Saturday, 6 July 2013
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.4: FLOODED
Promo
WRITER: Douglas Petrie & Jane Espenson
DIRECTOR: Douglas Petrie
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
While trying to fix a leaky pipe Buffy accidentally floods her basement. Xander’s plumber bud who comes to fix the leak gives Buff the bad news: an expensive full copper re-pipe is needed. This news forces the Buffster to confront her dire financial situation. A loan application at the bank goes badly when the loan is denied and a demon then attacks and robs said bank. Turns out the demon was working for the geek Trio of Warren, Jonathan and Andrew, the new wannabe Big Bads of Sunnydale. In return for his services, the demon, called M'Fashnik, really wants to kill the slayer. So the ever helpful Warren points M'Fashnik in the direction of Buffy's home…
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
No metaphors needed. It is all out there in plain view. Life in the real world. Maintaining a house. Paying bills. Managing money. All the deathly dull stuff of real life. Poor Buff. She can slay demons ‘til the cows come home…and then slay the cows too. But running a household, paying day to day bills? That's what gives her the real wiggins.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
See above. Life, money, bills. Oh and some demon guy. And the Trio as well I guess.
WHY IT ROCKS
Real life: Buffy is facing the same reality we all face as adults – paying our way in the world. And it is scarier than any icky demon or fangy vamp. The scene with Buffy trying to get “her loan” is funny but also kinda tragic. We know she won't qualify. No income. A house with hardly any equity. It is a hard lesson for her to learn. Being a kick ass vampire slayer won’t pay the bills and keep a roof over your head…unless you take Anya’s advice of course and start charging per slay. Heh.
Stupid skirt! Buffy trying to fight M'Fashnik at the bank but being scuppered by her long, tight skirt is funny. Plus it’s very nice when she borrows a letter opener to slit said skirt open down the side exposing a nice length of bare slayer leg. Hey! (looks sheepish) She's cute. I’m a man.
Giles and Buffy: Giles’ reaction to seeing Buffy back from the dead is lovely. Tony Head and SMG play the moment to perfection. Never does it get over sentimental. It is just genuinely warm and full of reserved joy.
Giles vs. Willow: another portent of things to come. Filmed in a darkened kitchen, the scene moves quickly from easygoing fun to tense, uncomfortable anger, ending with a dark threat from Willow. What’s more, this will all pay of spectacularly come the end of the season. Both Tony Head and Alyson Hannigan are excellent.
“NO. MORE. FULL. COPPER. RE-PIPE!”: Buffy’s final furious beating to death of M'Fashnik after he breaks one of her brand new (and expensive) copper pipes is brutal but very funny, especially as she times each blow to the repeatedly yelled, “NO. MORE. FULL. COPPER. RE-PIPE!”
WHY IT SUCKS
M'Fashnik: He is nothing but a plot device. He exists for no other reason than as something for Buffy to pummel and to introduce us to the Trio as this season’s Big Bad…or are they? His motivation seems to be he just wants to kill the Slayer, being furious with her for no apparent reason.
The Trio: Never the best wannabe Big Bads for Buff to face. Individually I like Andrew and Jonathan (Tom Lenk and Danny Strong are both wonderful performers) though Warren works best as the true villain of the three. But not here. It takes until late in the season for him to move from being a goofy geek genius to becoming a truly vile, murdering misogynist monster. Here though, together, they are all just silly and totally non-threatening.
Mope: Blimey! I know Marti Noxon and Joss said they would make Buffy earn her resurrection and not just set the reset switch so everything is back to normal but the Buffy depressed/mope factor does come on strong. Luckily it is often broken up with moments of lightness where we get a glimpse of the old Buffster e.g. the bank fight.
Buffy is broke. And yet Willow and Tara seem to be living there rent free and not contributing to the household budget. However they seem to have money to continue their studies and keeping in witchy things and stylish clothes. Freeloaders!
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
“NO. MORE. FULL. COPPER. REPIPE!”
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Buffy (finds the leaky pipe): So, we meet at last, Mr. Drippy!
