Snakes On A Motherf*ckin' Plane!

I've been obsessing over Snakes On A Plane today and have just added the wonderful Snakes On A Blog to my cool links.

You can read more about the forthcoming Snakes On A Plane movie by checking out its listing on IMDB or on Wikipedia.

You gotta admit, you're excited aren't you?

Who needs tickets for the 2006 NME Awards Tour?

NME have just announced dates for their Shockwaves NME Awards Tour 2006 and they'll hit Brighton Dome on Thursday 16th February. Tickets (priced £15.50) are already sold out through NME Tickets but will go on general sale tomorrow... so if you want tickets then get your requests to me by 10am as they're gonna sell out immediately.

This year's tour featured The Killers, Bloc Party, The Futureheads and Kaiser Chiefs and the line up for this forthcoming tour is due to be announced in next week's NME. I'm not party to any insider information but latest rumours suggest that Arctic Monkeys, Maximo Park and We Are Scientists will all be taking part... watch this space!

Movie Haiku - Lower City

www.cidadebaixaofilme.com.br


Dir: Sergio Machado


Cast: Wagner Moura, Lazaro Ramos, Alice Braga, Jose Dummont


She screws two best friends

cockfighting and cocks fighting

should have had threesome


soulmining rating: ***

Bowie lands Prestige role

Be afraid... be very afraid... Bowie's acting again. I don't care though, he's still a hero of mine, therefore I'm quite excited to read the news that he's just been cast alongside Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine in The Prestige, the new film from Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins) which will begin shooting in January 2006.

"Bowie will play inventor and electrical wizard Nikola Tesla who is approached by one of two competing magicians for help in pulling off the ultimate magic trick in 1878," according to Variety.

How did I get here?

I'm curious to see where my blog traffic is coming from so I've recently signed up with Active Meter to track my visitors. Aside from discovering that most of my hits are just random visits coming from Google Image searches, I have uncovered one or two wonderful search terms which have apparently led here. My favourite ones so far are:

• Jessica Alba tied up
• Horny Brighton students
• Offensive Jimmy Carr t-shirts
• Susan Sarandon bikini

James, was that you again?

Snakes On A Plane On A T-Shirt!

Regular readers will know that my most eagerly awaited movie of 2006 is Snakes On A Plane - purely because it's called Snakes On A Plane.

Now in an amazing piece of coincidental merchandising, James has not only found the best t-shirt design ever, he's actually bought one of these cool tees, thereby making him the hippest guy in the whole of London town. Or Middlesex. Imagine the fun you could have wearing one of these little beauties, holding your arms out wide and running around making plane type noises! This has just flown right to the top of my Christmas list!

If you want to wear snakes on a plane too, then click here.

Badly Dressed Weather Pixie

I love the Weather Pixie on Kelly's blog, she's extremely dim. Always inappropriately dressed whatever the weather. Just take a look at her here - it's 6 degrees and raining and she's wearing a crop top right up to her boobs... is she mad or just plain desperate?

I have now added my very own Weather Geisha to my blog (bottom left) - if she proves to be too sensible with her attire then I'll just have to trade her in for a different model.

Man Stroke Woman Stroke Minor Celebrities - Get Me Out Of Here!

Faced with the horrifying prospect of the return of Chris Evan's smug, grinning, ginger face on OFI Sunday last night, I quickly switched over to BBC Three. In theory, a good move judging from Vik's comments.

Instead I watched Man Stroke Woman, the much-heralded new sketch show starring the likes of Nick Frost (Shaun Of The Dead) and Nicholas Burns (Nathan Barley). Two laughs in thirty minutes is not a good comedy-per-sketches ratio. Frankly, it's a piss poor effort. And just like BBC Three's dismal second series of Nighty Night, I just know it won't get any better no matter how many more chances I give it. Channel 4's similarly themed Spoons did it much better.

Earlier in the evening I found myself watching the new series of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here in which another ten micro-celebrities humiliate themselves in the Australian jungle for AntandDec's entertainment. Someone I didn't recognise from Eastenders kept fainting a lot and had to go to hospital, someone I didn't recognise from Emmerdale refused to do a parachute jump - and that was before she even got to camp - Mr Orange (aka David Dickinson) bossed Rickyyyyy (Sid Owen - the most likely winner) around in their 'bush tucker challenge', and we got to watch Carol Thatcher having a wee-wee in the night. No-one needs to see that image on television. Ever. Yet with the creeping inevitability of a dog returning to its own vomit, I know I'll be watching again tonight...

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

I've been doing a lot of thinking this weekend.

Blogging is supposed to be fun, never a chore, yet recently my movie reviews have become just that - something done out of a sense of duty, rather than out of pleasure. The real problem is that my cinema addiction means that I see on average two films a week (I've seen 101 films at the cinema this year to date) and that's a lot of reviewing to do. Maybe it's just laziness on my part, but I'm just finding that it's eating into my life too much and I've got to stop. I was going to wait until the New Year, but it's no good... it's just zapping away at my energy and making me feel down, so no more.

