Crazy, Stupid, Love: The Best Film Ever Made Ever?

After watching Crazy, Stupid, Love I can hereby confirm to you all that I’m not crazy and I’m definitely not stupid, but I am in love. With this film. Which is crazy, but surprisingly not stupid.

It stars the hottest people in the world and Julianne Moore figuring out how to best procreate and apparently the answer is always knock back six gallons of hard liquor. Vodka if you’re a man, whisky if you’re a woman, because who needs gender stereotypes when you can have transgender stereotypes? And yes before you ask Steve Carrell does count as one of those ‘hot’ people, so sue us. It’s fine though because we’re about to write five paragraphs on Ryan Gosling.

Ryan Gosling.

The idea, the man, the abs. Those are just three of the things he has going for him plus the boy can act we have to throw it to him. We like how he acts in leather jackets, in suits, in blood, but mostly we like the way he acts out of his clothes into his car and right to our house, that’s the sort of talent Brando never had. He even acted alongside a toothpick and along with children and animals they’re just a no-no, but somehow baby-duck Gosling pulled it off.

Crazy, Stupid, Love is one of those films that makes you change your mind about ‘those kind of films’ and along the way it makes you wish you had this exact life and when I say, “this exact life,” what I mean is it makes you wish you were one half of the pair Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, it really doesn’t matter who you are because they are both incredible human beings with life’s more fulfilling than whatever it is you’re doing right now: said the girl writing this at 2 am.

In seriousness though (dim the house lights) it was more than just funny, it was a steam train chugging away; all aboard the Emotional Express: destination, your heart strings. You might not actually learn anything that you can put into action because like us you’re a lonely soul, a lone wolf, a lone ranger…you get the gist. The great thing here though is IT DOESN’T MATTER because now that you’ve seen Crazy, Stupid, Love you’re fucked, well and truly and doubly if you’re in a relationship, so sorry guys, sorry. You might be wondering why and I’m going to tell you that after a short paragraph on goddess Emma Stone.

Emma Stone.

The illusion, the woman, the fiery hair. She’s gone from strength to The Helpful strength since her days of teen comedy, wait you thought this was a teen comedy? GET OUT OF MY BLOG YOU VAGRANT. She’s a serious actor now with her films about the issues jazzed up for a new generation, I mean I learnt such important life lessons from Easy A, like never have a bitch for a best friend and that served me well in my life.

Why you’re all fucked, single or not.

Why would you want to be part of any couple where you aren’t with or made up of the genetic code of Emma Stone and/or Ryan Gosling? You wouldn’t. Even when they aren’t having sex and they’re just talking about their sublime lives they’re having better sex than you. Ryan Gosling is the most casually charming six pack you will ever meet mixed with the perfect amount of sleaze. His voice is alluring and confuses us in our quest to have a defined sexuality. Someone make this man James Bond right now, seriously. He’s all vulnerable and secure and smouldering, he’s sort of surpassed ‘man’ status now, he’s a phenomenon and we’re going to start The Church of the Latter Day Ryan’s if you fancy joining?

Emma’s here too dumping the begeesers out of Josh Groban for being a massive knob which is unfortunate because we actually quite like a bit of the wet, sappy Groban, obviously, he’s not good enough for our Em, but then who is? (Ryan). She plays it all empowered woman who doesn’t need love, but her heart soon melts when she gets a load of him. Her hair is fabulous; even when covered in water from the sky. She does her little array of laughs and voices and of course the obligatory snort which we’re convinced is a clause in her contract somewhere. IT’S ADORABLE. She’s so ‘every girl’ which is what the world loves about her, so it’s a real shame when you realise you could never be her, not Emma, not that beacon of worship.

