Product placement isn't necessarily a major issue, it can fit. But rarely does a lack of brand name take you out of the story.
It really bothers me when the story or plot is affected by it. Marketing teams influencing how a shot should be is the worst thing in movies for me. When a camera lingers on a label. Imagine Kubrick lingering on Jack Nicholson in a pair of Beats headphones in The Shining.
Some movies are atrocious for it. Still Alice's obsession with Words with Friends nearly derailed that film for me. I, Robot's Converse trainers. Christ, there were lines of dialogue that Will Smith delivered that had no plot purpose whatsoever. It was just an advert for trainers.
Transformers 4 is the absolute worst though. They set half the film in China for crying out loud. There's no integrity to stories that do that. They're charging you money to watch an advert. Fuck that! And the worst thing is it's getting worse.
I am always behind with Movies but saw Unbroken last week and quite enjoyed it but thought it was probably 20 minutes too long as the scenes/story got a bit repetitive. Nonetheless a remarkable story about a great human being.
A very different take, and much more slow and reflective than what has gone before both in film and TV versions, but still enjoyable and worth seeing if you are a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories - although that assessment was no doubt helped by the fact that the tickets were free!
Not sure when it is on general release, but watch out for The Legend of Barney Thomson. Black comedy set in Glasgow. Robert Carlysle 's directorial debut and he also plays the lead role - a barber who accidentally becomes a serial killer. Superb cast including Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay and the showstealer: Emma Thompson as Barney's Mum - a hard as nails East End Glasgow wifey.
The Connection. Saw this last night in a 90% empty cinema. Enjoyed it a lot. French film covering the same sort of ground as the French connection, set in the seventies/early eighties. Period detail and music excellent, the story told from the point of view of the magistrate trying to clear up the drugs trade in Marseille. Very good leads, though the subtitles were a bit clunky and unenglish at the start of the film. Recommend this one. 7.5/10.
I'm a fan of the TV series Entourage. I have seen every episode , so this was a much anticipated film for me and i was really interested to see if this would transfer well into a feature film. Sadly It didn't. I desperately wanted this to be good but if i have to be honest this felt like four average TV episodes back to back. The story revolves around Vincent Chase who is trying to get yet more funding for his first acting/directing role in his new movie. Vince and Ari try to convince the backers son ( played by sixth sense actor Haley Joel Osment ), who then takes a dislike to some of the cast. The irony of this story line is that this actual film had notorious problems in production and took ages to come out. It's ram packed full of celebrities making cameo appearance. Some i recognised but most i didn't. The truth is that Entourage doesn't work as a film . It comes across as a sexist , misogynist mess and that works well on TV because they are the characters. ( perhaps i'm getting old). I'm a fan and i didn't like it , so i dread to think what people who had never seen the series must have thought of it. Extremely disappointing .
The Gunman is a really entertaining thriller , superbly directed by Pierre Morel who directed Taken as you can quite clearly see from the really good action scenes . Sean Penn is a seriously underrated actor and he very rarely gives a bad performance and in this , he is excellent again. It's good to see Ray Winstone and Idris Elba too in a film that doesn't have a complicated plot so it's nice and easy follow. This has a low 5.6 rating in IMDB while a bad film like Entourage has a 7.5 rating. Very strange.
I haven't seen the Gunman but this is by far the most positive review I've read! Kermode gave it a right kicking. I want to check it out now!
I saw Grand Piano this week. Pretty awful but mercifully short. A hobbit has to play a comeback concert on the piano, and john cusack points a sniper rifle at him and tells him he's dead if he plays a wrong note. Which is pretty silly, because it means the basic premise is 'guy with gun forces man to do his job normally.'
This is an enjoyable documentary about the genius footballer that is Paul Gascoigne. It's great to see him in a good place at the moment and he looks happy in the film. It's not groundbreaking. You are not going hear or see anything you haven't before and he doesn't get into the personal side of his life too much but if you wan't a historical account of his life , with some great footage , from the man who knows best - this is it. There are vox pops with José Mourinho ( not sure why ) , Gary Lineker and Wayne Rooney and the close up shots of them are slightly distracting but it's Paul you really wan't to hear from .
Old now but just watch Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Didn't think I would like it but thought it was superb. The effects are great and even though you are watching a lot of CGI it's still gripping and touching.
Not sure when it is on general release, but watch out for The Legend of Barney Thomson. Black comedy set in Glasgow. Robert Carlysle 's directorial debut and he also plays the lead role - a barber who accidentally becomes a serial killer. Superb cast including Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay and the showstealer: Emma Thompson as Barney's Mum - a hard as nails East End Glasgow wifey.
