Sucker Punch...

I feel I'm going out on a limb here...but I liked Sucker Punch. Only I'm not sure I'm supposed to.

I'll try to keep spoilers at a minimum.

There's been a lot of bad reviews regarding this film and to be honest I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to get from it. I'd seen the trailers and really liked the visual style of genre mash up in the action. Samurai with Machine guns? Can you really go wrong with that?

So I made an effort to get out of Worthing, something that nearly defeated me, and went to see Sucker Punch.



I'll start with hmmm. I started off not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. The opening was cool, minimum dialogue, just depressing visuals with a depressing cover version of Sweet Dreams playing over it. Then the plot begins, with Baby Doll taken to a mental home and is put in line to be lobotomised. This is the drive of the character, to escape before literally losing her mind.

However, in the institute, as part of their therapy, the girls have to act out their problems on stage, in order to work through them. Baby Doll reacts to this by escaping into her own head, thinking that they are dancers locked inside a club unable to escape and having to put on a show each night for the seedy clientele.

Ok so far it's a bit messy, the transition from the institute to the club could have been smoother, but a few jerky movements and we're there. So now we're escaping from a club.

Another reason for the messy transition comes from some of the set design. It seems to jump between the Club and Institute. So for example, one minute Baby Doll is in the dressing room, all lit up, and the next she's running through the dingy corridors of the institute, but still in dance club costumes.

Anyway, along the way she enlists the help of fellow inmates/dancers and together they try to gather the 5 items required to escape. This is when it all goes very video gamey. I've read that Zach Snyder didn't think he was making a video game style but it can't be helped when characters are given mission objectives.

So rather than 90 minutes of sneaking around the club, which would have been a completely different film, Baby Doll has to use the weapon of dance. A dance so completely mesmerising, it can hypnotise those watching, enabling her cohorts to steal the required items.

This is where we get the action, Zach could've just shown a dance, but no dance would've been enough to convince the audience, so when dancing, he has Baby Doll escape further inside her head to some other world where she has to fight samurai with machine guns, zombie Nazis, knights, orcs, dragons and robots.

So to keep you up to speed the action is as follows:

You have fighting Baby Doll...



...inside the head of the dancing Baby Doll...



...inside the head of therapy performance Baby Doll.




So she fights/dances/performs to steal what she needs. Therefore the film is pretty straightforward, in a round about way.

The film is pure escapism, rather than facing the truth, you escape to somewhere more exciting. I've done it before, especially in times of distress. Dentist's chairs come to mind.

As you can see the more I thought about this film the more I found I did enjoy it. I was a little disappointed when I started, but during the film, gave up trying to work out how it was wrong, why it was bad, whether the female leads are anything but eye candy and came to a realisation that the girls on film are locked in a mental institute, so why should this make any sense. You have WWII bombers fighting Dragons for example. I'm not going to try to work this out, just enjoy it as is. This idea of the film being purely insane, is also backed up by the video on the end credits, the main villain of the film (Oscar Isaac - awesome by the way) sings Love is the Drug, cabaret style with the Institute's therapist (Carla Gugino). This film is meant to continually come at you with surprise attacks. Hence the Sucker Punch.

I was going to hide this in a spoiler box, but you may want to hear my other thoughts as to what it could be. I have been thinking that maybe all the girls are just personalities of Baby Doll. For example, she is taken to the mental institute because she accidentally killed her sister. Once there she meets two fellow inmates who are sisters, the older Sweetpea looking out for the younger Rocket. Surely an extension of BabyDoll;s character that she tried to look after her own sister. So now she has become bother older and younger sister.

THIS IS A SPOILER:
This is also present in the ending when Baby Doll is lobotomised, but we see Sweet Pea escape. Although she doesn't escape, She is the only personality to survive in the lobotomised Baby Dolls mind. This is why Scott Glenn, the mysterious advisor in all the action dreams, is present at the end. Sweetpea is still inside Baby Dolls head because she doesn't exist.


Baby Doll is content to live out the remainder of her days, in her own mind, as the protective Sister Sweetpea.

