Thor

There has always been a difference between a film and a movie. A film makes you think, it makes you feel. It moves you (TO A BIGGER HOUSE!). A movie on the other hand distracts you. There are bells and whistles and explosions and average acting from the good guy and spectacular over acting from the bad guy and it tries to make you forget about life and instead enjoy the two hour ride for what it it is, a ride. This is England is a film. Robocop is a movie. So now that you understand my philosophy I hope you understand why I found the new Marvel studios release Thor to be amazing.

Thor was a movie I had low expectations for. It was based on a character that I was only vaguely familiar with. He always seemed to be a background character. He had no cartoon show in the nineties like X-Men or Iron Man. He had no republished three years later collected book editions like Fantastic Four or even Deadpool. My only real connection with him was as a supporting character in the dreadful 1988 Bill Bixby starring The Incredible Hulk Returns. On top of that Kenneth Branagh had stepped in to direct. I know Branagh is a good director. He's a top actor too if you ignore Wild Wild West. But he directs Shakespeare and lowish budget thrillers, not the God of thunder. But I guess they Bryan Singered us again because Branagh delivered in spades.

The film opens with a montage of Anthony Hopkins explaining how he defeated the Frost Giants years ago and then slides gently into modern day Asgard where Thor is about to be crowned the new king of Asgard. But theres skullduggery afoot as the Frost Giants are making moves on Asgard. They are stopped but Thor is pretty pissed off and leads a small expedition into the realm of the Frost Giants (which I'm not even going to try to spell.) where things promptly go from bad to worse until they are rescued by Odin. Odin, pissed off with Thor for disobeying his orders banishes him to Earth. Here things take a turn for the bizarre as he runs into a group of scientists who think hes mad. When SHIELD show up and start being dicks, Thor puts manners on them in a fun little scrap. Of note is the cameo from Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and possibly a Luke Cage cameo too. I'm not sure of that because he didn't really say anything very Luke Cagey like: 'Sweet Christmas! This honkey be crazy!" Luke Cage is kind of a stereotypical character. So he might just be some big black dude. One thing leads to another and shit blows up and I promise no spoilers this time. Now, I'm gonna get nerdy.

Holy shit, did you see Hawkeye in there? Aw yeah. Casting Jeremy Renner, who can only really do burned out combat junkies, as Hawkeye points to this guy being more in line with the Ultimate Hawkeye than his mainstream Marvel counterpart but thats okay because Ultimate Hawkeye is pretty badass. In Ultimates 2 he gets captured, tied to a chair, tortured, has his family murdered in front of him, pulls his own nails out while tied to said chair and flicks them at his captor with such force that they die. My summary of it was nowhere near as badass as it was in the comic. It was cool okay? Just trust me on that.

Another thing that was great in this flick was the use of 3D. When in Asgard it was in your face and a real feast for the eyes, rainbow bridges zipping around and nebulae in the distance and just stunning set design. When on earth then, it was subtle. Almost non existant. The background was very out of focus but that wasn't really too big a deal. This film is a real feast for the eyes and it captures the strange science fiction and fantastical elements of the Kirby Asgard the I wasn't sure they'd get right. But they did. Big style. All of the effects were great from the Destroyer rampaging through New Mexico, prompting one of the SHIELD agents to ask 'is that one of Starks?' (Continuity!) to the bit where Thor and chums battle the Frost Giants. It really shows the potential of 3D. Something that has been ignored in dozens of films like Clash of the Titans where the 3D actually kind wrecks the film.

My only real complaint about the film is the pointless love interest played with all the flash and sizzle of a Transit van by Natalie Portman. After Iron Man, a friend said to me that he was pissed off with Paltrows character of Pepper Potts. He said that there was no pont in having all these love interests for characters who just don't really need them. A love interest for Tony Stark, womanising playboy is just pointless. A love interest for a God is equally daft. Even if Natalie Portman is super attractive and a badass bitch, its just daft, especially when Stellan Skarsgard as Dr Selvig makes more of an impression on Thor and the audience by going out for a pint with him than Portmans astrophysicist in any of the daft shit she does. It leads to another great line where Thor,drunk, carries the drunker mortal home telling Portman 'We drank, we fought, he made his ancestors proud.' i really wanna see some deleted scenes for that.

Going back to what I said above Thor is not a film masquerading as a movie, like the Dark Knight. Its also not a movie pretending to be a film, like the Godfather.(There I said it!) Its a movie. A straight up movie that has an unoriginal plot(its King Lear with special effects) and some dry performances(Natalie Portman.) but it has tremendous pacing, effects and a baddy that chews scenery like no tomorrow. It will make you forget about your pointless existence for two hours and you'll have a laugh doing it. This is another Summer of the super heroes with Captain America, Dylan Dog, Priest and Green Lantern still to come nerds are gonna have a good summer.

