Best of 2008 - Top Two!

The final part of the countdown then, and you may be wondering why I left the last two films to a separate post.

It's because I'm going to declare it a tie. I couldn't pick between the two so for the first time I'm declaring the film of the year to actually be two films.

They couldn't be further apart either.

On the one hand we have a two-and-a-half-hour, big budget, box-office smashing Hollywood blockbuster comic adaptation, which dominated the box office in 2008. In the other corner it's a low-budget, 80-minute, emotional drama based on a stage play which has yet to even find a cinema release in the UK.

In case you've not already guessed, the best two films of 2008 according to my humble viewing are Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT and Declan Recks' EDEN.

So there.

THE DARK KNIGHT - not as dark now?

So, over on the Melon Farmers anti-censorship site there's a guy who reckons that a scene in THE DARK KNIGHT, in which the Joker slashes someone's face with a knife, has been trimmed for the UK DVD release.

Now that doesn't surprise me; it happens frequently. There's nothing on the BBFC site to suggest a forced cut, so if it's been cut then it could well have been pre-cut, or else cut under advice from the board. It's even less surprising given the fuss about the level of violence for a film with a 12A certificate, and of course it was unfortunately released around the same time as a massive drive to cut knife crime in the UK which caused a spate of tragic deaths of young people. Of course, because films always come under scrutiny for things like this, THE DARK KNIGHT came under direct attack for the Joker and his casual attitude to knives.

So I understand if that's been done, although I certainly don't approve. Anyway, back to my point.

When watching the film again for the first time since its original release on Sunday afternoon, I happened to notice exactly the same thing and also was convinced that they'd cut that very same part of the scene. Here's the part that interests me though - I was watching it in the cinema. One of my local cinemas does double bills every Sunday and this time it was Nolan's two Batman films, so along I went.

So does anyone know what has happened here? I noticed this at the time, before I'd read the piece on Melon Farmers, so the idea was not planted in my mind by that article. Have two completely unrelated people just imagined this under totally different circumstances?

If we're right, is there any explanation anywhere of who did it and why?

And finally, assuming my mind is not playing tricks on me, this seems to be an interesting precedent regarding retroactively cutting cinema prints (or at least replacing prints with cut ones). Has there been any other examples of this kind of retroactive tampering?

I don't imagine for a minute that this will become widespread practice but it certainly is something to think about. (Incidentally, the print did have the BBFC card before it, so I'm assuming it's not an issue with picking up a print from another country or anything like that.)

There's a lesson here I guess. Next time you want to see a violent movie and in its original, uncensored form, see it at the cinema as soon as you can. If there's any kind of media furore around it, it might be the last opportunity you get.

Current release: THE INCREDIBLE HULK

I'm a comic geek. It's my duty to turn up to films like this so that I can either get a fanboy thrill out of seeing these things realised on screen or else just be really disappointed at how it doesn't really live up to the comic and then come home and moan about it on the internet. Unfortunately, I'm beginning to think that I'm turning up to all these superhero movies out of curiosity rather than because I think I'll enjoy them.

Every so often I'll see one that tries something new, or has a unique visual style to make it more interesting, but the majority of them are just, well, a bit samey. I'm looking forward to THE DARK KNIGHT, but otherwise I think I'm just getting bored of these films. ELEKTRA... FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER... the more recent IRON MAN... I didn't even get round to seeing these ones. I just can't muster up the excitement. Is it a comic geek thing? Have I finally realised that none of these films will ever live up to my expectations? Or is it nothing to do with that, and I'm just being hit by the same realisation that I suspect many other moviegoers, comic geek or otherwise, are probably being hit by - that these films just aren't that great.

I think part of the problem is that they're the epitome of films that I usually don't like - vapid storylines as an excuse to blow things up and have really cool special effects - but at the same time I feel compelled to treat these ones differently because they're from source material I love. The same thing could explain why I went to see I AM LEGEND (my favourite book ever) when I knew it would disappoint (though, I admit, not nearly as much as I expected it to).

So anyway, THE INCREDIBLE HULK more or less ignores Ang Lee's take from a few years ago, largely because very few people actually liked it, and starts off as a kind of sequel-but-not-really. Instead of referring to the original movie (this new one is completely recast for a start) it constantly refers to the TV series and comics, albeit not explicitly. You know the drill - man gets angry, man turns into big green monster, monster smashes things up.

Aside from offering nothing new as a superhero movie, THE INCREDIBLE HULK is hampered by the acting.