END OF SPOILER

There's an obvious omission from this review. The portrayal of the female leads. This is not a black and white thing to answer. On the one hand you have the strong, fighting women, albeit wearing festishied costumes. One the other hand, when not fighting they are all a bit weepy and seem to accept their roles as objectified dancers.

However, I think, this is far to easy a judgement to make. The girls are the same characters. You can't simply split them up into their different emotions. They are strong to fight back, but also vulnerable. You also have to take into account the subject matter of the film. It's set in a Mental Institution. I think it's pretty safe to say that they aren't the strongest of minds if they're in their in the first place. You can't have a group of Warrior Women in the mental home, otherwise surely you;d have to question why they were they if they were so strong in the first place.

I'm not getting into this on here. I enjoyed the film. I also enjoyed 300 and didn't think it wrong that there were no fat men in pants on their team. As with many other films, the male heroes are usually Adonis types. I should really be on side with Seth Rogan as he is a heavier build and was recently the lead as the Green Hornet, but he's not very good.

So back on track with Sucker punch, a quick mention to the soundtrack which includes some cool covers and is actually awesome. There's a great cover of Search and Destroy by Skunk Anansie played over the dragon sequence.

Overall I think the reviews have been unfair to Zach Snyder. There's a lot of great ideas in Sucker Punch. The fights are exciting, using some insane camera techniques that I have no idea how Snyder kept track of. I think the main problem was the way the film is put together, which I admit, is a little confusing, resulting in a lot of bad reviews. Who knows if the studios had a hand in messing it about.

But who says that every film has to be the greatest film ever made. Sometimes you just want to escape from day to day life. Sometimes you just want to have something else to think about. Sometimes you just want to watch an anime school girl fight a samurai with a machine gun!

Too much?

London Film and Comic Con

Today I attended, as if you couldn't guess, the London Film and Comic Con. That's Con as in convention to those not in the know. It's one of many UK based conventions trying to create something on the scale of the San Diego or New York Comi Cons in the USA. They don't quite succeed, but I still enjoy them. Ask if I was having fun whilst I was there and I'd be thinking long and hard, but now I'm safely home I think all the queuing was worth it.

Before I go any further I want to set a few things straight. I'm not a full on geek, in the sense that I know every episode to Stargate. Nor do I dress up to look like a Jedi or other such Sci Fi characters. I dabble. That's all I can say. I enjoy Star Wars as readers of this blog will know, I watched a few episodes of Star Trek, not religiously though. And I've seen episodes of Stargate, but I'm not really a fan (this may disappoint one of my readers. Sorry) Anyway, I do have an inner geek, I know more about comics and films than the average joe, and that's where my interest lies. I still get annoyed when I see charity figures dressed as Batman hanging out with Spiderman. (Side note it was funny today seeing a Star Trek Captain discussing the finer points of phaser handling with a Stormtrooper) So my inner geek needs feeding once in a while, which is why I like this kind of convention. Completely from a fans perspective. There are people there that frankly scare me. Each to his own I've always said, but it is a little strange. But if they leave me alone, I'm not going to bother them.

Anyway, let's continue with point 2. Point 2 is the notion of celebrity. I've discussed many time with Brother Chris, who attended a couple of these events with me in the past. Who decides what will be charged for autographs? It is made clear that if you want something signed you have to pay a fee, which is clearly stated is for the signature not the photograph, which are considered free. (By this reasoning I could get a one of each photo available and just the one signed, but I'm sure if this was tried someone would stop me. Maybe next year) For example, today Mr Scott Bakula was charging £25 for his autograph. Fair enough, I can't afford that but I'll go to his talk, not a free talk though so I queue to get a ticket. Another £20 for this talk. Obviously I make my excuses and left sharpish, keeping hold of my monies. So who set this up. To whom is this cash going to. Not everyone was on my wavelength and forked out the cash, so he must be raking it in. But who decides? Where does it go? All good questions to which I have no answers. So I did pay a couple of £15 for signatures. Which brings me onto point 2B. You pay your money, you get a brief chat (very brief in my case 'cause I'm kind of rubbish at it) and you get a signature. When you think about it, it really means nothing. I could scribble an indecipherable name onto a photo and joe public wouldn't know the difference, or even care. So why is it a good thing? I guess it's an idol/hero thing. I guess if I said more you could say you shared a moment with someone you admired. Or you could just say it's so you can have a brief gloating moment the next time said person appears in something. I don't know for sure but, as I said. I do enjoy it. It brings the famous a little closer, even if it's in a forced transaction based environment. Anyway, I still think I'm a little different to the masses of attendees, a little more grounded, but hey, wouldn't it be cool if I started hanging out with Chris Sarandon.