What that all should say is that you might want to watch Crazy, Stupid, Love and change your life in in the trivial ways that really matter. I mean you’ll never get laid looking like that. No, you should be taking tips from this man who doesn’t actually look too much like what he’s aiming for, but you know it’s the thought that counts or something equally meaningful about how it;s great to not be yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTm2ru-APUw

Canne Not

Us Meta Junkies, well me anyway-the other one is happily playing his new x-box games, are devastated that we aren’t at Cannes Film Festival when everyone else in the entire reviewing world is, even the unimportant and YOUNGER THAN US Ultraculture got a yellow press pass. As we live in this bastardised internet savvy environment we can’t even  forget about the event because twitter is making Woody Allen jokes right in our faces and ‘videoblogisodes’ whatever the hell they are are being streamed into our brains. We don’t like it. You’re actually quite lucky this entire thing isn’t in caps as a 21st century representation of my pain.

Instead of living it up in France with the smelly, frog-eating, bread-carrying, French people* we got a bit drunk in Salford, went to a glam-rock night our friend put on, got drunk a bit more, watched Thor and then topped it all off by watching The Thing for the first time. Now I’m going to bear all in a review that will be nothing like all the other one’s you have already read.

After the initial disappointment of having to watch  it in 3D Thor  actually wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t camp and it wasn’t cheesy and it was actually a little bit funny, It’s up there with Iron Man as the best super-hero adaptations. Well done then Ken.

Asgard looked shiny and cool; the bridge to the bi-frost was the strongest aspect. New Mexico was a perfect setting for arrogant hero in small town style slapstick and chaos which turned out to be more than just a little light relief from some big non-human words and names. Chris Hemsworth was perfect for Thor with his flowing golden locks and massive abs and Natalie Portman clearly thought so too as did every woman in his vicinity. Portman might not get the kind of accolades here she did for Black Swan, but it’s got to be better than whatever swan-dive her career is taking from that Ashton Kutcher ‘movie’ and let’s not forget Your Highness, granted I haven’t seen either of these films, but you can’t make me do that so just understand they aren’t very good and we’ll move on to Loki. Tom Hiddleston was a show stealer here portraying a perfect amount of hurt and born-to-be-evil glamour that looked great in a cape, you might recognise him from TV, but probably not. I’m going to say the word SPOILER RIGHT NOW before I go on to ruin it for you all and I’ll even be nice and leave a little gap, but not a big one, so just click away if you don’t want to ruin anything for you and I apologise for making you leave. Please come back.

If you wait till the end of the credits you can see the little Avengers bit that only the geekiest are aware exists at the end of the recent slew of Marvel flicks to hit our screens and you can see a little more Tom with hints to what I can only assume will be a lovely empowered evil role in The Avengers next year.

Right Thor  was good then, The Thing was pretty cool too. It scared the crap out of me actually and I went to bed shuddering. I did get told off for falling asleep in the Alien-esque stomach bursting bit, but I was bloody tired. The monsters were excellently designed and the soundtrack was for me the creepiest bit, Carpenter is always great at that though. Still looks awesome after all these years and may just be one of my favourite scary movies,  in case Ghostface ever comes to ask.

Cannes is still in swing for another week I think so be prepared for another one of these and I hope everybody who is there is having a horrible time.

*No stereotypes were used in the creation of this blog

You will be unprepared

Zack Snyder, fan-boy without a budget, shows us what his (wet) dreams look like. What ensues is the slaughter of Nazi-zombies by scantily clad ‘chicks’ on a road-trip through a mental asylum/dance-club/apocalyptic game wasteland.

You might think that sounds great and you would be quite right, but as somebody famous no doubt said, theory is different to practice.

Snyder has made quite a name for himself in refashioning everyone’s favourite cultural products of yesteryear; Watchmen, 300, Dawn of the Dead, and his visual style has never been short of stunning. With this, his first original offering, he lets his imagination run away with himself like a feral child. It looks sharp, snazzy, and satisfyingly cool, but then it always would have, what Snyder lacks is depth. Dialogue here is scarce, as are characters that anyone would give two hoots about, and not to mention the distinct lack of anything resembling a plot, but then it does have smoking-hot empowered female leads right? For reasons not quite clear yet everyone expected this to be the case and thus critics the world over have cyber-bitched about the inherent misogyny of a sexualized female cast. I’m not sure if anyone saw 300, but it’s full of men wearing skimpy clothing and nobody cared about that, this really isn’t that bad. Snyder has bastardised himself a bit here by showing too little and leaving the audiences mind to create whatever bizarre sexual fantasy they want. If we had seen Babydoll do a nice little dance a-la Britney nobody would be complaining, instead we’re left to our own sick desensitized imaginations. Sadly it’s a bit ambitious to think the director was trying to confront societies menace.