Willow: Buffy, I know you're still getting back on your feet after...
Buffy: Lying flat on my back?
Buffy: But, I haven't spent any money. I was all dead and frugal.
Buffy: It's not like it's the end of the world. ...Which is too bad, because *that* I'm really good at.
Anya: It's not *so* crazy.
Dawn: Yes it is! You can't charge innocent people for saving their lives!
Anya: Spider-Man does!
Dawn: He does not.
Anya: Does too!
Dawn: Does no... Xander?
Xander: Action is his reward.
Loan Officer: The problem is you have no income. No job.
(demon comes crashing through the window)
Buffy: No job? I wish!
Buffy (to demon): Hey! Are you in the wrong line? That's for deposits, that's for withdrawals, and this one is for getting kicked in the face. (tries to kick, can't raise her leg) Stupid skirt!
Xander: Score one for Captain Logic!
Anya: No, no. Captain Logic is not steering this tugboat. I smell Captain Fear at the wheel.
Giles (seeing Buffy alive again for 1st time): You're...
Buffy: ...a miracle.
Giles (smiles): Yes. ...But then I always thought so.
Jonathan: How'd you make him do that?
Andrew: What, are you some kind of ...Jedi?
Warren: The Force can sometimes have great power over a weak mind.
Giles: Well I know I'm back in America now, I've been knocked unconscious.
Buffy: Mmmm... Poor lumpy Giles!
Buffy: Who's calling me? Everybody I know lives here.
Buffy: “NO. MORE. FULL. COPPER. RE-PIPE!”
AND ANOTHER THING
It is established in this episode that Giles keeps a home in Bath (a small city in the south west of England for those who don't know.) Tony Head actually does live in the Bath area, not that far away from me as it happens. I've seen him around town and shopping in the local supermarket, which was kinda surreal. Anyway, this geographical trivia will come in to play at the start of season seven.
We know two of the three geeks (Warren and Jonathan) but not Andrew. We have met his brother, Tucker, though. He was the one who sent hell hounds to the Sunnydale High Prom in season three's The Prom.
After the Spider-Man argument between Anya, Dawn and Xander it is fun to note that Jeph Loeb, Executive Producer of the abandoned Buffy: Animated series, has written several Spider-Man comics.
HOW MANY STAKES?
A not so soggy 3.5 (out of 5)
Wednesday, 3 July 2013
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.3: AFTERLIFE
Promo
WRITER: Jane Espenson
DIRECTOR: David Solomon
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
Dawn brings the confused, newly returned Buffy back home and cleans her up, explaining to her how things now are at the house with Giles back in England and Dawn and Tara living there with them. Soon the rest of the Scoobies return to the Summers home and are overjoyed to see Buffy back and in one piece (at least physically). But a furious Spike, left out of the whole resurrection loop, warns them that their will be mystical consequences for what Willow has done. He is right. A ghostly demon has come in to being thanks to the dark and powerful forces used to bring Buffy back. Said demon is haunting and also possessing the gang, freaking them all out. They soon learn that the creature is seeking to stay alive in this new world it has suddenly found itself in. And that the only way for it to do so is by killing the newly returned from the grave slayer…
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
As always in this show, everything has consequences. There is no fresh start, no reset button to push. Everything affects everything else, just as it does in real life. And no one gets away clean. There is always a price to be paid. At first, we think that price has been paid in this episode. But as the season goes on we quickly discover that the ramifications of everything that has happened will only grow and grow until reaching horrifically tragic and apocalyptic proportions.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
The home-made demon who wants to keep on living
WHY IT ROCKS
Creepy: Buffy does a straight forward demonic possession horror story. And while the story itself may be very simple and easily resolved, the execution is at least reasonably creepy.
Evil Dead: There is a definite Sam Raimi Evil Dead vibe to the demonic possessions, especially the Anya one. The way it is shot and the way she walks towards us, giggling evilly, white eyed, cutting her face with a big knife… Brrr.
