Romance & Cigarettes

Watching Splash with Tom Hanks on TG4 reminded me of this somewhat more impressive underwater scene from John Turturro's hugely underrated and ignored Romance & Cigarettes. Mind the crude content for ye of a sensitive disposition.

also, check this out for an insight into some of Turturro's most iconic role

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0W2crjd4bc

I Heart Huckabees

Great film, great end of bank holiday show for RTE. 

Kind of funny when you think about it, the Holy weekend that was in it, all about Jesus and whatnot, to be concluded by a funny and thoroughly existential movie such as I Heart Huckabees. No harm at all. The winning quality is in the little details in this movie, everything from the cutesy soundtrack to the imagination/dream animations, down to Wahlberg's brashness and Tomlin and Hoffman's idiosycracies. Jude Law is also excellent, a pretty different type of role for him. And as for the subject matter, right up my alley . . . one of my favourite movies of all time.

This gag reel is pretty good - check out Dustin Hoffman letting one rip. It belies a stranger working environment as witnessed in this video of director David O Russell going crazy at Lily Tomlin. Nasty.

ah hello again

It's been an extremely long time since my last post, so there is a bit of news to catch up on. I suppose first and foremost is my new job as presenter of The Cinema Show on Spin South West. I'll be presenting an hour long look at the latest in cinema and DVD releases, news, reviews and interviews.
Started just before Christmas and most recently Alan Owens of The Limerick Leader joined me for a bit of a ram-shackle preview of 2009 movies (just can't get out of lazy Christmas mode!). Here's one I'm really looking forward to:

So be sure to tune into the Cinema Show on Spin South West 8.45 - 9.45pm Sundays!! I'll try to get my head around Podcasts and all that jazz too.
http://www.spinsouthwest.com/

Being John Malkovich

Just watching it on FilmFour, I forgot what a fantastic flick it is. The real trick in all of it is that you completely forget that John Malkovich is acting in the movie, which is probably why it works so well. Of course ironically, he needed to put in a really good performance to pull it off. Irony indeed. I'm also a big fan of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (if only for this video and tune), though Adaptation kinda rubbed me up the wrong way. Still waiting for Charlie Kaufman to top Malkovich though.

According to IMdB; John Malkovich was approached about this film several times and loved the script, but he and his production crew felt that another actor would fit the role better. Malkovich offered to help produce the film, and aid Spike Jonze in any way, but refused to star in it. Eventually after a couple of years Malkovich's will was worn down and he agreed to star in the film.

I love that his best friend is Charlie Sheen too, and the line "Lesbian witches, fucking genius".

Classic - I told ya!

Yeah so I ended up staying up myself, and it was so worth it!

Silver Streak on TV tonight!

If you're pulling a late one tonight, or perhaps ITCEC you mightn't have work in the morning, or you might be a student or an insomniac . . . even if you're none of this, you should stay up to check out this movie. Its a classic. Channel 4, 2.10am
*ITCEC - In The Current Economic Climate. I'm trying to coin the acronym.

W.

Went to see Oliver Stone's 'W.' tonight. It wasn't nearly up to par for Oliver Stone, unusually linear and quite simply shot and put together. There was some talk that it was a bit of a rush job to have it finished before the election, and there is certainly some evidence for that. It lacked any of the pizazz you'd expect, but was however quite interesting for those behind-the-scenes war room cabinet meetings. Kind of strangely stale and flat compared to, for example, The West Wing (which I've never watched properly), but it was interesting to see those characters that caused so much shit and disaster for the world-at-large to be represented on the big screen.
Some dodgy vocal performances (okay Thandie Newton looked uncannily like Condoleezza Rice, but what's the deal with her voice?!) threatened to turn the whole thing into the pantomime, and while its quite sympathetic to Bush, it felt like it really simplified everything too much. I refuse to believe he didn't have many more people as well as Carl Rove telling him exactly how and why he was corrupting the US - his thoughts could not possibly have been as noble as 'doing the job'. The father/son thing was done better in Alexander.
Also, I kind of think Josh Brolin through no fault of his own just doesn't look dumb enough. He has too much charisma to play a convincing moron, though his efforts are pretty good. It was always something I found fascinating about Bush, just the look in his eyes bely a deeper stupidity. In fact, you can nearly see the rabbit in there working the controls.
W. isn't exactly ground-shaking Hollywood fare (this from the same man who gave us the momumental epic Any Given Sunday), but more of an interesting companion piece to a thoroughly enjoyable election season. Oh yes and a disasterous White House administration.

It was also funny how Stone and writer Stanley Weiser managed to fit in all the classic Bushisms over the course of the movie, sometimes painfully so. (Though you may miss the 'misunderestimated' one). Of course, this is why we love him.

The Changeling - Snore!

Is it just me, or does this movie look really really shit? Oscar-assured performance and all . . . sounds more like TV3 "I want my baby back!" fare.

While we're on it, I wasn't overly enamoured with Million Dollar Baby, Clint's other big Oscar winner. That was quite boring also. Unforgiven and Mystic River were pretty good though.

Obama Wins

I stayed up as late as I could, saw McCain's concession speech, and somehow dozed off for Obama's victory speech, but the result was in. I think it's fecking great anyway. Was fairly nauseated by some of the early early election coverage, but of course I got quite into it. I watched all the debates, including the VP debate with that fucking clown Sarah Palin, and I really do believe Obama/Biden was a much better ticket.

