Suppose that’s
Checkmate to Death
Then.

A scene from Bergman’s iconic The Seventh Seal. I say iconic, but I could never get into it myself. Even with all those seals it was never a patch on Happy Feet.

Here’s the trailer so you can make up your own mind:

(There’s a YouTube video here that you won’t see on the RSS feed. View it on the website instead.)

It’s a shame. Some of my favourite comedies are from Germany, such as Stop! Oder Meine Mami Schiesst.

Excerpts

1. It is the biggest case of miscasting in history. Anyone, anyone, would have been better in this part. Steven Seagal would have been better. Janette Krankie would have been better.
2. This story could go on for 104 minutes or 104 aeons and it would make no difference.
3. One of the funniest and most astringent books of recent times has been turned into a film so embarrassingly awful I felt like putting a brown paper bag over my head and emitting a high-pitched keening sound.
4. Her final moments in this film are so hammy that any vegetarians present will come out in a rash. The prefix “over-” in “over-acting” doesn’t quite cover it. Her shriekingly tragic fate was something that I certainly won’t forget in a hurry. Many people in the audience had to be helped out of the auditorium, given a cup of hot, sweet tea and covered with those Bacofoil blankets. I myself will need years of therapy to get over it.
5. This treacly second world war drama is the sort of flaccid silliness that you’d expect to see on television with “ITV4″ in the corner of the screen.
6. There are some films so awful, of such insidious dishonesty and mediocrity, that their existence is a kind of scandal. [...] Just thinking about it gives me a headache.
7. These thesps look like the most terrifying water-based situation they have ever actually faced is when the Jacuzzi isn’t warm enough in their suite at the Four Seasons. XXXX, in particular, could do with a pair of waterwings, and he gives us every reason to suspect that his tummy scrapes the bottom of the pool when he assumes a horizontal position.
8. Chased for days and days, they do not need to eat or sleep or use sentences that ordinary human beings would use.
9. As the film continued, I personally began to bow my head in humility and self-knowledge. My pen slipped from my nerveless fingers and hot teardrops fell on my notepad, like a pure and cleansing rain, blurring the vindictive remarks I had scribbled. I was ashamed … ashamed … that I had ever given this incredible idiot anything approaching a good review.
10. One per cent of your time watching this may be spent being startled by some vivid and disturbing images. The other 99% will be spent thinking: what the hell is going on?
11. Never has a title been more horribly at odds with the way you’re actually going to feel while watching the movie.
12. Embarrassingly, she is made to say “loo” to show off some real limeyspeak. Perhaps she can be grateful she wasn’t given bad teeth.
13. Enough to make me want to put a brown paper bag over my head and whinny like a tormented pony.
14. As Sigmund Freud once said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a film with the silly but entertaining title of Snakes on a Plane, is just a silly but entertaining film about snakes on a plane.

Films

1. The Aryan Couple
2. Atomised
3. The Black Dahlia
4. The Da Vinci Code
5. The Devil Wears Prada
6. Eragon
7. A Good Year
8. The Grudge 2
9. The Guardian
10. Lady In The Water
11. Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer
12. Stay Alive
13. World Trade Center
14. Snakes On A Plane

There are no prizes, obviously. It’s the taking part that counts. For answers see the first comment.

(There’s a YouTube video here that you won’t see on the RSS feed. View it on the website instead.)

He also has a £14,000 letter from WWI, special healing hands and Miss World for a daughter. I’m telling you, this guy puts the RRROCK! back into rock star.

Rumour has it that Chris has written a special version of his hit song Lady In Red for his little alien, entitled Lady in John Hurt:

Lady In John Hurt

I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as you did tonight
I’ve never seen you shine so bright
Mm-mm mm-mmmm

I’ve never seen so many men have to hold me down while I died
With you bursting out from inside
Then running off to hide

I have never even really noticed
How you look just like a horse’s cock with teeth
You’re beyond belief

The Lady in John Hurt is hatching in me, little freak
There’s nobody here
It’s just you and me, and-some-blokes-and-Sigourney (Weaver)
But I hardly know this beauty in my insides
I’ll never forget the way you made my chest burst open and all my blood squirt out

I didn’t say it was finished yet but it’ll be done for Christmas.

Ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-ff-fffff!

It just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it? I told the scientists these miniature livers would never take off, but as usual they didn’t listen.

New information: I stand corrected. Apparently Brewster’s have put in a bulk order for their new range of stem-cell burgers with curly fries. Never let it be said I don’t admit when I’m wrong.

Update: It’s just been suggested to me that Winstone is in fact play a Boston Irish hoodlum who has had a stroke which has left him with a partially Cockney accent. In that case I would like to commend his excellent performance and shift my criticism to Scorcese for losing this crucial back story detail in the editing suite.

It goes without saying that the book is very long and about hobbits.

Peter Jackson is en route to New Zealand as we speak to get enough material for another 15-hour epic “in the can” before he dies of old age. His filming schedule is thought to look something like this:

• Film some hairy children jumping on and off horses
• Film old bloke holding staff aloft/spreading arms/bellowing
• Knock up vast monster army on computer
• Film hairy children hiding under big leaves
• Film old bloke/hairy children fighting giant creature
• Do scenes of vast monster army marching, fighting, grunting, etc.
• Film hairy children going into some sort of tavern
• Big battle scene with vast monster army: kill off old bloke
• Film hairy children hiding behind a rock
• As soon as book is published: Add titles, arrange shots into sequence, dub mumbo-jumbo dialogue

I can barely contain my excitement.

(There’s a YouTube video here that you won’t see on the RSS feed. View it on the website instead.)

And from the DVD extras, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot from the set:

FILM: Jack

Comedy-drama about a ten-year-old boy with an ageing disease which makes him appear to be 40.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Robin Williams, Diane Lane, Brian Kerwin, Jennifer Lopez, Bill Cosby, Fran Drescher

I don’t know how this one passed me by on its release in 1996 but it did. Honestly, can you even begin to imagine a more troubling concept? It’s a comedy… about an ageing disease! But no, wait… with Robin Williams! And, and… and Jennifer Lopez! And Bill Cosby!! I mean, where do you start?? What was Coppola thinking??

Not surprisingly, it gets a 19% Rotten Tomatoes rating.

For the record, people with real ageing diseases tend to look pretty odd, and not in the Robin Williams way. They do have weird heads and funny arms. They don’t have all-over body hair and a chin like Sarah Jessica Parker.

Still, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it was a laugh riot all the same.

Is it just me, or is everything Sith?

Amazingly, though, bitrot has spotted a niche in this seemingly saturated market: the period zombie movie. Think about it: people love period movies… everyone loves zombie movies… it’s a combination to die and then come back from the dead for. As you read this I’m making a joint pitch of my script to George A. Romero and Merchant/Ivory. Watch out for it on a billboard near you: Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench, plus a load of white-eyed extras, in… The Day of the Remains.

First up, two Chinese blokes doing a unique dance/gurning routine to the Backstreet Boys.

And for seconds, one for all the Grandaddy fans.