Revelations: Buffy’s end confession to Spike about the truth of her afterlife was a genuine shock at the time of first airing and remains a powerful moment in the series’ history. SMG plays the scene wonderfully. She gives the impression of a person beyond traumatised, beyond miserable or angry, as if she exists in a permanent state of nothingness; a hollow shell of a human being.
WHY IT SUCKS
The story itself is fairly run of the mill and is mostly a coda to the big two part opener. That’s fine and all but it just doesn’t really work as an episode in its own right.
For a Jane Espenson script the laughs are fairly few and far between. In fact it is almost continually mawkish and grim.
Once corporeal the demon is dealt with pretty darn quickly.
Early on in the episode Willow says she’s spoken to Giles in London. As he only left earlier that same day there’s no way he could have made it all the way to England in that amount of time.
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
Possessed Anya, white eyed, giggling insanely while cutting her face with a big knife. Yikes!
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Spike: You scared me half to death. Or more to death.
Anya: Yeah, I mean, jet lag from hell has got to be, you know, jet lag from hell.
Anya: I found one of those 24-hour places for coffee. Remember that bookstore? Well, they became one of those books and coffee places, and now they're just coffee. It's like evolution, only without the "getting better" part.
Spike: I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I'd have done that, even if I didn't make it, you wouldn't have had to jump. But I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course, but after that. Every night after that. I'd see it all again, and do something different. Faster, or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways. Every night, I save you.
Xander: We made a demon? Bad us.
Anya: She's right. You're like a snail. A snail who's driving a car very slowly.
Spike: I was going to go inside, but I overheard you and the super-friends exchanging a special moment, and I came over a bit queasy. Say, aren't you leaving a hole in the middle of some soggy group hug?
Buffy: I was happy. Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything. Nothing had form, but I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved. And I was finished. Complete. I don't understand theology and dimensions... or any of it, really. But I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there, pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch... this is hell. Just getting through the next moment and the one after that. Knowing what I've lost... They can never know. Never.
AND ANOTHER THING
This is the first time we get a really good look at Buffy's back garden.
Willow must be getting plenty of cash from somewhere as a (then) brand spanking new iBook can be seen on Buffy's dining table.
The demon’s wraith-like non-corporeal form might look familiar to movie fans. It was created by one of the same FX guys who worked on the ghosts that come out of the Ark at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Linda Hoyle, who played the role of the demon in this episode, also had a part in season three. She did the voice-over for Emma Caulfield as Anyanka in the season three episode "The Wish".
HOW MANY STAKES?
A home-made demon scares up 3 (out of 5)
Tuesday, 2 July 2013
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.2: BARGAINING (PART 2)
Bring Me To Life
WRITER: David Fury
DIRECTOR: David Grossman
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
Unbeknownst to Willow and the other Scoobies the ritual to bring Buffy back to life has worked. Our girl has regenerated and is alive and trapped in her coffin under the earth. Screaming in terror she begins to claw and fight her way free.
Meanwhile, up above, the evil demon bikers continue their rampage through Sunnydale.
Back at casa Summers, Spike tells Dawn they can’t stay there and have to leave as the neighbourhood burns. Hijacking a motorcycle Spike and Dawn take off, looking for safety.
In the woods, the Scoobies split up with Xander carrying an exhausted Willow while Tara and Anya head separately back in to town. The two girls soon arrive at the Magic Box and wait there for their loved ones to get there too.
Back to Buffy who has now escaped from her grave and is wandering dazed and confused through the burning, ransacked streets of Sunnydale. Soon she stumbles across the gathered throng of demon bikers and their leader who have the captured Buffybot chained by each limb to four different motorcycles. Real Buffy then watches horrified as the motorbikes proceed to speed away, ripping the poor Buffybot to pieces. Seeing real Buffy, the demons, thinking she is another robot, try to grab her too. But real Buffy runs off with the demons in hot pursuit.