While the women of the film are busy moaning, groaning, and grunting (mostly in slow motion), the men are getting some half-decent roles. With a quick appearance by John Hamm, Don Draper to you and me, the only interesting and developed character in this graphical showcase is Oscar Isaac as Blue Jones. In each layer of the film, let the Inception comparisons begin, he plays a sadistic ‘manager’ in a constantly emasculating power-struggle with ‘his girls’, a great new talent from the Eli Roth school of evil, Isaac could easily adapt to the scenery of a Tarantino type film. These layers which the film relies so heavily on are presented simply as performances, the film starts with a red curtain, each ‘act’ of the play starts with a mission and a dance, when the music stops so does the un-reality, it’s an interesting technique and the asylum as a club worked beautifully, but go a bit a deeper and the emptiness takes hold. Utterly un-cohesive is the only way to describe the events that take place within this multi-faceted world.

Snyder’s aim here seems to be nothing more than creating a two-hour show reel of music videos. He’s good at that and he used music beautifully in Watchmen, here he drowned in the dreaded remix-album. Any fight scene that includes an industrial remix of a Bjork song is designed only for a game and all scenes in this Nazi/dragon/robot infested world looked and sounded like cut-scenes. If they don’t develop a videogame from this then somebody somewhere should be sacked.

Zack Snyder isn’t a bad film maker; possibly, he’s just not a very good creator. Oozing through Sucker Punch’s every pore is Snyder’s influences from anime, TV, games, films, music, and anything else he may have encountered in his life. As a film maker fully stocked up on Ritalin he tries to show us everything and in doing so shows us little of anything. Just calm down Zack and go back to remaking and remodelling.

The wedding one

I miss Skins already, don’t you? When it ended I felt my life deflate a little bit.

For now though we can still live in bliss as I discuss what exactly just happened on my poor laptop screen. I feel like I should apologise for clearly missing crucial pieces of information from last weeks mental breakdown, I for one was very shocked to learn that Rich had proposed, because on the Channel Four I was watching this never occured, which is quite terrible since the entire finale revolved around this. At least I have an excuse to watch it again now.

As much as this episode massaged my brain into a sweet sweet coma it pissed me off in equal measure. Liv suddenly didn’t give a shit about her relationship based on booze with Matty and decided that Franky could come along for the ride when clearly, as she later realised in a moment of enlightenment, he wanted to shag her in the woods–hasn’t happened enough this series. Also we shouldn’t be starting to like Mini now because she is slowly turning into a ‘caring lesbian’ she is probably still a bitch deep down inside and she should be crying herself to sleep. The writers really need to bang some more stereotypes in, their target audience will be getting confused. One last thing which thouroughly annoyed me was Nick’s existence. He is now un-neccessary to the plot and should be disposed of like the beer cans he is never without. Rugby was never that good mate, go home and cry to daddy.

Otherwise it was rather enjoyable and an interesting finale of action packed proportions. So the couple whose wedding it was suppossed to be weren’t really the centre of attention, too much stuff was happening on the way to the wedding, in the woods. Okay so the only bit that gripped me was the bit in the woods. Skins is always better when it’s in the woods, as we have witnessed over the course of five series it’s a tried and tested method for carnage and success. This time round we got some latent homosexual feelings arising, which they didn’t explore enough and I look forward to it coming up in the next series, we got poor Franky telling us just why she is adopted, also an excellent tale, and we got her then tumbling of the edge of a little cliff after NOT having sex in the woods. You can’t please everyone I suppose.