Did you see the fancy-ass touch screen that CNN had to analyse some of the 'data'? And the dude from Black Eyed Peas being interviewed via Hologram?! Fucking hell Minority Report here we go. It was like
"Look at us, first; kick ass futuristic touch screen and hologram 3D imaging, next; elect black president."
It'll be self-drying jackets and hoverboards before we know it.
point of order - I remember clearly in 6th class ca. 1993 everyone was talking about how hoverboards were real and the only reason we hadn't seen them because a 'parents group' in the States had banned them. I remember I was the only kid in my class who knew that story was bullshit and they couldn't possibly exist, and I was ridiculed for my wisdom. Oh what a tortured childhood I had.

- So, where were you when Barack Obama was elected the first Black President of the USA?
- I was baked on Demery's sofa-bed in London

It's probably the best of the 'Where were you when X happened?' moments in my lifetime so far, the other two being Lady Di's death (yeah I know) and 9/11. Though I do remember seeing the first tower fall, in a crowd watching SkyNews in the window of a stockbrokers on Dawson St. Then the student bar in UCD waiting for World War III to start.
I'll take Obama anyday.

Halloween=Scary! (as it should be)

As usual, I wait until the last minute to get all excited about the scariness of Halloween! Wooooo!
Spent a fortune (in pound shop or '€2 shop' terms) on last minute costumes, had a few mojitos and went down to Red Cross Hall to see 3epkano performing a live original soundtrack to The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari! Scary!

[3epkano's soundtrack was so much better than that shite]
It was really cool gig/film, and SCARY!! There was even a jump in it!
The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari is credited with being the first horror movie, and I even read a YouTube comment that said it was the first movie to feature "a twist at the end, like Fight Club" - yes, exactly like Fight Club you moron. (YouTube comments are the grazing ground for some real idiots.)
Its my second time seeing 3epkano soundtrack a film, the first being Metropolis in the Dublin Film Festival last year, and that was fucking amazing.
Metropolis is credited with being the first science fiction movie, as well as having some pretty cool concepts of the future and touching on some fairly crazy issues, for example, the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism (Wikipedia)
3epkano's Metropolis was one of the best cinema experiences and one of the best gig experiences I've ever had. Powerful stuff. So, much kudos to 3epkano! You should have a listen to their MySpace. I'd love to give it a go sometime - soundtracking silent film that is. Looks like fun.
Of course, after that highly cultural and enjoyable experience, we ended up getting fairly tanked in Mickey's (at one point I was taking a piss with The Phantom of the Opera and an eerily detailed Adolf Hitler on either side of me at the urinal). Back for more mojitos, cigars and late night begrudgery.
A fine All Hallows Eve.

http://www.myspace.com/3epkano

Ricky Gervais: One Trick Pony

Ricky Gervais on ITV's Loose Women? Just watched the repeat after the pub. I swear, he's a one trick pony, it's not that funny, and he knows it. Waiting to embed the YouTube clip and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Oh, and Happy Halloween!

best trailer ever?

he's nothing if his timing isn't good (oliver stone that is)

god i hate the man . . . but if a good movie (and the new realisation of a savage tune) can't make him look sexy . . .


Best Trailer Ever?

This from the man who played the older brother to Sean Astin (aka Samwise Gamgee) in The Goonies?

"I'm gonna hit you so hard when you wake up your clothes are gonna be out of style."
Hollywood is nothing if not poetically just.

RTE: wtf?!

Just enjoying Kill Bill Vol II on RTE2, in the kind of way that you enjoy a second viewing of a movie on TV where you weren't particularly enamoured with paying the €8 (+double that on popcorn and drink) in the cinema for the initial experience. Its really quite good. I love the stop/start action to it, particularly the very cool girl on girl trailer fight scene.

When all of sudden, WHAT THE FUCK - back to Kill Bill in 30 min after the news update, and bullshit news report of Willie O'Dea punching/not punching some skanger in Limerick (and I'm from Limerick so I know one when I see one!)

I really thought RTE had grown out of this shit. For fuck's sake if Tarantino deliberated and saw fit to split the Kill Bill story into two parts, who is the RTE equivalent who sought to put the bloody news right in the middle. The pacing is delicate enough in Tarantino's last rateable film - Deathproof being an unmitigated bucket of shit.

Pisses me off. I'm off to practise the five point palm exploding heart technique.

Waking Life

I suppose its fitting. I wanted to recommend a movie, so sat in front of the DVD collection to see what I could whole-heartedly stand beside as a great movie. My hand flinched to The Dude a few times, you know, some White-Russian-drinking bowling shenanigans, rugs really tying the room together and all that stuff. Of course classic and brilliant.

But then I spotted Richard Linklater's Waking Life. Good old RTE, it was another sterling choice random viewing, probably in the small hours of RTE2's stoner programming. But it made quite an impact at the time, and made it into the DVD library.
Its fitting because my first movie recommendation is about as far as a regular movie as you may be accustomed to. In fact, it can really only be put into the sub-set of a 'film'.
If you've ever wondered:

how you know you're not dreaming right now?
how can any of the choices you make actually make any difference in the world?does anyone else ever think some of the fucked up things that have ran through your head?
what the hell is it all about anyway?

I hope that clears it up anyway! Just watch the movie . . . er, film. Highly recommended. The soundtrack is also amazing.

[Waking Life, written and directed by Richard Linklater 2001]