Back in the woods, Xander and Willow are lost. But then a magic light appears to guide them home, a light Willow knows has been sent by Tara. Soon, Xan and Will arrive back at the Magic Box, reunited with Anya and Tara. Thinking the resurrection of Buffy failed, the gang determine that it is up to them to stop the demon horde, and tooling up, they head out to do battle.
Spike and Dawn, still on the bike, find the abandoned wreckage of the Buffybot. Spike knows she is done for but Dawn goes to her just in time to catch her final words. Buffybot saw the real Buffy and asks Dawn where “other Buffy” went? And with that the poor broken bot ‘dies’. Dawn, making a leap of faith, runs off, looking now for “other Buffy” with Spike not even noticing she has gone until it is too late. Furious he sets out to find the runaway niblet.
Eventually Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya run in to real Buffy in an alleyway. After initially thinking she is the Buffybot, Willow realises she is in fact the real thing. The gang are amazed and happy yet also worried by Buffy’s dazed and confused behavior. Right then, the demons arrive and a fight ensues. Thankfully some of the old Buff returns and she engages the horde in battle, beating them down. But then, battle done, she runs off, clearly traumatised by the whole affair, leaving Tara to finish off the nasty demon leader with a well placed axe to the back. Her first, she proudly announces.
Dawn arrives at Glory’s tower, which is still standing, but only barely. She looks up and sees someone up on top. She runs to the tower and ascends it as fast as she can.
Up on top of the tower, it is Buffy standing at it's edge. She is staring down at the ground far below as fragments of memories of her fatal sacrifice fill her mind.
Suddenly Dawn appears behind her.
Dawn, scared that the somehow newly returned Buffy is going to take another swan dive, begs her sister to come away from the edge, to come back home with her.
For a time Buffy seems unsure and appears more inclined to jump once more.
But as the rickety tower begins to shake and crumble, and as Dawn screams out in terror, Buffy snaps out of it. At the last moment she turns, grabs her little sister, and grabbing a cable, swings them both off of the tower and down to the ground and safety…just as the whole thing comes tumbling down behind them.
The episode ends with Dawn hugging tightly her returned and thoroughly confused looking big sister.
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
Nothing specific as this carries on directly from part 1. I guess there is something in there about putting those you love before your self.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
Still the nasty demon biker gang
WHY IT ROCKS
Seamless: It’s a direct continuation of part 1 and the join is seamless even though it has a different writer.
Payoff: Part 1 was the set up and this is the resolution. As such there is a lot of action and running around and fights. And they are all great as per usual. The emotional beats hit home too, especially the loss of poor Buffybot and the real Buffy looking and acting so lost and traumatised throughout.
On your bike: Spike's flying kick, taking the demon rider off of his motorbike and Spike then nicking it. Very, very cool.
SMG: whether playing the demise of poor Buffybot or the newly returned Buffy she is tremendous. As Buffy she has virtually no dialogue relying almost entirely on body language and on a pretty face that tells a traumatic tale with nothing more than a simple look.
Go Tara! Great to see Tara getting in on the demon slaying action. Nice axe to the back, girl!
WHY IT SUCKS
Bye, bye Buffybot: She’s gone to electro heaven. Rest easy, sweet, funny robo babe. We miss you. :(
The Scoobies must have realised that they’d need to dig Buffy out of her grave. So why didn’t they bring tools to dig her out? And why didn’t they dig up the grave before doing the spell so Buffy wouldn’t suffocate?
SMG’s post-death shock wig is kinda…shocking.
Still no cops
And no fire-fighters either
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
Spike’s flying kick to take out a motorcycle demon…and then nicking his ride. Cool.
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Spike: A couple of stakes, holy water, one cross. (picks up cross) Ow! (drops it) Brilliant.
Willow: Xander, that's not the North star. It's an airplane.
Xander: No, that's not an airplane. That's definitely... a blimp. But I can see how one would make that airplane mistake.
Xander: Demons. Ah, there's something you don't see every day. Unless you're us.
Willow (following the tiny glowing light sent by Tara): Xander, it's not a bug. It's Tara.
