Knuckle

So I watched this documentary on the weekend called 'Knuckle'
I am not entirely sure why the fuck I bothered even watching it to the end.
It follows a bunch of Irish travellers who punch the shit out of each others faces over the course of 12 years. I can't believe the guy who made it could even be bothered trailing the idiots for that long. Every now and again, he puts some emotional music over the top to try and get us to feel for these thick-as-pigshit wastes of oxygen. Or perhaps to take stock of the human condition or some such.
The story basically is, that 12 years ago something horrific happened which caused 2 traveller families to have a rift between them making them stage high stake, bare knuckle boxing matches for years to come. Each family will choose a champion and then make a completely idiotic video of their champion, yelling, cajoling and challenging someone from the opposing family to a fight. Usually there is money involved. These fights solve nothing even though these complete fucktards believe they will somehow and the family feuds continue on for years afterwards anyway. Sometimes the feuds get worse because of them.
The only hook in the whole stupid, idiot hole of a film was finding out the reason the two families had been feuding so long in the first place.
As it turns out its a remarkably shit reason.....although I don't know what the fuck I was expecting by this point. Turns out, one family member had died when a member from each family had had a fight. So lets get this clear. Instead of thinking rationally and stopping fighting, they organise more regular and dangerous fights. Then pontificate about how at least their families feud for a good reason, better reasons than some wars according to one of the toothless, drool holes one of the idiots has on what is left of his face.
(He may be right.....but still)
These people seriously need to stop marrying their sisters. The collective intelligence of every single person in the documentary, plus all the kids they will ever have, plus all of their kids, and all of their kids etc, etc, etc, etc would be about equal to the massive amount of fecal matter that was blocking the right hand side cubical in the top floor toilets at work the other day.
I couldn't quite help feeling like we would be better off without these people on the planet.
Unless you to are a fucking idiot I would avoid this film like eyeball herpes.
Remarkably, it got reviewed quite well. Which just makes me think my earlier statements about film critics are all true. Cunts. They say its a 'Remarkable insight to a secretive world'
People are pretty secretive about going for a shit too, but I don't want to watch that either.

Herzog would have made a great doco about this.*

*thanks James

Youtube Playlist of Stuff

I have been adding music to a youtube playlist for a few days now. It is ever growing so if you like it check back in every now and again. None of it is techno. Its not that sort of playlist. But there is no order. Its more just a reflection of my moods on any given day.
Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTN3AU-aeGk&feature=BFa&list=PLE306CCD4BEA3C956&lf=BFp

The Film Terminator.........

Has this bar in it called "Tech-noir"
I watched it the other night for the first time in a couple of years. It seems finally that the fashion in Tech-noir no longer looks old. I swear to god it looks like they shot that scene by going to London Fields on a hot day, grabbed a whole bunch of hipsters and then went to Dalston Superstore with a camera. Minus fixed wheel bikes of course.
Too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJjYkAs1ZFQ&feature=related

Blowing up peoples faces.

I am working on a movie at the moment. I probably shouldn't say what I guess, but it has been made before......in a very shit way.
Anyway, the director has decided that it should be mega-fucking-violent. Like Robocop violence. Which is cool. I am not against violent movies at all. The problem is, that my job at the moment is consisting of bullet wounds. Predominately, ones that hit in the face. There has to be lots of blood. And realism. As I sat working late last night, three of us got into an argument about exit and entry wounds. I put quite a bit of fine mist spray coming out the front, where the bullet enters. I am not sure this is right, but it looked good.
Anyway, the discussion continued, and we decided to look at reference. Looking at reference of people getting shot in the face is not cool. Its cool if its from movies. But not real footage. Which, thank you JFK footage, is what we ended up doing. Back, and to the left.
Anyway. I felt slightly sick when I got home late from work last night, and realized I have been using someones murder as reference for a shit action film.
So if you're out there John John. Sorry about that bud. Shot looks wicked though. The film shot, not the one in your face.

An Old Avatar Post I Never put up.

I saw Avatar for starts. I hated it. Just kidding. The reason I say it though is it seems like a popular thing to say these days.
For starters, by no means do I think its a great movie in the normal sense of the word. I mean, as a far as Sci Fi goes District 9 was a far superior film. Moon even better again.
And I basically have had a hatred for James Cameron that borders on weird ever since he dropped that shit-pile of a film Titanic on us, so I really wasn't expecting too much from Avatar.
And they are very similar stories if you imagine Leonardo DiCapro to be a wheel chair ridden marine and the rich people to be big blue hot cat people, and Kate Winslet to be the forebidden lover and Billy Zane is that blue hard arse that the main blue chick was supposed to bone for the rest of her life....you see the parallels right? No. Neither. Anyway.
So how could I possibly like it?
Well my main problem with Titanic was the seriousness in which it took itself.
James Cameron constantly banging on about how it was an Historical drama made me feel ill. It was a fucking teenage girls wet dream is what it was. He may as well have just made a movie with My Little Ponies or whatever the fuck girls are into these days, on board the Titanic. It was more like a comedy movie, except not funny.
Anyway. The obvious button pushing that Cameron does serves him better when the subject matter is more fantastic, because well, I find it hard to take a neon, blue person filled world too seriously.
I understand Cameron takes himself very seriously, which is a bit shit, but in terms of something to look at, its a pretty staggering achievement.
I have seen some fx films in my time and worked on a few, and they all usually have some bad shots in. This film doesn't. All I can say is wow. And congrats to the people who worked on it.
So for all my cynicism about it. I enjoyed it. That's not to say it doesn't have problems. It does. But for fuck sake, when the other box office toppers include Transformers 2, you have to take a step back and think, well at least this film is actually kinda good. Transformers 2 had no redeeming aspects. At all.
Things that are annoying about it for me, were a lot of the creature design was a bit pants. I mean come on. Lets give everything six legs and name them roughly the same as the creature the idea was stolen from on earth. What was that six legged Panther thing called. I remember it was something really dumb like Panthero or some shit. And as everyone has said the dialogue is terrible. But to be fair, the dialogue was fucking terrible in Aliens and Terminator.
The marines doing pull ups in Aliens scene for instance.
Anything Hicks or Hudson say. The "You're Terminated" line from Terminator.
One thing that I liked which everyone else hated was the simplistic characters.
I liked having a bad guy that was just so obviously bad. It just makes things easier. Plus I sort of agree that the film needed broad brush strokes because, well there was so much other shit to look at.
Anyway. I switched my brain off, and I liked it. It didn't really hold up to a second viewing very well I have to say though. But hardly anything ever does for me these days.
A film I could have watched straight away again was Fantastic Mr Fox. That kicked arse.