The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)

I was really looking forward to it, so was Anna, the trailer looked great, classic Inbetweeners. Anna saw it first and said she'd never been so disappointed in all her life.
I then was prepared to see great disappointment and because I was prepared you know, I still managed to enjoy it.

But Anna was right, it could have been about anybody, it wasn't about the Inbetweeners. Somehow we're supposed to think Jay and Simon have a bond when they haven't for all three series, their falling out was the basis of the film, but were they ever really that close?! They all get girlfriends?! What? The only one who would get a girlfriend is Neil, because he would shag anybody. They are all loathsome and all of those girls must have had serious mental issues, especially the tortured soul who likes Simon and ESPECIALLY the little blonde who is supposed to be intelligent but decides to go out with Will. Maybe Jay could have got a girl, when he's sweet he is sweet, but you have to have pretty low standards and that chick who went for him was gorgeous!

Anna thinks overall it would have been greatly improved by all the parents also being on holiday with them (but staying somewhere nice). The parents are great and the bit that they were in was fantastic. Not enough! I think I would have liked that too.

BUT, saying that, I did really really like lots of bits of it. The dancing was hilarious.

Twilight: Eclipse (2010)

Even though there was a sort of exciting big fight scene in this one the film was still extremely uneventful- it ended with NOTHING happening- and it was ridiculously overlong.

The three leads are so horrifically uncharismatic and hateful, I don't know if it's just the three boring actors playing them or the appalling scripts or heck, both! But I wondered- as I had given up whilst reading book two because it was so disgustingly badly written, self indulgent and basically just unreadable!- I was wondering if I might actually end up liking any of the characters after seeing what happened in this movie. Well, I just wanted them all to die more!

Ugh. It made me want to watch Black Death again! It made me think Sean Bean was a good actor!!

Glandular Fever roundup: Nowhere Boy, Avatar, Sunshine Cleaning, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I have seen a bunch of films this week because I am ill. All films that I have wanted to see, some for a while, some that have just come out. I can't be doing with reviewing each separately so here is a roundup. The list: Sunshine Cleaning(2009), Nowhere Boy(2009), Avatar(2009), Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist(2008).

I'll say straight off that I enjoyed them all, except Avatar which was the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen and I knew that it would be (my dad made me watch it, it wasn't on my list). Yes the CGI is amazing and it looks beautiful and I'm sure on the big screen and in 3D it was an experience. But it is still a film about a self-righteous American who befriends the natives and leads them into a mindless war where even though they win they have millions more fatalities than the enemy. Self congratulatory American drivel.

Nowhere Boy was about John Lennon's teenage years and I was worried (as a Beatles expert) that I wouldn't like it, the casting or whatever. But no, I really did like it, and I felt very emotional watching it, especially that bit at the end where Paul and John have a punch at each other and then start crying because both of them have just lost their mums. Of course, that is what kept these two vastly different geniuses together all those years, but I never really thought about it, and it made me terribly sad! Maybe it was just the glandular fever! I thought the casting was great, though not keen on George- he was a much prettier boy than that- Paul as played by that ugly kid from Love Actually was actually quite a good choice and of course the boy playing Lennon was sometimes exactly like him and then sometimes stunningly gorgeous! As per usual with these British films, excellent ensemble, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff gave brilliant performances and David Morrissey in the background was good solid support.

Sunshine Cleaning I liked too, the two gals were good and Alan Arkin never disappoints, very real but with surprising moments of subtle hilarity considering the subject matter! Could have done without the weird Emily Blunt/Lesbian not-relationship though, I didn't think that added anything.

I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist with my dad and we both liked it- and he is the kind of person who thinks American Pie is a good coming-of-age teen comedy! I thought it was very well written, I liked that it all took place over one night, that made it different from the other Indie teen movies out there- that probably also star Michael Cera. She was really lovely though and all I could think was she could do much better than him!

The Chatterly Affair (2006) -And general Christmas round-up

As per usual the family got a load of porn for Christmas. Just kidding, but seriously, when am I going to see Rafe Spall with some clothes on?!