Still available to buy for distribution in the UK @Weegie Addick ! Make sure you catch The Wolfpack this week in Edinburgh - one of ours and released in August later this year - it's TRULY brilliant!
Not sure when it is on general release, but watch out for The Legend of Barney Thomson. Black comedy set in Glasgow. Robert Carlysle 's directorial debut and he also plays the lead role - a barber who accidentally becomes a serial killer. Superb cast including Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay and the showstealer: Emma Thompson as Barney's Mum - a hard as nails East End Glasgow wifey.
Still available to buy for distribution in the UK @Weegie Addick ! Make sure you catch The Wolfpack this week in Edinburgh - one of ours and released in August later this year - it's TRULY brilliant!
Just watched the the trailer for The Wolfpack and it doesn't really give much away as to what's going on . I presume there is a good reason for that. I look forward to seeing the film.
Local cinema re-released The Terminator for one night only. I never got to see it the first time around (what with not having been born at that point!) but it holds up really surprisingly well. The special effects are a bit dodgy on the big screen by today's standards but the atmosphere is terrific and the plot does actually make sense instead of just being an excuse to string stunts together. Arnie is never going to be the most nuanced and skilled actor but what he does he does very well, in this film especially - easy to say 'he's acting as an emotionless robot' but he does convey something genuinely creepy and unnatural even before the reveal.
Not sure when it is on general release, but watch out for The Legend of Barney Thomson. Black comedy set in Glasgow. Robert Carlysle 's directorial debut and he also plays the lead role - a barber who accidentally becomes a serial killer. Superb cast including Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen, Tom Courtenay and the showstealer: Emma Thompson as Barney's Mum - a hard as nails East End Glasgow wifey.
Still available to buy for distribution in the UK @Weegie Addick ! Make sure you catch The Wolfpack this week in Edinburgh - one of ours and released in August later this year - it's TRULY brilliant!
Won't make it to any others at EIFF, @supaclive, but will look out for that on general release. So is Legend of Barney Thomson not likely to be distributed? Be shame if it goes straight to DVD.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
This is a fascinating documentary about Canon films who were headed up by two Israelis , Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They made scores and scores of B movies at an alarming rate and quality was not uppermost in their minds. They started off making films in Israel and i remember the film Lemon Popsicle very well. A film very much like Porkies and perfect to watch for a 12 year old kid! This film shows lots of clips from their movies ( you will recognise lots of them) and has lots of interviews with people they worked with . Not many were complimentary and unsurprisingly there are no modern interviews with the pair which is a shame. If you are into your films and film history then this will be right up your street.
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
This is a fascinating documentary about Canon films who were headed up by two Israelis , Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They made scores and scores of B movies at an alarming rate and quality was not uppermost in their minds. They started off making films in Israel and i remember the film Lemon Popsicle very well. A film very much like Porkies and perfect to watch for a 12 year old kid! This film shows lots of clips from their movies ( you will recognise lots of them) and has lots of interviews with people they worked with . Not many were complimentary and unsurprisingly there are no modern interviews with the pair which is a shame. If you are into your films and film history then this will be right up your street.
Rosewater is a thought provoking film about Canadian/Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari who is detained by Iranian secret services and is subtly interrogated under suspicion that he is a spy. Directed by The Daily Show's , Jon Stewart . This is more about how social networking and modern forms of communication are bigger than dictatorships and how that when the word is spread it , people just can't disappear which would have happened previously. Some great performances from Gael García Bernal and Kim Bodnia make this a really good film.
Bit late and mainstream I know, but I've just watched Boyhood on Sky. Is it just me or is this film more than a tad overrated? Arquette's Oscar must be the most bemusing since Sandra Bullock's.
Saw Jurassic World last night. It was ok. I'm not a huge fan of the original like many are. Parts of the film I enjoyed others were just ridiculous (excluding the obvious about bringing dinosaurs back). I guess it does it's job, summer blockbuster with big monsters and action but just didn't quite do it for me.
And if you thought the product placement in Avengers AoU was bad wait until you see this. Surprised they didn't have the corporations listed in the opening credits.
Taken 3 - Liam Neeson taking names and killing people in imaginative ways. No suprises and good fun
Interstellar - fantastic, missus thought it was dire, I thought it was fascinating
The theory of everything - not usually my thing but very glad I watched it. Eddie Redmayne thoroughly deserved his Oscar for this and I don't know but I hope the girl who played his wife won something too. Very touching and suprisingly funny in patches
Comments
It really bothers me when the story or plot is affected by it. Marketing teams influencing how a shot should be is the worst thing in movies for me. When a camera lingers on a label. Imagine Kubrick lingering on Jack Nicholson in a pair of Beats headphones in The Shining.