Norton is a charisma-free zone (I know that many think he's a Very Good Actor, but I just don't get it) and a rather drippy Liv Tyler is even worse. That's not a good start, given that a love story between the two is supposed to offer us some kind of heart to the film. On top of that, William Hurt is miscast and Tim Roth is only two steps removed from the pantomime villainy that he subjected us to in that bloody awful PLANET OF THE APES remake (sorry, I really shouldn't keep mentioning that).

On top of that, the effects are far from great too. A lot of the Hulk effects improve over the naff effects in Ang Lee's version, but many don't and the Abomination (the villain that Roth turns into) was just garbage. If the CGI flops from I AM LEGEND mated with Dick Durock's man-in-a-suit SWAMP THING, this character would be the result. Well, this character and a really disturbing movie sex scene.

Neither movies have been great, but I think Ang Lee's edges this one for at least daring to be different, and no amount of fanboy in-jokes or TV series references are going to change my mind. In fact, I'm reminded here of my experience of watching HOSTEL 2 - the appearances of several Euro-cult veterans only reminded me how much I'd prefer to be watching one of their movies than Eli Roth's nonsense. This film had much the same effect with each and every TV series reference. Norton is no Bill Bixby, CGI is no Lou Ferrigno and Liv Tyler is no... well, she's just nothing at all based on this evidence.

I guess if I want to be optimistic about it I should point out that the film has been a hit with plenty of folks. Aside from the fact that, as I write, it has a mindbogglingly high score on IMDb, the screening I went to did end up with lots of kids running out shouting "Hulk smash!" so I guess they enjoyed it.

MAN-THING (2005)

Just the other day, I sat down to watch the 2005 straight-to-DVD movie MAN-THING. I feel that first of all I should provide some justification for doing this, despite the fact that you're probably not surprised by this at all if you regularly read this blog and see the kinds of drivel I watch.

It's based on a Marvel Comics character created back in the 70s and was one of a glut of muck monsters that emerged back then (the most famous being DC's rival character Swamp Thing). I have a fondness for such characters and although I prefer Swampy to Marvel's creature I still couldn't resist the urge to see the latter turned into a movie, albeit a cheap one. DC already saw Swamp Thing turned into two movies, a cartoon and a TV series and although the TV series wasn't something I care for (the theme tune was the Troggs' "Wild Thing", re-worked with new lyrics!) I really enjoyed the films (despite them being both cheap and rubbish) and I absolutely adored the TV series (despite it being even cheaper and even more rubbish).

So on to Marvel's attempt. Obviously deciding that there was no cinematic movie franchise in Man-Thing, Marvel turned it into a straight-to-DVD venture, not the only character to get the treatment. That said, it's not really much worse than a lot of crap that gets released in cinemas; the only real difference is that the cast is made up entirely of people you've never heard of.

It gets off to a good enough start. Within the first ten minutes, we get a bloody murder, a bunch of rednecks, an attractive young lady doing what attractive young ladies do best in low-budget horror films, a really pompous and portentous voice-over about mankind ruining the planet, and the new sheriff in town turning up to have his assistant reveal that the previous sheriff "kind of went insane before he disappeared". What a set-up.

After that, the film descends into pretty standard by-the-numbers horror nonsense, but the great dialogue doesn't stop. Where would we be without the wise old Native American character to spout forth about the old customs and issue lines like "maybe he is in the swamp... maybe the swamp is in him" - no cliche box is left unticked.

It's not just the wise old Indian, there's also the evil corporation out to exploit the swamp regardless of environmental or social issues. Hurrah. Here's where the nice subtle lighting scheme come in too - not only do we get a spooky green for all the swamp scenes, but the industrial complex is obviously always shot in strong sunlight, the land bleached orange and bereft of light. The dastardly nature of it all is even emphasised by having wrecked old cars sitting on fire outside the place, for no other reason than cars on fire make a place look really nasty. Never mind the fact that there doesn't appear to be any logical reason why someone would leave lots of cars on fire like that.

Other cliches abound, such as the romance that develops (or more accurately, just seems to happen), which can be spotted from the moment the two characters meet. Wow! A hippy protester argues with the new sheriff before kicking him to the ground into a muddy puddle! Gosh, I bet we won't see them getting together by the end of the film.

If the deep and meaningful philosophy (yes, sarcasm) that the Indian treats us to is bad, I should at least applaud the z-list cast for being able to carry off scenes in which they discover that a man killed by a tree had the branches grow through him... from the inside out! Gasp!

I know I wouldn't have been able to deliver that with a straight face so well done to them.

