”When you’re in the joint you spend all your time dopin’ out who you’re gonna see the first day you’re out. The second day. The third. But then you get out, everybody’s got a different face than you remember. Maybe you do too. You pray for one face that didn’t change. One face that still knows you looks at you the same way it always did”

Carlito Brigante

I guess I must be in the joint because this is how I feel. Such a brilliant quote from the awesome Carlito’s Way. Looks like I may be here longer then I hoped as we have won some new work. Back to the desert I go.

6 weeks to go.

One of the best films ever is Wall Street and it is with deep joy that I hear a sequel is now being planned. Along with the eighties nostalgia, big hair and scathing attacks on Reaganomics the best thing about the film is Mr Evil Capitalist himself Gordon Gekko. Douglas was perfect for the role and he seemed to embody the power dressing late eighties in looks alone and his performance should have copped that Oscar. Perhaps the biggest legacy of Wall Street are the quotes that have now entered popular culture with the misquoted ‘’greed is good’’ and ‘’lunch is for wimps’’ thrown around when talk turns to yuppies and the latter end of the 80’s. I love the quotes and still use them to this very day in my office despite the fact that all irony is completely lost on my Cantonese colleagues meaning they either think I am serious or a psychopath. This is how it should be. So when I feel sorry for myself as my colleagues go for lunch en masse for some fried something or other I am again reminded of Gekko; ‘’No feelings. You don’t win ‘em all, you don’t love ‘em all, you keep on fighting and if you need a friend, get a dog’’

I have a new test called the Miami Vice Test. Ask someone what they think of the film and if they don’t like it because it should have been an 80’s kitsch experiment then they are beyond salvation and you must leave them to their own tormented existence. We are seemingly so retarded that the only art we can digest is facile and insubstantial and our minds and attention spans have now shrunk to that of goldfish allowing us to laugh at the same joke over and over and over again. This was most recently displayed by the public’s reaction to the Starsky and Hutch film which was simply one 70’s joke on repeat and therefore guaranteeing success at the box office. No wonder the film execs and audiences were up in arms with Miami Vice – why not do an 80’s Starsky and Hutch with Miami Vice huh? You know, the slip-on shoes and the shoulder pads and the big hair? It could have been the perfect multiplex fodder for the masses that had already digested and shitted out the Starsky and Hutch burger and were hungry for more. Alas Mann said no and the Chavs are livid. No neon lights? No knowing winks or mullets? Not here stupid. (more…)

Vince Vaughn yesterday

The Break Up. What is it, a drama or a comedy? Judging how the audience of 12 year old girls and menopausal housewives were laughing like drains at the obvious and unamusing quips I would say a it was funny drama or a rom com. The movie chronicles the relationship and break up of frog faced Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston in a way that is neither gripping or amusing but it didn’t drag and there were a few good bits, I think, although a few hours after seeing it I am trying hard to remember what they were. There are one or two wry smiles to be had somewhere I recall but I might be wrong I’ve forgotten what happened. As for the housewife behind me rolling around in hysterics I can only imagine that she has never seen a film before or she was on acid. This a laydeez film but it was always going to be. Bring on Miami Vice. 4/10

Seeing as its Wimbeldon and there is tennis in the air I thought I’d go on about Match Point, the new filum from Woody Allen. Or Dad as he is known to his adopted daughter that he married. Nice. Match Point features the kind of “brits” a middle aged American imagines the upper echelons of British society consists of. How super. The story is based around the idea of a tennis coach meeting and marrying into a well-to-do family and the subsequent choices our hero has to make when he realises marrying for money rather than love is not wise. The film rips along at a fair old pace and it does have its fair share of braying hooray Henrys being all posh and that so there’s unintentional laughs to be had. I have to say I enjoyed da movie and, like Layer Cake, Match Point is a good London film. I did find the story began to implode twords the end but thankfully it doesn’t go on too long so its not drawn out torture. So to summerise I would say there are worse ways to waste an hour and a half and although the conclusion is unsatisfactory you don’t feel dirty and used at the end. New balls please. 7/10