A retraction

Turns out, its all a big fucking joke.

Am I the only one who thinks this is actually worse? I admittedly feel foolish for posting the blog I already did. So, I guess have to retract the below blog as obviously this girl was not religious. I suppose this is the kind of thing that should be pointed out to young people as a reason not to blog angry. I wrote it almost as soon as I saw the video. I was pissed off. I was pissed off and apparently that was her intention.

Well done Pamela. You win at trolling. You fail at both satire and human decency.

The religious

I am an atheist. Considering most of the people who will ever read this are friends of mine, this is not exactly news. When I was younger and angrier I shouted it from the rooftops and told people of faith that they were morons who deserved whatever Hell they fear most. I've mellowed somewhat with both age and meeting a friend who is religious. He is not a braying sheep believing that all who disagree with him will die in a fire, nor is he paying lip service to his parent s by going to mass and assuming that God will sort his shit out for him. He is a logical, intelligent and ambitious man. He also just happens to be quite devout. One of the many things he taught me was that not all devout religious people are nut jobs who want to slaughter infidels.

By talking to him, I reconsidered my opinion on people of faith and decided that what they believed in was fine so long as they believed in it away from me and didn't try to convert me, we're groovy. As Jesus said: 'Don't be a dick.' But then another friend of mine, an atheist, posted this video on facebook in a sort of 'lol, crazy religious person is crazy' sort of way.' Here is the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UmotTE-VlY

Now, there are a lot of people going onto youtube and calling this girl horrible names and mocking her faith. As I explained above, I don't do that anymore. I mean sure, I will explain again and again and again to anyone about how evolution happened and the part about God making everything in the universe in seven days is silly, but I would never go out of my way to attack someone because of their faith.

What I will now do is attack this woman for her rudeness, stupidity, arrogance and borderline hate. Be warned: here be curse words.

I am so filled with rage by this video. That someone would be so blind to reality that they would claim that not only did God do this, but that it was a good thing that it happened, causes my blood to boil. This person is exactly the kind of person that made me an angry atheist in my teenage years. This person, claims that she and others 'all over the world came together and prayed that God would open the eyes of atheists all over the world.' She promptly declares her amazement that God acted so quickly as only two days after she started praying, God 'literally grabbed the country(Japan) by the shoulders and said: 'hey, look, I'm here."

I don't think I should have to explain to any of the few people reading this what is wrong with her statements, but its my blog, so, fuck it. Her prayers were that God would open the eyes of Atheists. So murdering 10,000 people is Gods work, huh? I thought that insane thinking died out after the crusades. Well looking at the Middle East, Northern Ireland and 9/11 disproves that. Although at least she only prayed for mass murder instead of doing it. She leaves the big guy upstairs do her dirty work. Another problem I have is that countries don't have shoulders. D'uh.

She soon turns her attention as to how vengeful God will be when his Mass Murder World Tour 2011 reaches America. Apparently there are a lot of Atheists there. She proclaims Japan to be a '...great place to start...' She's right of course, the Tokyo dome seats 50,000 and its a cracking venue to start any world tour. Also the fact that 64% of Japanese people do not believe in God  also lends some credence to her insane theory. To anyone out there who read that last sentence and thought that it might be a fair argument on her side, grow up.

Do those people, atheist, Christian, Buddhist or what have you, not deserve life? They deserve to die, because they disagree with you? How about instead of making videos on Youtube taking credit for getting in Gods ear and having Him murder 10,000 people, you try to help the people who survived. Or does that sound like too much work for you? Or a better idea, turn yourself into the International Criminal Court at the Hague and confess to being the mastermind behind the deaths of 10,000 men women and children? Or does that sound like too much reality for someone as deep in denial as you to comprehend?

Or maybe, just maybe, you could stop patting yourself on the back for five seconds and realise that people are dead. They deserve your prayers, not your scorn. Your sympathy, not your arrogance. Your help to get back on their feet not your video thanking God for the deaths of their friends and loved ones.

Now if anyone out there is reading this and thinking, that theres a big joke coming, I should let you know now that there isn't. Just a pissed off atheist wondering what the fuck I did and what the fuck people everywhere like me did, to become the bad guys. I think I figured it out though. It is all Bill Maher's fault.

I used to think Bill Maher was funny and insightful. I now think he's an asshole. An asshole I agree with most of the time, but an asshole anyway and I do not have time for any more assholes in my life. The reason I think he's an asshole is his film Religiulous. In this film, Maher goes around the world speaking to religious people. Naturally the films argument skews n his favour and is little more than an op-ed piece about how stupid religion and the religious are. He does this by speaking with rednecks, lunatics and ideological fascists the world over. He only speaks to the loonies. I didn't care for it because I know that there are people who are not loonies but are also religious. But Maher made a film tarring all religions with the same brush. If a moderate Christian were to see this film and take its message that all people a certain type are the exact same, he/she would have to think that all atheists are assholes because Bill Maher is an asshole. Do you see the fundamental paradox at the centre of this argument?