Let's see, is there anything else I can give the film credit for...? Well, I guess the now standard "destroy everything with lots of fire" ending has a nice twist; the monster is actually reasonably well realised with the aid of some CGI, although I do feel that DC Comics were more faithfully treated in their Swamp Thing adaptations when they had Dick Durrock running about in a rubber suit.

There's also a nod for the comic geeks watching the film - I was about to say "comic geeks, like me", but I've just realised... who else is actually going to be watching a straight-to-DVD MAN-THING movie except comic geeks? Anyway, the reference is there, but it's not exactly subtle (like the rest of the film is...) and consists of naming two characters Steve Gerber and Mike Ploog, after the comics writer and artist respectively.

More subtle is the moment when a victim is found with his face contorted and stretched in almost exactly the same way as the infamous melted body in John Carpenter's THE THING. And who was involved in the production of THE THING? That's right, Mike Ploog. However, I suspect that I'm reading too much into that one and it's more of a coincidence. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt though.

The verdict - MAN-THING is cheap, rubbish, cliched and a whole more bad things besides. However, this is my opinion we're talking about here and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. If you actually have standards approaching respectability you might want to stay clear.

Tangled Web

You might remember the story of the curse of the Bristol Odeon - the gist of it is that every time I go to the Odeon cinema in Bristol the film I see turns out to be rubbish. Well every horror story needs a sequel I guess.

Last weekend I was in Bristol again and while there decided to take in SPIDER-MAN 3 at the Odeon. Yes, I know I should have learned my lesson and gone to another cinema, but it was really close to my hotel and I figured it would be reliable entertainment.

How much more wrong could I have been?

Where do I start when summarising how bad this film is? It's difficult. The internet is, after all, only so big.

First of all, there are too many villains. We already expected the return of the Green Goblin since it was set up in the previous encounters; to this mix we also add Michael Hayden Church as Sandman and a CGI rendition of Venom, an alien that clings to a host and brings out the worst in them.

Let's look at that latter point. Venom turns people nasty? Okay. What I don't understand is why the filmmakers felt the need to have it turn Peter Parker into not just a rather unlikable chap, but one who likes to strut down the street with a slightly different hairstyle and dance a lot. There are people who will tell you that the audience laugh with him at this point, not at him. From the audience I was with, I'm not so sure.

Talking of audience laughter, there's another thing. The so-called emotional scenes actually drew laughter from half the crowd I saw it with, such was the terrible writing and poor acting on display.

That whole love story was completely misjudged to be honest. I've already mentioned that Peter Parker gets turned into an arse. Well unfortunately the character of Mary Jane doesn't come over much better and I became equally sick of her whining. So when the pair become involved in a love triangle, of sorts, it's hard to care when it involves two people that are getting on your nerves and one person (Gwen Stacey, played by Bryce Dallas Howard) who has gone from being an iconic character in the original comics to being a waste of screen time in the movie. Seriously, I have no idea why they bothered introducing her for all the character was involved with the plot.

That's not just something that Howard suffered with either. Topher Grace (playing Eddie Brock, the man who will become Venom) is shafted, as is Church - though in the latter case, it's no bad thing. As criminally underdeveloped as the character is (and his story is left hanging), Church's performance is unfortunately all too fitting - he's like a stone.

The re-writing of a pivotal event in the first movie also comes across as rather too coincidental (not to mention cheapening the first movie) but probably isn't as laughable as the plot exposition courtesy of Harry Osbourne's (James Franco, also in panto mode) butler late in the film.

The sad thing here is that the usually reliable cast are all shown up by the bit part players. Bruce Campbell steals the show as always (this time he's a crazy French restaurant manager), JK Simmons chews the scenery to hilarious effect every time J Jonah Jameson is on screen and Topher Grace is actually the most interesting of the main characters in the film - except that the screentime afforded him means he barely qualifies as a main character.

The special effects are as cartoony as ever, with the final giant-sized Sandman appearance being the only real highlight; a slightly forced cameo from Stan Lee is more amusing (for us comic geeks at least) than most of Raimi's misjudged attempts at humour; I just can't describe how many things are wrong with this film.

There are too many plot strands, too many characters, too many attempts at humour that just end up embarrassing to watch - there's just generally too much going on, and not much of it is any good. It's like nobody learned any lessons from BATMAN AND ROBIN (aka The Worst Film Ever Made).

This one's been a success and won't exactly have killed the franchise - but a major rethink will be necessary for a fourth instalment. Or at least it will be if they have any intention of making a good film.