After all that was over and business had been taken care of, nobodies head would be fucked with any longer, they set-up the next series brilliantly with a reintroduction of the aformentioned head fuckery and some lovely back and forth shots of texting. Those clever souls over at E4 have realised the future is upon us and are taking full advantage of it. Next series should be filmed entirely via facebook with the occasional Skype conversation for a bit of excitement. The first social media show, I can see the critics swarming already.

Usually I would now talk about the music, but lets face it, it was good and average that’s about it. Though I have just discovered Segal who is rather excellent so I will say a begrudging thanks to Kyle and be done with it. Thanks (dick).

That’s it folks, my banter has drawn to a close and I’ll have to find something else to weekly disturb and excite myself with, but I did just read the news that Skins has a film coming out this summer which will focus on the second generation, but feature the first and third accordingly. I’m absolutely terrified of that.

 

 

It’s high art obviously

This week Skins decides that the popular literary figure Shakespeare, you might have heard of him, is cool. Grace decides that sustaining a voice doesn’t matter, and everyone gets out their ‘coke eyes’. Sounds good I know.

I appear to have missed all important plot points this week, if indeed any occurred, and only saw Frankie kiss everyone on command while saying that she isn’t bi-sexual she “just likes people”, great writing coming to you from E4 since 2005.

Despite all this it was however Grace’s episode, though it did appear to be more like a Mr.Blood (Chris Addison) greatest hits compilation as he pranced about the scenery spouting nonsensical shit in a pan-British accent. The accents played a large part of this weeks shows mainly because, never having been to Bristol, none of them sounded remotely Bristolian in nature. Of course I recognise that they are professionaly trained thespians from the ‘big-city’, but I mean come on, if you can’t make it Skins then you have no chance, which is why nobody knows what any of the previous cast members are doing. Nicholas Hoult being the exception, but then he worked with Hugh Grant so nothing else really matters does it.

GOD I ALMOST FORGOT THE PEA SONG.

For those unawares the pea song is a cultural movement unbeknown to anyone in the modern world that isn’t a complete and utter shit-tard of a human being. If this doesn’t signal a last attempt at greatness before ‘the fall’ then I don’t know what does. Empires have been ruined by less. Just ask Julias.

I’m still recovering from that memory for a while so let’s discuss the aforementioned ‘coke eyes’. Picture the scene: four quiet girls in a bedroom full of floaty stuff with nothing to do, they get out their limitless supply of cocaine, kiss daddy goodbye, and run off to the club that doesn’t ask for any form of identification from said underage children. It’s a great world I know. Once at this club where all their friends also happen to be, it’s obviously not a school night, they decide to ‘get off with’ some fat bloke and his mate, Matty takes unkindly to the unwanted attention Franky is recieving and asks him politely to leave by scaring the living shit out of millions of people with what is the complete opposite of Bette Davis Eyes. That boy can act. Maybe. No, no he can’t. We can all begin to walk the long road to recovery know because he clearly had an overdose of something. Sorry about that long-winded rant, but someone had to say it and I am speaker of the truth. Anyway I’m sure next week all this trouble will end, or be exacerbated-who knows, when him and Franky just have sex already, Liv won’t mind she’ll just have another five bottles of Vodka.

Since I don’t know what I’m saying anymore I’ll just stop saying things, other than that the music this week was unusually good and I would like to say well done Kyle. We had a bit of Jessie J, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, James Blake, The National, and Magnetic Man amongst others. God it’s a great time to be alive.

Skins goes rural

I know I missed my weekly post for Nick’s episode, but all I have to say on that is: I’m glad that the writers have recognised the blatant homosexual nature of rugby and proceeded to create a character and indeed an hour long show around that. We all feel better about ourselves now don’t we?

This week however it’s the turn of much more interesting character and ‘farm boy’ Alo. Apparently Bristol has whopping big farms in the middle of it now, it’s news to me, but I never was very good with geography. After a slightly bizarre series of wanking events, set to the only song ever to feature the sound of someone choking on cum, the story gets started.