The haikus will continue, along with my ratings, and I'll still write reviews for genre films - but these will be exclusively for the Eat My Brains website.

Of course I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, so this post could turn out to be a load of old bollocks!

EMB turn to The Dark Side

Congratulations to Mike, Jim and Russ from Eat My Brains - the lads have landed their first magazine feature, published in this month's edition of The Dark Side!

Their own unique take on August's FrightFest event runs across pages 38-42 of Issue 118 (the one with a cover-mounted DVD of Cold Eyes Of Fear on the front), which is available in all good newsagents now.

You can read my own account of FrightFest on their website here.

Skin at the Concorde

The last time I saw Skin at the Concorde I was absolutely hammered, so it was good to approach this performance in a more sober frame of mind - although that didn't last too long! She was fantastic though, belting out a mixture of old Skunk Anansie songs, stuff from her first solo album Flesh Wounds - including the awesome Trashed and a wicked cover of Electronic's Getting Away With It - and a selection of tracks from her forthcoming album, Fake Chemical State.

Movie Haiku - A Cock And Bull Story

www.redbus.comsgrp.com


Dir: Michael Winterbottom


Cast: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Jeremy Northam, Keeley Hawes


Watch Tristram get born

then watch the film crew watching

Steve's back in the womb


soulmining rating: ***

Life on Babelfish?

Thanks to Kelly for this suggestion... Take some song lyrics, translate them on Babelfish, and then translate them back into English again!

So here's the chorus of The The's Soul Mining:

Something always goes wrong when things are going right,
You've swallowed your pride to quell the pain inside,
Someone captured your heart like a thief in the night,
And squeezed all the juice out until it ran dry.

And here's the English-Japanese-English translation:

When as for something always thing has gone just in order in to calm pain,
Your pride which is swallowed as for someone who goes by mistake like the thief of the night until it captured the center of the hatchet,
It dried moved juice everything was squeezed.

So, then I tried the chorus of David Bowie's Life On Mars?:

Sailors fighting in the dance hall,
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go,
It's the freakiest show,
Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy,
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know,
He's in the best selling show,
Is there life on Mars?

Which gave me this English-Japanese-English translation:

The person of crew Ohio state which fights with the dance hall!
Those hole staying people it goes,
That it is and / or the most whimsical show,
Tries looking at the legal process server which has been struck on the person and the person of Ohio state whom you make a mistake,
See! Whether or not him in the best sale show,
There Mars life him think in the doubt which has been known?

Genius.

Movie Haiku - The Constant Gardener

www.theconstantgardener.com


Dir: Fernando Meirelles


Cast: Raplh Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy


Why is his wife dead?

uncovers dodgy drug trials

not much gardening


soulmining rating: ****

Play It Cool in November

I've really cut back on my CD buying lately. This is no bad thing; I already have far too many for my groaning shelves, and a three piles on my bedroom floor just waiting to find new homes via eBay. Still, there's always new tunes to discover, and these are the ones which have been hogging my stereo this month:

• Serena Maneesh - Serena-Maneesh (Honeymilk)
• Ladytron - Witching Hour (Island)
• Gemma Hayes - The Roads Don't Love You (Source)
• Feeder - Shatter / Tender (Echo) single
• Depeche Mode - Precious (Mute) single

Don't know what's gonna crop up next month, but I've been impressed with the Arcade Fire tracks I've heard and I really like Madonna's Hung Up single, so we'll see...

Movie Haiku - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

www.kisskiss-bangbangmovie.co.uk


Dir: Shane Black


Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Val Kilmer, Michelle Monaghan, Corbin Bernsen