Xander: And how long have you known that your girlfriend's Tinkerbell?
Xander: This place is NORAD when we're at DefCon 1. (The girls look at him blankly) Okay, I *so* need male friends.
Xander: I happen to be a very powerful man-witch myself. A male... (turns to Willow) is it a warlock? (turns back to the demon biker) Warlock.
Xander: Tara, nice axing.
Tara: My first!
AND ANOTHER THING
The location where Dawn finds Buffybot was the same place used for Glory and the monks' original hideout in 5.5 'No Place Like Home'.
This is the second time we’ve seen Buffy six feet under. There’s a scene in 1.10 'Nightmares' where Buffy is buried alive by the Master - it’s one of her fears.
HOW MANY STAKES?
Still a bargain at 4 (out of 5)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 6.1: BARGAINING (PART 1)
Promo
WRITER: Marti Noxon
DIRECTOR: David Grossman
WHAT’S THE SITCH?
And we’re back!
It’s been several months since Buffy died, sacrificing herself at Glory’s Tower to save her little sister as well as the rest of the world. Things in Sunnydale seem to have settled in to some sort of slaying routine, even without our deceased heroine being around. The gang, led by a mystic all seeing (and telepathic) Willow, are a well oiled slaying machine…kind of. They are all present and correct – Tara, Giles, Anya, Xander and Spike, all following Willow’s instructions to hunt down and slay a big fat vamp in the cemetery. Oh, and they have an ace up their sleeve. The Buffybot. The gang are using our reprogrammed electro girl to make the supernatural world think that the Slayer is still alive and kicking…their arses. And RoboBuffy has been doing a mighty fine job of it too, even cracking wise in a fight just like the real Buffster.
But no matter how good a copy she is, Buffybot is not the real Buffster.
The truth is Buffy’s demise has left a gaping hole in the lives of all the Scooby gang. They miss her terribly. Guilt is rife, especially from Giles and Spike. And poor Dawn, while putting a brave face on her loss, at night sneaks in to the room where the Buffybot recharges and secretly cuddles up to the robotic copy of her lost sister.
But unbeknownst to Dawn, Spike and Giles, Willow has a plan.
She’s refused to give up on the lost Slayer and has vowed to use whatever magic she can to bring Buffy back! Working secretly with Tara, Xander and Anya, she is preparing a dark and very dangerous spell to rescue Buffy from the eternal torment of the hell dimension in which she thinks Buffy is trapped. Willow declares that because Buffy died an unnatural death through mystic energy, they have a very good chance of bringing her back to life. Xander though is unsure, worried about the morality of what they plan to do. But Willow convinces him, mostly with the simple words: “It’s Buffy!” Xander can’t argue with that and agrees to help. The plan of resurrection is on for that very night.
Meanwhile, a weaselly little vampire has managed to cause a slight injury to Buffybot, exposing her electrical circuitry and damaging her navigational system, thus allowing the little monster to get away. He escapes with the knowledge that the Slayer is in fact nothing more than a machine and he ends up at an out of town bar where he tells his story to an ugly and vicious gang of motorcycle demons who all now know that with the real Slayer gone the Hellmouth is ripe for the taking. The vile gang heads off at top speed, violence on their minds, destination: Sunnydale.
Also meanwhile, Giles has decided to leave. He’s realised that with Buffy gone he has no real reason to stay. And so he secretly heads to the airport to catch a plane back to England. But the Scoobies discover what he is doing and they just about manage to get to the airport for a heartfelt goodbye before the G man’s flight is called. And so Giles leaves, not knowing that Willow and co. are planning on Bringing Buffy back that very same night; a plan he is not informed of as Willow knows that he would try to stop her.
And so later that night, gathered around Buffy’s grave, Willow begins the ritual with Tara, Xander and Anya looking on concerned.
