Well, Andy is off to livejournal and that would leave me as the last person here of the people I know....so I've cut my losses and I'm off.  My near 3 years here has come to an end...but fear not....the blog will still live on...on Livejournal.

http://mrchom.livejournal.com/

Well, I've watched it all now....so what do I say....

Munich just isn't very good.  It felt fat, edited with little speed or flair it lollops along at its own leisurely pace not really doing much of anything...I've seen Takeshi Kitano films and enjoyed those because of lingering shots, lack of dialogue etc. but this just takes the cake.  The John Williams score too is present but lacking any of the memorable style of his other films (Barring Memoirs of a Geisha...which was a decent OST but completely forgettable in the grand scheme of things) and all too often the places that should have had music lacked it.

The lazy editing even transferred to scenes where there should have been tension, the lack of a score and the slow editing made it impossible for these scenes to maintain any sort of tense moment as they just moved on.  The editing was more suited to a documentary about a fishing trip than any sort of alleged "thriller.

But let's move onto the rest of the movie here, shall we.  The film was confusing at a lot of points, characters were not introduced...at all....in fact until I searched wikipedia I thought the military intelligence scenes at the beginning were being led by a grandmother for no particular reason.  All we needed was someone to start talking to her with "Madame Prime Minister...." but noooooo.  Frankly a lot of scenes were the same...they occurred with little or no reason explained to the watcher and the movie just became a collection of stuff.

I could understand the way the film was if it was an exact representation of reality but some things were clearly written with cinema in mind (such as the initial terrorists getting changed in front of huge fully lit  windows) so the slow manner of the film cannot be excused...neither can the lack of tension, the people involved would have been nervous not being terrorists before this and it fails to come across in film.

I think the key moment where I knew the film had irreperably broken down was when two people started having a discussion about the benefits and problems with terrorism in a dark stairwell for about 10 minutes...everything in that overt discussion was more than implied everywhere else making that scene COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.

It's not a BAD film per se....I mean the plot is interesting enough...but at 2 hours and 45 minutes it is 1 hour and 15 minutes too long and with a pair of scissors and someone to help with the soundtrack I could actually pick out the scenes to remove.

All I know now is that Chris has to watch V for Vendetta, the far superior film.

Yeah, lotta stuff about movies recently, they pass the time.

So I'm trying to get Chris, my mate in Coventry, to watch V for Vendetta....which he won't because he thinks the title is rubbish.  He says he'll watch it....but only if I watch Munich.

I've been avoiding Munich.  I don't particularly like the idea of films based on disasters less than 50 years old for a start, it may have been 35 here...but it's still not long enough.  Secondly the whole Israel/Palestine/Mossad/whatever thing is of no interest to me.  I am not anti jew, or anti arab, I am not pro war or pro terrorism....I just don't care because I have no vested interest to care.  It's far away, none of my family is arab or israeli, and it may sound callous but I just don't care.  Political reasons aside...why don't I care...well...the movie just doesn't look very good to be honest.  Oh, and it has Eric Bana, I'm not a big fan of his, couldn't explain why.....I'm just not.

So right now I'm almost 2 hours into the movie...and I found out at the 45 minute mark that it was over two and a half hours long.  I'm going to blog about the movie itself in the morning....but I just thought I needed to get this down while it was fresh in my mind....nigh on 3 HOURS....

I just need to remind myself....I'm doing this so someone else can experience the joy of V for vendetta.

Prey, it looked like such a nice little shooter....I played the demo, and now I bought the game for £20.  I got past the end of the demo.

Here's a synopsis....you're an ex-army native american who's meeting his girlfriend in the bar she owns.  Two guys are harassing her and then attack you in drunken rage....you hit them over the head with a wrench.....AND THEN ALIENS ABDUCT THE BAR.  Bet you weren't expecting that.  Yes, you're abducted, tied to a slab, and sent on rails through a mothership with hundreds of other people....you are freed by a man/machine crossbreed, you see your grandfather brutally slaughtered...and then die.  Bet you weren't expecting that either.  Your grandfather leads you through the spirit realm to your rebirth into the physical world...with the power to separate your soul to pass obstacles.

Yeah, kinda cool, huh.  Fighting aliens who seem to have abducted half of texas to save your girlfriend/the earth.  Not scary so far, huh?  Well, here's where it turns....

Venturing deeper into the ship you end up under one of the decks in cramped, dark tunnels.....up above you can see running children, screaming running children.....from time to time you hear them being killed....the occasional amount of blood.....nothing attacking you though.  And that's the scary part....you're wandering round dark and cramped corridors, no way to dodge, there's a constant heartbeat noise.....and pitch blackness in front of you....oh and from time to time.....little girls laughing as the other kids die.  From time to time you even see little ghostly red eyed children.

I've got to an opening in the tunnel to a pitch black room with "NOBODY HEARS US" written in blood on the wall (small enough and low enough only a child could have done it)...and I've saved because frankly I'm too scared to go on right now.

This is the good kind of scary though, the kind where you're stressing and waiting for the next thing....they could have gone out and out overt stuff, but no.  I like it.

WHY?  Seriously, Brian, WHY?

I LIKE your films, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, The Untouchables....ESPECIALLY the Untouchables (£4 at Asda....I seem to say that a lot)...and whilst seeing it for about the billionth time tonight I made a discovery.

That discovery, friends, was a movie slated for release in 2008....
This movie is directed by Brian de Palma...
This movie....is The Untouchables: Capone Rising

Yes, a prequel to a movie made 20 years ago about a TV series made 48 years ago.

The Untouchables is a classic movie full of great actors (Yes, Kevin Costner is good.....it's just that he rarely appears in good movies, I like to call it "Jeremy Irons Syndrome) and to do a bloody PREQUEL hurts me....at least with Star Wars you had none of the same characters....but in this you have Capone and Malone in action...I could do without someone trying to be DeNiro...or Connery.

What next, someone gonna go ahead and make a Godfather prequel?  Do I have to come over there to Hollywood and beat sense into people until they start realising that making bad movies hurts them...

In conclusion, Brian, WHY....just WHY?