Fag and New Yorker

banter makes you laugh out loud

dog ate his finger


Shane Black wrote the scripts for seminal action flicks Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout, pocketed $4 million for The Long Kiss Goodnight and then disappeared in a cocktail of booze, drugs and hookers (probably). One nervous breakdown later and he's back with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a satire on the buddy movie which also marks his directorial debut. Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr) is a petty thief who ends up tagging along with private eye Gay Perry (Kilmer) after bursting in on a Hollywood audition and being hired on the spot in a classic case of mistaken identity. Perry's latest case involves the daughter of a producer (Bernsen) who turns up dead in a lake, whilst Harry is falling for wannabe actress Harmony (Monaghan) - who just happens to be his pal from back home - whose sister also turns up dead in LA. Of course, like the 'Johnny Gossamer' novels that the movie references, this is pure pulp fiction, so we just know that these two seemingly seperate cases are going to be connected. As thrillers go, it hits all the right notes, throwing in enough red herrings and holding the interest commendably. There's none of the explosive set-pieces you might imagine from Black's action-packed pedigree; sure, there's a few thrills along the way but largely Kiss Kiss Bang Bang keeps its feet on the ground rather than riding the blockbuster cliches - and it's all the better for that. Where the film excels - and this won't come as a shock to fans familiar with Black's oeuvre - is in the writing. Within five minutes I was sold on this film and I found myself laughing out loud more times at the cynical, sarcastic repartee than in any supposed 'straight' comedy this year. But it's more than just Black's dialgoue, it's his whole approach, his constant breaking of genre conventions. This is one smart, savvy Hollywood satire - perfectly encapsulated in Harry's inept narration causing him to halt the film and rewind to add the little details he missed, or in Harry and Perry's messages to the watching audience as the film is winding to a close. It certainly helps that all three of the lead actors are on top form here. Downey Jr is just perfect as the (not quite so) innocent caught up in this surreal city, and he's subjected to the type of physical abuse more akin to Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead films! Kilmer gives his best performance in years and newcomer Monaghan smoulders like a modern day femme fatale, oozing sex appeal, yet with edge to her that keeps you questioning whether she's really Harry's dream girl, or if she's just using him as a pawn in a more sinister game. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang might have proved too sophisticated for middle America, but it should find a more appreciative response over here and I urge you to go and see it - it really is a gloriously entertaining action-comedy-thriller-satire of the highest calibre.

soulmining rating: *****

Greatest Hit

Thanks to everyone who's been stopping by my blog recently, the counter has really been clocking up those hits over the past month. So to celebrate, if you're the magical 10,000th visitor this week then send me a screen grab of the page and in turn I'll send you a special prize!

(Disclaimer: By 'special prize' I mean some random item that I was planning to sell on eBay if only I could be bothered)

New Order at Brixton Academy

From the NME website, as I'm too lazy to write anything myself!

"New Order performed a collection of classic anthems and legendary Joy Division songs last night (November 10) for the first of two special shows in London and Manchester. The legendary four-piece treated fans to a 90-minute set at Brixton Academy packed with hits from their back catalogue including Ceremony, Bizarre Love Triangle, Temptation, True Faith, Regret and Blue Monday, a song which the band were forced to cut from their Glastonbury set this year. They also threw in Joy Division favourites Transmission, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Shadowplay and Warsaw. During the encore, singer Bernard Sumner even pulled their video producer Michael Shamberg up on stage for a special dedication. The New Order frontman said: "We would like to dedicate this next track to Michael Shamberg. Give him a cheer, he hasn't been very well lately," before Sumner launched into the Joy Division track Shadowplay. He also took a swipe at Green Day after performing early hit Warsaw when he said: "That was one of our first singles and that is what shit Green Day try and play". They closed the set with She's Lost Control."

That New Order setlist in full:

• Ceremony
• Love Vigilantes
• Crystal
• Regret
• Krafty
• Turn
• Transmission
• Your Silent Face
• Waiting For The Sirens Call
• True Faith
• Bizarre Love Triangle
• Love Will Tear Us Apart
• Temptation
• Blue Monday
• Shadowplay
• Warsaw
• She's Lost Control

Seeing New Order live after so many years was an undoubted highlight of a wholly entertaining day - for an 'electronic' band their sound was a lot beefier than I'd expected. During the afternoon I hung out in my favourite bar in Chinatown with James, Mike and Stevie B where we took full advantage of their 2 for 1 offer on cocktails and talked a lot of nonsense about films. The journey home with Stevie B was enlivened by a couple of kids who'd got on the wrong train and a drunk lady who was bothering the bloke opposite (while we pretended to be asleep) and then passed out on the seat next to me - and refused to budge once we reached Brighton. After finding the biggest puddle of mud in Victoria Gardens which absolutely caked my shoes and jeans as we walked home, we then got accosted on Edward Street by another wino desperate for a smoke, who then got all stroppy when we walked off instead of staying to listen to her no doubt fascinating story about her dropping her bottle of wine... aaaah, the delights of excessive drinking!

Mau rien mai?

Just look at that huge pitcher of beer! Some things never change, eh? My Thai friend Earn just sent me this pic of her (right) with our friend Nok. I haven't seen the two of them together since early 2002 when they were both working at the Sax Music Pub in Chiang Mai - Earn got married that year and moved to Shropshire, whilst Nok moved to Holland earlier this year to live with boyfriend Johnny. I'm guessing this photo was taken in Amsterdam, but Earn neglected to say where they met up. Ladies, any more news for me? "Chock Dii puen, pom kit khun mii sanuk mak-mak!"

The Sad Silver Cyberman

Fresh off the BBC website here's the brand new design for the Cybermen, who are due to return in the new series of Doctor Who in 2006. Is it just me, or does this new makeover make them seem half as scary as the previous designs? Just look at his sad little face, the poor silver chappy looks like he's about to cry...

In other television news, Variety reports that David Cronenberg is apparently working on an adaptation of his own 1988 film, Dead Ringers, for HBO. Yup, that was the one about the twin gynecologists...

Finally, The Mighty Boosh are taking their show on the road - hitting Brighton on 11th February!