Said ritual is dark, and it is extremely painful on Willow. Her flesh is slashed, bugs crawl under her skin, and she vomits up a snake! Xander tries to stop it but Tara stops him, saying Willow told her this would happen, that it is a test. But just as the ritual is building to its climax the demon biker gang shows up pursuing the Buffybot who is damaged and has automatically sought out Willow for repair. Then, right at the crucial moment of the ritual, a demon’s motorcycle goes and breaks the Urn of Osiris, abruptly ending Willow’s resurrection spell. Heartbroken by the perceived failure and terrified by the rampaging demons, the Scoobies flee in to the woods leaving behind the damaged Buffybot to be taunted and tortured by the evil horde.
Meanwhile, underground, inside her coffin, the withered corpse of Buffy Anne Summers is enveloped by mystical energy and begins to regenerate. After a few shimmering seconds, the now newly regenerated slayer opens her eyes and gasps for air. She’s alive! ALIVE!
WHAT’S THE SITCH BENEATH THE SITCH?
Not too much in the way of underlying theme or subtext here. I guess the only obvious one is about how we each deal with loss - the refusal to believe it, to accept it, the guilt, the anger, the simple terrible absence in your life. All are shown here, though they are not explored in any great depth.
WHO’S GIVING US THE WIGGINS THIS WEEK?
Demonic motorcycle gang The Hellions. Ugly bunch of suckers.
WHY IT ROCKS
Life goes on: the gang are all stepping up and dealing with life after Buffy. The world still thinks the Slayer is active. With Willow and Tara now living at 1630 Revello a new family unit has been created to look after Dawn and to keep things afloat. It all seems plausible and workable. And with Buffybot around, life, though different, appears not to be so bad. At least on the surface.
How we deal: There are some nice character beats throughout the ep. showing how the Scoobies are (and are not) dealing with the loss of the Buffster. Willow refuses to believe she is gone, being determined to put things right via magic at any cost (a portent of her fall from grace this season). Giles is feeling guilty and is full of self loathing, thinking he has finally achieved a Watchers role in life – to watch his Slayer die. Spike is angry with himself for having failed to save Buffy, for having failed to keep his promise to her to protect Dawn, and as a result has now turned in to Dawn’s constant babysitter, refusing to leave her on her own and unprotected. And Dawn, she is quietly accepting, though in secret she pines desperately for her sister. Only Xander seems to be the voice of reason and true acceptance. Of course that doesn’t last after Willow convinces him otherwise.
The set up: part 1 is of course all about showing where everyone is, physically, emotionally and mentally, and about getting them to the point of bringing Buffy back. The emotional beats provided by Marti Noxon’s functional yet emotionally engaging script are all honest and affecting. We feel the Scoobies sense of loss, of pain. We feel awful for poor Dawnie as she cuddles up at night to the Buffybot. We feel Giles’ stoic anguish, Willow’s stubborn refusal, and perhaps most of all, Spike’s barely restrained fury and pain. Soulless? No way.
Buffybot: Aw, I love her so much. The innocent, smiley, chirpy, ever helpful Buffybot. So cute. And SMG is fabulous at playing her. It’s such a great device to keep your star in the episode and the character around when she really isn’t. Plus she’s just so darn adorable. I especially like how Spike can’t look at her properly anymore and is devastated when a bit of her old ‘I adore Spike’ programming rears its head. It’s all about character.
The funny: for what could be a very depressing and mawkish episode Bargaining Part 1 defies those expectations to actually be very funny and charming. Much of this is thanks to Buffybot and to some great lines of dialogue from a cast so in tune with their characters and with each other.
Stylish: Willow et al sure do have stylish wardrobes this year. World of leather must have signed them up for a discount. They all look great. All the girls look gorgeous, dressed and made up to the nines. The lads all look great too, cool and handsome. The photography is glossy and lush and the FX top notch. The move to UPN seems to have done them all the world of good.
WHY IT SUCKS
Um, demon bikers? Okay, the demon biker gang The Hellions are a goofy idea much like the Knights who say Nee from season 5 (or whatever they were called). They are just a bunch of dumb violent lugs and nothing more. And how do they exist and operate in a world that is still largely unaware of the supernatural? They seem to ride around and hang out in bars without giving their appearance to humans a second thought.