So here we go. This is just the beginning.

To set the scene, as Brother Chris has a lot of work on at the moment he couldn't spare the time to join me this year. The last time we both went was about two years ago, failing to get Nathan Fillion's autograph and tiring of the day we went for a mercy greet and meet with Alan Tudyk, who had no queue. Then we left. Due to these circumstances, we both agreed that it was a little rubbish and weird and vowed (maybe) never to return. That was until I moved down to Brighton. With the convention now more or less on my doorstep I decided to go. And go I did. Alone.


So I braved London on a Saturday, not the easiest of things, especially with Tube delays, but I successfully arrived at Earls Court and entered Queue 1 to get in. This is where first photos were taken solely for this blog. Here there were Stormtroopers hanging around. I contemplated asking about their state of New Zealand-ness but instead just took the photo. There were also Clone Troopers wandering around. The same musings were thought about but I left them alone, chuckling at the fat Cylons I'd just seen. Not to mention the smallish Jack Sparrow. So I'm inside and I queue for some talks. Having missed the Red Dwarf talk I opted for the Doctor Who (Yeah, I know I don't like Dr Who) as I'd heard that Tom Baker was in attendance (see that's why) I also wished to attend the Danny Trejo talk and the Stargate talk (Again, I know I'm not a fan) which will be explained later on. This is when I literally discovered the price I had to pay to see Scott Bakula talk. No go. I then moved onto the signing alley or whatever they call it, to see who was there, and whether to get any autographs later on. Many faces were seen as illustrated with my assorted photographs.

A lonely Sean Maguire


A bad photo of Chloe Annett. Bonus points - her father directed the film The Beast Must Die as mentioned in Brother Chris' blog here

Interesting fact: the most costumes today were of Paul Foote - a character from The Beast Must Die. Which one was the werewolf though?

It's David Prowse. He was Darth Vader.

It's Bruce Boxleitner. He looks bored.

This is kind of mean. This is a funny picture of Jake Lloyd - he played young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. He looks the same.

The stars of Heroes - Jimmy Jean Louis (The Hatian) and Sendhil Ramamurthy (Suresh)

So I took the ticket of Scott Bakula. Number 969. The place had only been open to the general public for 40 minutes and already his tickets were up to 969. No way was I going to see him today. I got a quick glimpse of him through the queues, and that was all. Knowing it was never meant to be I took the tickets of Michael Ironside, to discover once and for all how many arms he actually had, and a ticket for Jewel Staite, star of the excellent Firefly and Serenity, and more recently Stargate: Atlantis (hence attending the Stargate talk), which I'd probably have seen if Channel 5 hadn't stopped showing it. I'd always been a fan of her character, Kayleigh, in Firefly so was happy to fork out the cash. But I'd gotton pretty high numbered tickets so I had time to kill. A lot of time.

So I wandered the hall, looking at stalls, wondering if the DVDs were legal, but generally just waiting for the first talk. Despite me spending money on autographs, I still didn't have much to spend. I can no longer buy any random thing, so I was just looking to see if any cool stuff existed. Plus the novelty has kind of worn off since the invention of the internet shop.

With still hours to kill I decided to get a present for my friend who had just passed a life changing exam in accounting, and he won't mind me saying that it isn't any more interesting than how I made it sound. As I haven't given it to him yet I'm blanking it out as a spoiler. You can still highlight it to read it, but if you're reading this Mr. Martin, just stop and wait patiently. (Click the tiny picture for a massive reveal. So as he'd passed this exam I decided to get an autograph for him from a Red Dwarfer. So after a curious text of who he like best, The Cat, Kochanski or Female Holly, and receiving confirmation that it was indeed The Cat, I entered Danny John Jules' queue. I was determined to get it super personalised, with some kind of well done, but it was hard enough getting the name across that I settled for that alone. Basically his name is Anthony and because we're all lazy we now just call him Antnee. Explaining this for an autograph is one of the most difficult things I've had to do, ending up with me just saying something along the lines of "Just spell it A. N. T. N. E. E. He'll get it, it's a nick name" Still unsure, Danny wrote it. I then got a photo to prove it's real and so I'd get something out of the transaction.)