We've done loads of Christmas watching, and it's not over yet, we like to stretch Christmas out for at least a month so I guess we're only half way through. Telly: I enjoyed Michelle Dockery in The Turn of the Screw, I thought they gave her shit hair in Cranford but then that is Cranford... Tom Hiddleston and Jodi Whittacker were good but let's face it Cranford was written by Mrs Gaskell as a bet. Not really, but she did write it as a piss-take and now it's the most successful thing the BBC has ever done!? It's shite! And The Christmas episodes that weren't even written by her were even worse than her send up of country-types and happy endings. Ugh. But obviously if both Jonathan Pryce and Nick le Prevost (And Rory Kinnear- one of my absolute favourite actors to see on stage) are appearing I'm going to be watching. So I did.

Anyway, I enjoyed the final Gavin and Stacey and Tennant's final Doctor Who- though my favourite bits were remembering Bernard Cribbins voicing Orinoco the lazy womble thinking he was invisible when he got stuck in that net... "Bramble Pudding! Oh no!!!" I look forward to Stephen Moffat's writing and Matt Smith's big grave stone slab of a face in the next series.

Missed Hamlet but we got the dvd in the post this morning so I will see it soon.

And now the gifties! We've been working our way through series one and two of The Inbetweeners and I have to say I totally love it. So reassuring to see realistic teenagers in realistic situations, Anna spends her mornings in bed watching 90210, everytime I go in there I say "teachers or teenagers?" because all the cast look the same age; in their plastic botox thirties- HORROR. The Inbetweeners is a wonderful British tonic to American sitcom/soap teenagers, all four boys are hysterically well suited to their roles.

We've watched lots of shite of course; Wolverine, an utterly awful Fantastic Four movie (Turns out he bought it in Lidl on Christmas Eve- he should have resisted.) Bridge to Terabithia- Suzie's favourite book as a child, totally un-cinematagraphical material so a terrible film, etc.

And today me and Anna watched The Chatterley Affair. Anna said flippantly afterwards of Andrew Davies the scriptwriter "Pervert. Always writes a lot of filth!" which made me laugh an awful lot.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is I think a key part of my strange history, my grandfather was one of the blokes who smuggled it into the country long before the court case, he was proudly photographed for the paper as a "local pervert", Nana was reet pissed off... I love it though, Anna probably thinks I'm a pervert too.

She's The Man (2006)

Twelfth Night is one of my favourite, if not my actual, definitive favourite, Shakespeare play. And Amanda Bynes- though I haven't seen much of her work (though, when I think about it I've seen at least five of her films, there can't be many more can there?!) is one of my favourite young Hollywood stars. And I'll tell you why I like Amanda Bynes; because she is in the tradition of screwball-romantic-comedy actresses that everyone loved in the 80s, it is my strong belief that Amanda has it in her to be the next Goldie Hawn. 

This is what we need folks! Who doesn't love Overboard or House-sitter?! So She's the Man wasn't great, but Amanda was!! She was brilliant, I can't believe I used to hate her face, now i love everything about it! She's so expressive and so good at being goofy. I think I realised how good she was when I saw her take a small supporting role in Hairspray, she didn't have many lines but she made that character so likeable and funny- is it just me who though so? Back to the film; rhe rest of the cast were awful- except the cliche gay friend (I think he was Horatio!) who didn't have enough screen time- the love interest was extremely wooden, there was no transformation there really, he didn't learn to talk to women he just settled for Amanda- which is great for her if a hot bod is enough and she can put up with nervous jittery conversation about different kinds of cheeses...

Anyway, it was all I expected it to be, it was a giggle. The most fun was probably trying to figure out who was supposed to be who, it is very loosely based on Twelfth Night, ie the names are the same in some cases and that's IT, but there were some surprises to see it did sort of stick to the plot and that the creep didn't end up getting with the bitch, they just both stayed humiliated. (I'm guessing Malvolio and maybe the Fool? Or was the Headmaster the Fool? I think he was. He was excellent.)