Some movies are atrocious for it. Still Alice's obsession with Words with Friends nearly derailed that film for me. I, Robot's Converse trainers. Christ, there were lines of dialogue that Will Smith delivered that had no plot purpose whatsoever. It was just an advert for trainers.
Transformers 4 is the absolute worst though. They set half the film in China for crying out loud. There's no integrity to stories that do that. They're charging you money to watch an advert. Fuck that! And the worst thing is it's getting worse.
This one is long, but well worth a view.
The plot for I, Robot was actually very good, regardless of whether it was a big budget Smith vehicle or not.
A very different take, and much more slow and reflective than what has gone before both in film and TV versions, but still enjoyable and worth seeing if you are a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories - although that assessment was no doubt helped by the fact that the tickets were free!
I'm a fan of the TV series Entourage. I have seen every episode , so this was a much anticipated film for me and i was really interested to see if this would transfer well into a feature film.
Sadly It didn't.
I desperately wanted this to be good but if i have to be honest this felt like four average TV episodes back to back.
The story revolves around Vincent Chase who is trying to get yet more funding for his first acting/directing role in his new movie. Vince and Ari try to convince the backers son ( played by sixth sense actor Haley Joel Osment ), who then takes a dislike to some of the cast.
The irony of this story line is that this actual film had notorious problems in production and took ages to come out. It's ram packed full of celebrities making cameo appearance. Some i recognised but most i didn't.
The truth is that Entourage doesn't work as a film . It comes across as a sexist , misogynist mess and that works well on TV because they are the characters. ( perhaps i'm getting old).
I'm a fan and i didn't like it , so i dread to think what people who had never seen the series must have thought of it.
Extremely disappointing .
4 out of 10
The Gunman
The Gunman is a really entertaining thriller , superbly directed by Pierre Morel who directed Taken as you can quite clearly see from the really good action scenes . Sean Penn is a seriously underrated actor and he very rarely gives a bad performance and in this , he is excellent again.
It's good to see Ray Winstone and Idris Elba too in a film that doesn't have a complicated plot so it's nice and easy follow.
This has a low 5.6 rating in IMDB while a bad film like Entourage has a 7.5 rating. Very strange.
7 out of 10
I saw Grand Piano this week. Pretty awful but mercifully short. A hobbit has to play a comeback concert on the piano, and john cusack points a sniper rifle at him and tells him he's dead if he plays a wrong note. Which is pretty silly, because it means the basic premise is 'guy with gun forces man to do his job normally.'
Gascoigne
This is an enjoyable documentary about the genius footballer that is Paul Gascoigne. It's great to see him in a good place at the moment and he looks happy in the film.
It's not groundbreaking. You are not going hear or see anything you haven't before and he doesn't get into the personal side of his life too much but if you wan't a historical account of his life , with some great footage , from the man who knows best - this is it.
There are vox pops with José Mourinho ( not sure why ) , Gary Lineker and Wayne Rooney and the close up shots of them are slightly distracting but it's Paul you really wan't to hear from .
6 out of 10
It's just come out on Sky Movies.
I thought it was a good film, very different to the normal Sherlock stuff.
7/10
Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films
This is a fascinating documentary about Canon films who were headed up by two Israelis , Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.
They made scores and scores of B movies at an alarming rate and quality was not uppermost in their minds.
They started off making films in Israel and i remember the film Lemon Popsicle very well. A film very much like Porkies and perfect to watch for a 12 year old kid!
This film shows lots of clips from their movies ( you will recognise lots of them) and has lots of interviews with people they worked with . Not many were complimentary and unsurprisingly there are no modern interviews with the pair which is a shame.
If you are into your films and film history then this will be right up your street.
6 out of 10
Mark Kermode on Entourage.
Rosewater
Rosewater is a thought provoking film about Canadian/Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari who is detained by Iranian secret services and is subtly interrogated under suspicion that he is a spy. Directed by The Daily Show's , Jon Stewart . This is more about how social networking and modern forms of communication are bigger than dictatorships and how that when the word is spread it , people just can't disappear which would have happened previously.
Some great performances from Gael García Bernal and Kim Bodnia make this a really good film.
7 out of 10
Two and a half hours of my life lost.
And if you thought the product placement in Avengers AoU was bad wait until you see this. Surprised they didn't have the corporations listed in the opening credits.
Taken 3 - Liam Neeson taking names and killing people in imaginative ways. No suprises and good fun
Interstellar - fantastic, missus thought it was dire, I thought it was fascinating
The theory of everything - not usually my thing but very glad I watched it. Eddie Redmayne thoroughly deserved his Oscar for this and I don't know but I hope the girl who played his wife won something too. Very touching and suprisingly funny in patches