Finally it was time for the Dr Who talk. I made my way to the talk area and joined Queue 2. For a while I wasn't quite sure what the queue was for, but it lead me into the strangest talk I've attended. Present were Alexandra Moen (from new Dr Who I guess), Philip Madoc, Bernard Horsfall (I guess) and the legend that is Tom Baker. Tom was awesome, not quite sure if he is a comic genius, or actually senile.

There were jokes and slightly detailed description of which actor he'd like to "bed" when asked in an interview for the radio (Johnny Depp by the way, and he went into some detail to do with pirates.) Very strange, very weird but excellent. An annoying follow up to this talk, a group of fans took the opportunity to ask Tom for a photograph. I was with them, however I ended up taking their photo for them, then in the time it took to return their camera, Tom was off with someone else and we were being moved on. So close.
Straight after this was the Danny Trejo talk. Not as weird as the previous talk but very entertaining. Two highlights. First off, when asked about when the film Machete was going to be made he took out his mobile and rang someone, then asked us to shout "Hurry up and Make Machete" I'm guessing, like so many others, that he called Robert Rodriguez. So in theory I'd just spoken to Robert Rodriguez. Cool. The secodn highlight was an answer to the question "Which of your films do you consider the worst?" He simply answered, "None of them. I'm in them" Awesome. He also wouldn't stop when he was supposed to and continued taking questions. Well, it's Danny Trejo, would you go and stop him. So we over ran into expensive Scott Bakula's talk. So there.

Now I had time to kill, time to collect on some autographing. So I headed for Michael Ironside. Closed it said. No reason stated, just closed. Had he left in an angry storp when someone questioned the number of arms he owned? Who knows? I had to move on.

My next port of call was Jewel Staite, who now had an open queue. Now a quick side note - when I get things signed I always like them to sign things to Pete, this is so it's a little more personal than my full name. However, it always seems to confuse everybody, and they repeat it back as though I've given them the strangest name in history. Anyway, back to Jewel. I was thinking after the bizarre interaction with Danny John Jules I'd be better at the whole experience. Not so. Foiled by the lack of interaction with the single (or dual) armed Ironside I reverted back to my good, polite, quiet self and handed over the photograph. It was still cool, and she was very nice, but I failed to get a photograph. This was mainly due to the fact that I was abiding by the "No posed photograph" sign, rather than the fact that there was no queue behind me. Bugger.

So now I felt that I should see someone else. Then I remembered Chris Sarandon. Still not too sure, I approached his stand behind what I thought was a small queue. I took this opportunity to peruse his photographs while deciding if it was the right decision. Then the queue vanished, and I was left on my own in front of Chris Sarandon. Now I had no chance to create any rapport and awkwardly began the transaction for his signature. During this I noticed a photo from Child's Play, the problem on discovering this was all I could think of saying was, "I forgot you were in Child's Play" which would further the awkwardness. Silent I stayed. But I did get a photo, so a small victory on my part. Now I'm just a little fed up that I didn't get the Jewel photo seeing as I did with every other autograph. Anyway, what's done is done.

All this didn't take as long as expected so I wandered the hall once again before joining the Stargate talk queue. Weirdness ensued when I played a couple of tracks of Guitar Hero World Tour. First off, Rebel Yell by Billy Idol. I was reduced to bass on this track, which isn't that interesting, and I began to slip up when I got a little bored. I decided to move on, but when no one took the guitar of me when offered, I stayed for one more. This was well weird due to the fact that the girl next to me wanted to sing. This is fair enough, and good on her to sing in the middle of the exhibition hall. It's not like anyone more than a couple of metres away would hear, but I don't even sing on the game at home, so I was impressed. Luckily she was good singer on What I've Done by Linkin Park. This time I was on guitar so more fun was had.

