one that this movie is about.’
It was about this point I became blonde.
‘The father?’
‘No, the other guy.’
‘The dead guy?’
‘NOT the father of the girl’
‘Which girl? the dead one?’
‘No, the girl who is pregnant.’
‘Why would he kill her father?
‘He didn’t.’
‘You said he killed her father.’
‘No he killed the father of her baby.’
‘Which baby?’
‘The babe with the power’
‘What power?’
‘The power of voodoo’
‘Who do?’
‘You do’
‘Do what?’
‘Remind me of the babe’

Set 6 years after kidULTHOOD, AdULTHOOD takes place over a single day. Sam (Noel Clarke - ‘Mickey’ in Dr Who) has just been released from jail having served his time for killing Trife (that’d be the baby’s father) and despite the signs of remorse it doesn’t take long before things take a familiar pattern.
Clarke wrote, directed and stars in the movie - which makes you kind of want to hate him, but the boy has got TALENT and you’ve got to respect that. This is a gritty portrayal of urban London made all the more relevant at a time when kids are dying on the streets for stupid reasons. AdULTHOOD doesn’t glamorise the life, nor does it try to give a reason for it. Some scenes are difficult to watch and the conclusion doesn’t end with a ‘happily ever after’ but it does end, and sometimes thats enough.