I found myself wondering just how ‘special’ Alo was during in this episode and praying to god that he didn’t get together with Mini who is still in mourning over Nick, the bastard, who is still in mourning over Liv. It does seem like the last two episodes of this series could just dissolve into a primal rave/orgy while Franky takes the role of voyeur/pervert androgynous bi-sexual? teen. We’ll have to wait and see on that front I suppose.

Alo is an intriguing character though and he has what one could describe as a ‘banging’ dress sense, though he did appear to be naked for most of the 45 minutes of screen time. The music I found quite a strange mix for his character, the opening song by Furr was excellent and really quite captivating, but then it descended into a mass of dub-step and electronica which I found unbecoming for such an ‘alternative’ guy, clearly the young hip douche-bag who decides on the music, I believe his name is Kyle, knows something I don’t.

Skins is slowly getting into a pattern of letting us see the family more and while it may not be what the audience is used to it’s much better drama. The conflict between Alo and his parents was great TV and I almost cried a few times. I know, I do apologise, I’m young and don’t know any better.

Next week: Grace’y’ goes a bit thespian on us probably going crazy in the process, but hey at least Skins is delivering high-culture to the masses now-a-days.

Oscar time

It’s that time of year once again where the little Golden man rears his head and I thought I’d do a very rushed prediction of what I think will be the winners in the big categories tonight. I’m an idealist so we can just strike out The Kings Speech from being in this list right now.

 

Best Picture: The Social Network

Actor in a leading role: Colin Firth

Actor in a supporting role: Geoffrey Rush

Actress in a leading role: Natalie Portman

Actress in a supporting role: Hailee Steinfeld

Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Foreign Language Film: Buitiful

Original Music: 127 Hours

Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network (Aaron Sorkin)

Original Screenplay: The King’s Speech

Sorry for missing out the technical awards I’m in a rush here to watch Outcasts, but I think it’s going to be a bit of a mixed bag this year. Anyway the wait is almost over and we are all excited to see what  one armed puns Franco delivers so get to it.

 

Now that’s what I call a Skins episode

Volume 5.

Sex, booze, drugs, teenage trauma, what more can a girl ask for from a Thursday night show?

Liv’s episode is by far the best yet, with some class-a music to match the drugs, and a strange appearance from the man we all know and hate from the Orange adverts of yesteryear.

Fashion wise I think it may have been a bit of a disaster, I’m not sure what ‘look’ Liv is trying to accomplish but it’s all a bit top-shop circa 2007 and frankly it falls short of the cultural definition we have come to expect from this ever so popular TV programme. Yes its not real. I know, I’m upset too.

This episode though was good for real reasons too, these being that we got to see how Liv’s life is affected by her family; rather than the writers just acknowledging that other people do exist in Bristol we actually get to see them interact and shape what others do. Liv’s sister in this respect was a lovely element to the show and she is a sci-fi geek too. Yay.

Alas! Hot mystery man is revealed to be, WARNING PLOT POINT COMING UP, Nicks brother Matty, in what is an interesting turn of events. Apparently he’s a mental too so buckle your seatbelts for that one folks and I’d get ready for some smouldering glances between him and Franky before they actually get it on, in the words of Marvin Gaye. That’s what this season needs, a bit more intercourse between the group. Remember when Effy and Co went camping well these guys need that episode and then they can learn to hate each other and get over it the way true friends should; having angry sex while wasted in a place where everyone else can hear. Skins teaching valuable lessons to kids since 2006.

I realise this is all a bit slap-dash, but to be fair I’m writing about Skins and apparently your reading it so its not like you care about intellect too much is it? If you ever wondered what it was like to see somebody down about 4 bottles of Vodka in 45 minutes then all your dreams have come true tonight as Liv proceeds to show us how to ruin your vital organs in style. Also Sherry? Are these people in 6th form or a bingo hall, not even my gran drinks Sherry.

Other things we learnt this episode: Mini is STILL a bitch. I reckon that’s not changing any time soon.

 

Skins of Lycra

This week in Skins world Kelly Brook visits and does absolutely fuck all. Which is a great point of reference for the entire episode really.