I've not forgotten about my recent trip to London or my promise to reveal that awful film I saw. Both will be covered soon. Apologies for the lack of updates, but I'm really lazy. Let's be honest about it.

Gobsmacking Cinema: 3 DEV ADAM (1973)

I'm not long back from my trip to the London Film Festival and I'm about to head out to Dublin for the next week for their Horrorthon festival (it is Halloween after all). So, no time to write up these festivals I've been at recently but just to keep things ticking over here's another entry in my neverending quest to expose all the normal people I know to somewhat less than normal cinema...

Have you ever heard of the Mexican hero Santo? If not, he was the masked star of a string of Mexican wrestling movies in the 60s and 70s. Yes, there really was such a genre of movie, and I guess it inspired the recent Jack Black film NACHO LIBRE. Which I won't be seeing, by the way. It looks awful. But I digress.

I've watched a few Mexican wrestling movies (a couple of Santo films and the excellently-titled NEUTRON VS THE DEATH ROBOTS) and enjoyed them a lot (usually they involve a hero fighting some outlandish criminals such as mad scientists or aliens and winning by carrying out some great wrestling moves), but I didn't think for one moment that they would possibly be popular enough for someone to actually rip them off.

And yet Santo does make what I assume is a totally unauthorised appearance in the mad Turkish film 3 DEV ADAM (translated as 3 MIGHTY MEN or something like that). But that's not the worst of it. The film also rips off music from other films - I recognised snippets from the scores to SHAFT, something else that I think was by Ennio Morricone but I couldn't remember which film, and what I thought might have been DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

And yet that still isn't the cheekiest aspect of it all. Check this out for a concept.

Santo and his best mate Captain America - yes, that's right, the Marvel superhero, here played by a dark-haired Turk in what can only be described as a slight departure from his comic book image - are sent on a mission to fight an evil supervillain who is flooding the economy with fake currency, torturing and killing people and also laughing in a really maniacal way.

Oh, did I mention that the villain happens to be called the Spider, and bears a not insignificant similarity to a certain wall-crawling Marvel superhero? Imagine Spider-man was a really nasty guy with an evil laugh, his costume was more homemade looking (and slightly green) and he liked torturing people in really amusing ways... and you have an idea what the villain in question looks like. Also, he has long hair which pokes out from the eye holes in his mask, giving the impression of having huge, comical eyebrows.

This shameless blend of stolen material all comes together in a no-budget kaleidoscope of badly dubbed dialogue, poorly-choreographed and unconvincing fight scenes and other such eye-popping crapness as a scene in which a man is tortured by having a big tube held up to his face with a couple of rats entering from the other side.

There are some scenes that transcend the crapness to become something truly special however. The finale in particular has Captain America seeing off several men who all wear the aforementioned cheapo Spider-man costume, only for a new one to pop up, laughing menacingly, every time one is felled. This might be annoying in a more serious film, but here it becomes side-splittingly hilarious, and sets up the rather bizarre closing scene of the film.

Turkish cinema of the 70s and 80s is a wacky world of rip-offs and weirdness and this is a great place to start off. After all, in which other movie could you see both Santo fighting a bunch of Karate experts AND Spider-man strangling a woman in the shower? Unless Sam Raimi has been doing an awful lot of drugs on the set of SPIDER-MAN 3, I suspect 3 DEV ADAM is probably the only candidate.

Superman and the Axis of Evil

Not so long ago in the history of world politics, you might recall a certain war-mongering halfwit voicing his concerns over what he had labelled the "axis of evil". I have my own cinematic equivalent, my own celluloid axis of evil. I speak of an unholy trinity, detested by me in the way that only someone who likes films too much for his own good can possibly hate something; three acts of utter folly so worthy of contempt that if you gave me the choice of wiping them from existence or banishing world hunger I'd probably need a couple of days to think about it.

What are the ingredients of this trio of motion picture pariahs? Well, there's the worst film ever made - BATMAN AND ROBIN - the Clooney-starring disaster of a Batman film that not only put the final nail in the coffin of the franchise but took a dump on the corpse and danced naked over its grave; INDEPENDENCE DAY, the alien invasion movie that took the premise of WAR OF THE WORLDS, stripped out all the good bits and replaced them with jingoistic flag-waving and garnished it with scenes that a 12-year-old would have been embarrassed to have written; and SUPERMAN III, the film where someone decided we needed an ensemble of cringeworthy characters topped off by an appearance by Richard Pryor as comic relief - a film so bad that the utter guff that followed (SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE) is watchable in comparison.