I'm going to finish this off now because I've gone on for quite some time and most of you will probably just skip down here anyway to see if I have a point, well here it is. If that woman in the video is right and I'm going to die soon because God is working his way through all the atheists, one continent at a time at her command than I really have to think about the God that I grew up believing in, from the day I was born to the age of 12 when I was confirmed, on through 14 when I thought about joining the Priesthood to the age of 16 when I though 'hang on a minute,' is different to the God that she believes in. That makes me wonder, whose God is right?

Jesus says: 'Don't be a dick.'

I say: 'You tell 'em Jesus!'

The Adjustment Bureau

Yesterday I went to the cinema to see the Adjustment Bureau. It wasn't very good. Theres a fine idea at the core of this movie and the message, that love conquers all and human beings are great, is all well and good except for the fact that nothing really happens.

Based on the short story, The Adjustment Team by Philip K. Dick here is a film that should have been Bourne Identity meets Inception. Instead we get Sleepless in Seattle meeting Bruce Almighty(complete with helpfully all powerful black guy.) Damon and Blunt have good onscreen chemistry but the simple fact that Matt Damon is told, point blank, by Terence Stamp that if Damon continues pursuing his love for Emily Blunt that it will fuck shit up for everyone and completely ignores it is really annoying. Its like being told that if you masturbate again, someone is going to stab you in the eye and still pulling your pud. Don't be surprised if someone kicks in the door and goes all Terminator on your eyeball.

Like I said though, its not strictly a bad film, it just lacks a certain cynicism that the original short story had. In it, the protagonist accepts that there are forces beyond his control after he meets one and sets about lying to his wife about what he saw. When she doesn't believe him there is a convenient door bell chime. At which point the protagonist goes away and his wife is presumably lobotomized. The fact that I think thats a great idea speaks volumes as to why I'm single.

The film batters you over the head with this sense of hopeful expectation that there not only is a higher power guiding the world and making sure nobody fucks up too bad, but it also seems to say that if you fuck with said higher power, you'll win. You'll live happily ever after and no one will ever dick around with your future again. You'll pick your own destiny, be your own boss. Wear your own shoes, that you, yes, You, picked. Also the fact that the Adjustment men(also known as Angels. Yes ANGELS) dress, speak and are named after stereotypical yuppie types pisses me off. Its like the crew of How I Met Your Mother decided to try sci fi. Suit up Matt Damon, you're going to do a lot of running around. Again. But only in the third act. For the first hour or so of the film you'll be a bit of a bitch.

In more positive notes from the movie, its excellently cast,particularly Terence Stamp as the constantly menacing Thompson. It has some fine technical work and the fact that Matt Damons character is named Senator David Norris gives me a chuckle. In summation, this film is not a complete cinematic abortion. It is not, however, worth the 9 quid to go see it. Go spend that money on something better. Like fags.

Introduction

Holy shit, I set up a blog ages ago and forgot about it before I even posted anything! Art college, you have ruined my mind. Well not so much the college as all the things I did while...not strictly at college. I mean I was a student there but I swear to Christ I only dropped acid at college once...or was it more...point is: I earned my olive oil that day.

Inspired by my chum Jenova Reunion, I decided to start posting a blog. Of course already having set one up some time ago for movie reviews and shit sure made the first step easy. However, I have since decided that doing purely reviews would be boring and its not like anyone will be reading this anyway so instead I have decided to try and use this thing as a forum for my budding interest in writing comedy. I also do stand up. As soon as I get another gig I will bring a video camera to it and not suck. I promise.

So with that in mind I thought I would offer a brief Titter-esque review of the Academy Awards this year, both the show itself and the Awards that were given out. Like I said, this will be based on the Twitter system of less than 142 characters.

This year, the oscars sucked a bag of dicks. Not the films themselves, they were great but the show itself did. I don't know who shoved the sticks up James Franco and Anne Hathaways assholes, but I'd like them to remove it please. And I'd also like the job next year. Unless they bring Alec Baldwin back. I need money, but not that much.

I mean, they're both good actors and we all know about Franco and his 'relaxation techniques,' so what happened? My theory is that they replaced them with shitt performance droids. Also, whoever had the idea for the Anne Hathaway as Hugh Jackman spoof, should be shot. Twice. As a wise man once said anyone worth shooting, is worth shooting twice.

I ignored my Twitter thing there. Mainly cos Twitter is stupid, but also because my blog, my rules. Beeyotch!