I think it’s safe to say the world was foaming at the mouth when the words ‘Kelly Brook is back on TV’ reached the nations ears and then all she did was stand around in her shiny Lycra pants and they didn’t even keep cutting back to her buttocks for the remainder of the show. Everything about the episode was a massive disappointment.

We got see a little bit more of Mini the big bad wolf of the series. Turns out she’s just a bitchy teenager who has never even had sex. Queue the OMGZ and self-loathing and puking on boy-friend in moment of abject terror scenes. Despite all this she still managed to be a bitch.

I had watched the American Skins just before and shockingly that made this seem like a Gus Van Sant drama. I can’t discourage you enough about NEVER watching that, ignoring the fact that it’s shot for shot the same as the British pilot it’s not a remake it’s a bloody massacre.

Mini yeah. Her episode managed to ruin the series thus far by making everybody involved seem like utter annoying dicks. Even Franky, who had the chance to get her own back, which any decent human would have, just asked for a light and a dance. The least she could do is turn her into a raging gay.

I think the main thing about this episode was that it lacked any substance, maybe as a reflection of the character, but still us children need entertaining or we’ll change over and watch some hard hitting politics with Paxman. Mini was just dull, other characters have a sense of inner turmoil that they project outwardly in some way, i.e. metal, Mini just ate seeds and used too much fake tan.

Even the music for this episode was quintessentially average mixing the terrible world of pop, Cheryl Cole and Lady Gaga, with cutting edge Skream and Crystal Fighters, and then throwing in some classics like Roots Manuva and Eddie Cochran for good fucking measure, because you know why not?

Oh there was also the most awkward sex scene in the world broadcast between Mini and her ‘boyfriend’ whose name escapes me, but do watch that because afterwards everything is in black and white for a bit. Rich lost his hearing and Mini apparently goes colour blind after shit sex.

Next week it’s the story of the other bint whose name also escapes me, but that looks harrowing and council estatey.

Skins proclaims “I am metal”

It’s that time of the week again when I do a slightly late discussion of Skins, but not so late that it’s no longer relevant, you best lap it up again kids (and grown men who are clinging onto youth.)

This week we met Rich and in doing so got the most metal episode of any show ever broadcast apart from when Cradle of Filth turned up in Coronation Street. We all knew then that metal and TV weren’t meant to mix. Skins has reaffirmed my faith in this fact by actually using the lines; “I am metal” and “This is who I am.” How not to write dialogue <—- just NO.

We did however get some interesting music and frankly it was quite daring of a prime time show to rely on Napalm Death and Slayer so much. Metal Heads the world over are rejoicing in acceptance, or more likely cursing that their favourite bands are sell outs. Fuck society they don’t understand you anyway. A rather unprecedented turn of events somehow led to Huey of The Fun Loving Criminals fame playing the record store owner, he was good on Buzzcocks and he was good here too. Shame about the music.

Skins has the idiotic ability to forget everything that has gone on in previous episodes between characters and just focus on the one they are showcasing to the world this week and while we did primarily see Rich they avoided this trap by inserting Grace as buffer between ‘alt-college’ and ‘Top Shop-college.’ Insert long winded and obvious boy likes girl, girl likes boy, but girls friends think boy is weird plot here and you have the synopsis of the episode and series.

It is lovely of this carnal teen carnage to finally show real alternative culture instead of just popular alternative culture for a change. Instead of a rave or out of control house party we see a gig and crowd-surfing. Sadly they make it all a bit cliché by playing Rage Against the fucking Machine and table dancing. The counter culture desperately needs a new anthem because if I hear that one more time in any sort of ‘official’ capacity I will be offering up my ears to Mike Tyson.

Rich is a great introduction to the show though and different to any character it has ever had before. If anything he is an amalgamation of a few males from across the series’: Sid and JJ come to mind the most. I just hope he doesn’t go through some sort of transformation now he’s had a near deaf, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get that in, experience.

Next week it’s that bitch who’s called Mini or something and I’m excited to see her vomit on her boyfriend, expectations are pretty dire if I don’t say so myself. As long as they play Rihanna it’ll be okay.