Last year Christopher Nolan managed to rescue the Dark Knight again with the wonderful BATMAN BEGINS, which finally saw someone take the bold step of making a movie which was about Batman rather than featuring him as a support act for the villains. I'm still waiting for something to eradicate the unpleasantness of INDEPENDENCE DAY though (or the ridiculous abbreviated form "ID4", if you prefer - either way it still made me want to eat my own face off) - Steven Spielberg came close with WAR OF THE WORLDS but blew it out his arse with the final scene.

And then there's the big red and blue guy. Unless you've been living on the planet Krypton, which would be pretty difficult since it's (a) fictional and (b) exploded, you'll have noticed that there's a new film out, Bryan Singer's SUPERMAN RETURNS. Naturally I couldn't wait to see if it could get rid of the lingering taste of SUPERMAN III, and the fact that I'm a total comic geek probably had something to do with it too (hence the self indulgence of using an old comic cover rather than a picture of the film above). I know, it seems incredible that someone who spends far too much time removed from people and surfing the internet could possible be a comic geek, but what the hell, I'm all about shattering stereotypes. Er, yes, I am single now you mention it.

In recent years, successful comic-to-movie adaptations (or at least the superhero ones) have been the domain of Marvel Comics. X-MEN, THE HULK, SPIDER-MAN, DAREDEVIL, THE PUNISHER - well, okay, maybe the last couple are stretching it, and I'm not going to talk about ELEKTRA - they're all Marvel properties. Only last year's BATMAN BEGINS saw their main rivals DC Comics claw their way back into the game, but now the attack is in full force with the big blue boy scout making his comeback (and Wonder Woman is to follow sometime soon, bringing the final member of DC's big three to feature films for the first time).

I'm pleased to report the film is a success. Ignoring the painful memories of numbers 3 and 4, SUPERMAN RETURNS is essentially a sequel to the first couple of movies and begins with Superman returning to Earth from a mission to outer space where he has been looking for survivors of his home planet. But five years have passed since he left, and a lot has changed - Lex Luthor is out of jail and the love of his life, Lois Lane, has moved on with her life and is now a mother and engaged to be married.

We've waited a long time for this icon to return to the screen (and unlike KING KONG, this is one that we actually wanted to see back on the big screen) and Singer carries it off with aplomb.

One of the key strengths is his concentration on story over special effects - the effects are used sparingly (for a big blockbuster anyway - unlike KING KONG) and in some places I'd even say they're a little undercooked. The story takes a few liberties with the characters, in particular the central relationship between Superman, Lois, her husband-to-be and her kid but I won't spoil it by going into detail, and given what Singer achieves here (and already achieved with X-MEN) you really have to cut him a little slack.

Any other grumbles are minor (given the pasting Lois repeatedly takes without picking up a single bruise, I can't help wondering if Superman is the only one with superpowers) and for a film of this length (about two and a half hours) the time really flies by. Unlike KING KONG. Sorry, that'll be the end of the KONG bashing for now, honest.

The casting of the main roles is another strong point. The previously unknown Brandon Routh has no trouble at all in taking up the cape, though it will be some time before he fully escapes Christopher Reeve's shadow; as Lois Lane, Kate Bosworth doesn't quite have the same dominant, smartass presence as Margot Kidder but still captures the essence of the character (headstrong and always in trouble, essentially) and if you'll allow me to be totally superficial she's quite a bit easier on the eye too; and Kevin Spacey, with the exception of a couple of OTT moments, is superb as Lex Luthor. He strikes the perfect balance of arrogance, intellect, evil and baldness, falling halfway between comic book mad scientist and an Enron boss.

In one of his most inspired decisions, Singer has also retained the legendary theme music composed by John Williams - if that doesn't make your hair stand on end in the cinema again after all these years, you're beyond saving.

And yes, there are even a few moments for the comic geeks too. Perry White gets to utter his catchphrase; there's a fleeting reference to Batman's stomping ground; the updated "S" symbol, while different to the more famous one used in the original movie, is closer to the one that was used back in the early years of the comics; and best of all, there is a lifting-up-a-car scene that perfectly recreates the image from Superman's first appearance on the cover of Action Comics #1 way back in 1938. If you like that sort of thing.

All in all, the film's a triumph. Superman does indeed return as the title promises, but it's not just about his literal return to Earth; he's returning to the cinema; returning to the public consciousness; returning to the status of American icon rather than laughing stock.

You'll believe a man can fly... again!

In a rare moment of seriousness, I encourage you to pop along to www.ChristopherReeve.org and do your bit for paralysis research.