I then left but had forfit a good place in the Stargate queue. Also after the small victory of extending the Danny Trejo talk, Scott Bakula overran. Eventually we began to move and in I went. No I began to feel like an outsider. As mentioned before, I wasn't really a fan of Stargate, only there for the star of Firefly. The audience was clearly made up of fanactics who knew every episode title and synopsis, as proved when asking and answering questions. The talk was fun, even for a stranger like myself. Firefly was mentioned so I was happy.

And that was it. With no more talks to keep me there I took one last tour of the hall in case I was going to miss some free stuff or something. This is when I found out that Michael Ironside had now returned. Still, it clearly wasn't meant to be, forever wondering how many arms he has. It was time to leave. And leave I did.

So now I reflect on the day's events. As mentioned at the begining somewhere, the London Film and Comic Con still has a long way to go to rivial San Diego. There's just not enough quality really. It's heart is in the right place, but there's a lot of open space, and various stalls just look thrown together. This year the Cos-Players were out in force and there was a CosPlay contest. There was also a lot of support for the two anime voice over actors which was suprising. With a little work it could be as big as San Diego. Overall I still find these events special. Despite all the weird and strange people there is an overall sense of community. I don't think attending is a bad thing, and shouldn't be seen as so. As I said, I'm not the biggest fan in the world, but the chance to see people I admire is a chance I don't what to pass up on. I just wish you didn't have to pay for the chance. I think the stars attending realise what they are a part of. Although at times people can seem a little crazy and a little strange, they're basically keeping their fanbase alive by appearing at such events showing that they care for their fans. They're giving something back. So what if it's at a price, as they say, nothing in life is free.

As a final note, if you're interest in anything I've just said you should check out two films. The first is a short documentary directed by Bruce Campbell entitled Fanalysis, in which he examines the world of fan conventions and what makes a fan into a fanatic. The other is sort of mockumentary called Comic Book: The Movie directed by Mark Hamill. I say mockumentray but this is only half true. It stars Mark Hamill as Donald Swan, a comic collector making a documentary about the new movie based on his favourtie comic Commander Courage. All fictional, but in it he interviews a variety of personalities who, when taking about the Commander, are clearly taking about some real life experiences they've had within the industry. Alongside this he documents his journey to the San Diego Comic Con. I've tried to explain it too much but it basically explores the whole convention culture.

So in a Jerry Springer's Final Thought moment, I say fandom shouldn't be looked down upon, whatever the level of your involvement. I mean, there are thousands of people who dress up in costumes each week in support of their idols. It's just that their conventions are called football grounds.

My face was shaved...and I watched films...

For those who may be interested, Operation Beard is over. It wasn't really a failure, more that I grew sick of the facial hair. I was going to post photos but how self indulgent would that be. Anyway, I also discover my hair is too fine and light to get a successful growth going. You basically had to be centimetres form my face to really see it. I have this theory though, whenever I seem to forget to shave, the lazier I become. Therefore with the act of shaving I cast off the laziness hair to become revitalised once again, ready to get on with whatever I was avoiding. This was a sub-mission with operation beard. The longer the hair grew, the more to cast off, the more I would get back into things. Which worked for a couple of hours, but then I went back to the confusion.

To explain, I'm moving down with Brother Chris for the foreseeable future and somewhere it was decided that I go down for a week, presumably to settle in, or get the lay of the land. Which is all well and good, but I spent the week not really knowing if I should be looking for work as I was returning home for a couple more weeks. This scheduled return also meant that the room in which I'd be living was still borrowed, so at home I did not feel. I did apply for one job though so not all was wasted.

When not working however I watched a lot of the second series of the Henry Rollins Show. although a little strange at first, seeing Mr Rollins presenting a chat show, the guests he has on and the cut around rants make for an interesting watch. It is a little disconcerting though as he does seem to complain about everything, even blogging, and I do see where he's coming from, however I shall persevere.

When not watching umpteen episodes of this show, I managed to watch a handful of cool films. These ranged from the "arty" Irma Vep, a film about the filming of a remake of a silent french serial called Les Vampires, starring Maggie Chung as herself. It's good because it makes a little fun of stereotypical French Cinema, that the majority of films are made only for the directors and not for general audiences.

I also watched a Japanese film called Kamikaze Girls. I originally thought this was going to be a crazy kung fu style film but was surprised to learn its the simple tale of two girls from clashing cultures becoming friends. It's still crazy, and really cool. Especially the soundtrack by Yoko Kanno, who also created the soundtrack for the excellent Cowboy Bebop anime series. Anyone who hasn't seen these should definitely look them up.

During a film night, and using the hat system (whereby the names of a bunch of films are put into a hat and one taken out at random to be watched) resulted in a quality triple bill featuring Ravenous, the Guy Pierce and Robert Carlyle cannibal fueled film, which I'd forgotten was quite funny, and has an excellent soundtrack; Omega Cop, a post apocalyptic style Citizen Kane meets Ong Bak starring Don Marchini and Adam West; and finishing off with Death Dimension, in which Jim Kelly teaches crime to George Lazenby whislt they take on Harold 'OddJob' Sakata and his snapping turtle. Assisted by none other than Myron Bruce Lee. Quality viewing was had by all.

In term of cinema visiting adventures, we saw Friday the 13th and Push. Unfortunately Friday the 13th was neither a re-imaginging nor a remake, but ended up another sequel in the already bulging Friday the 13th family. A 'Previously on...' style opening continues into a brief body count before the actual film really begins. Jared Padalecki, from Supernatural, was good but the fact that Jason as a franchise has become so large that even he isn't allowed to kill him off.

So with Push, a film closer the Heroes TV series than with telekinetic adventures as advertised. The film is ok, there are a lot of plot holes and one wonders whether using a different 13 year old, rather than the 40 year old 13 year old Dakota Fanning, would have achieved the same result. It was fun though, and was better than Friday the 13th.

I've come to the end now as I'm not quite sure what I'm writing about.

Kamikaze Girls Trailer


Irma Vep Trailer

You can't save everybody...

...as my saying would go I if were reassuring someone in a Zombie/disaster movie style situation. Instead, this is how I console myself when I let innocent people die when I've only got a few minutes left to save a guy so I can get the next story point in Dead Rising. Yes, the games returns to haunt this blog. I've calmed down a little since last time. The game is not without its faults, but I'm beginning to enjoy the apocalypse. Well, digital zombie apocalypse.

You may find my above reasoning a little strange, but I find it shows strength of character. I'm not one to complete every last aspect of a game just to unlock a new hat. But when There are people getting eaten I find myself trying to save them, despite not having the time to get where I actually need to be. This happens to be one of the faults with this game, despite all the freedom you get, if you want to experience the story, you just can't save everybody. It is physically impossible. Anyway, enough of this, there are more important matters at hand.

Today I watched Millennium Actress, an anime from the director of Perfect Blue. I've had this film on my pile for quite a while when I went on a spurt of anime buying, although I've yet to watch any. Until now that is. Unlike Perfect Blue this film is not as suspense driven as the former, nor as visually impressive/confusing (I was falling asleep at the time of watching though) as Paprika, Millennium Actress is just a nice film. It uses a cool character interaction to tell the story of an aging actress who spent her life looking for her first and only love. The story proceeds through he life combining actual event sin her life, with the events in the films she starred in. This is a fictional story though, as I mentioned to Brother Chris, it would be cool if the same method was used on an actual biopic.

Again, not the most important thing to have happened, but 'twas worth a mention I thought.

Now here we go. I've finally begun work on Secret Project Number 1, which will remain secret until a time I see fit, to protect me from embarrassment it nothing happens with it. That and stealers. Anyway, I've begun to write the treatment, and now I waste time blogging, but the hard part is out of the way. Hopefully ideas should start flowing. I will say this however, unlike the previous script I worked on with Brother Chris, this is not of the fighting genre. There are no clear cut goodies and baddies, and not simple "they fight" set pieces. Which is to say, the other script if more interesting that that, that was just a summarising breakdown. This one needs to be planned. It's a more complicated route from A to B this time, but I'm getting there. I just hope it survives the translation from my head to the page/screen.

So I'm off to get some more done.