Where are all the cops? So the demon gang discover that the Slayer is no more and decide it is open season on Sunnydale. They show up in town and promptly run riot, looting, destroying, burning… And where exactly are Sunnydale’s finest while all this is going down? Have they all gone out for doughnuts? Are they all on summer leave? C’mon! Buff wasn’t the only protection Sunnydale had from bad guys.
The headstone: So, if the gang are trying to make the world think Buffy is alive and well and still slaying, why then do they plant a great big headstone with her name on it in the cemetery where all can see, effectively telling the world she is dead? Duh!
IT’S BUFFTASTIC
Lots of great moments but for pure shock value it has to be Willow, the cute baby deer, and the BIG knife! Oh my god, she killed Bambi!
DIALOGUE TO DIE FOR
Spike: Oh, poor Watcher. Did your life pass before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got shagged, cup of tea?
Buffybot: That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!
Willow: And I got her off those knock-knock jokes.
Buffybot: Ooh, who's there?
Xander: You know, if we want her to be exactly...
Spike: She'll never be exactly.
Xander: I know.
Tara: The only really real Buffy is really Buffy.
Giles: And she's gone.
Buffybot: "You know, if we want her to be exactly, she'll never be exactly, the only really real Buffy is really Buffy, and she's gone" who?
Xander: House of chicks, relax. I'm a man, and I have a tool. (pause) Tools. Lots of plural tools, in my, uh, toolbox.
Spike (to Dawn): She responded to Buffy-Bot because a robot is predictable. Boring. A perfect teacher's pet. That's all school's are, you know. Just factories, spewing out mindless little automatons. (Guilty pause) Who go on to be very valuable and productive members of society, and you should go.
Tara: You found the last known Urn of Osiris on eBay?
Anya: Yeah, from this desert gnome in Cairo. He drove a really hard bargain, but I finally got him to throw in a limited-edition Backstreet Boys lunchbox for...
Xander: (coughs)
Anya: A friend.
Buffybot: Sorry I questioned you, Spike. You know I admire your brain almost as much as your washboard abs.
Anya (to Giles): I'll take really good care of your money.
AND ANOTHER THING
In the US part 1 was originally shown with part 2 as a feature-length special to celebrate Buffy's re-launch on the UPN network. On the UK DVD set it also plays as one long double episode.
Responding to the Buffybot's comment about "That'll put marzipan in your pie-plate bingo", Spike asks "Why the Dada-ism?" referring to the German absurdist art movement of the 1920s. Not many prime time US shows would casually refer to such things. Love it.
Tara gives Giles a little rubber monster as a leaving present and says "Grrr, argh" - clearly a reference to the monster in the Mutant Enemy logo at the end of every episode.
This episode is the first time that Anthony Stewart Head is listed as a guest star in the credits. Alyson Hannigan now appears in the opening sequence in the spot he used to occupy. Tony had decided to leave the show full time in order to spend more time with his family back in England and to pursue other roles. But he remained a big part of the show for its remaining two seasons.
Season six sees the writer of this episode Marti Noxon promoted to co-executive producer alongside Joss, taking on the day to day running of the show as Joss moved on to do other things. Thus her name now appears alongside Joss' in the end credits.
The scene where Willow kills the deer is nasty enough but originally it was a lot gorier and had to be cut back in order to be suitable for transmission. Interestingly, the music playing during this scene is listed in the production notes as "Willow Stabs Bambi". Alyson Hannigan found it extremely difficult to film this scene. She was very upset at the thought of Willow doing such a thing and Marti Noxon says that Alyson cried the whole day it was being filmed.
In this episode we discover that Anya and Xander are engaged, but Xander doesn’t want to tell the others yet, causing tension between him and Anya.
Franc Ross, who played the lead hellion demon Razor, played ‘Monty Reynolds’ in Joss Whedon’s Firefly episode ‘Trash’.
The vampire who discovers that Buffy is a robot is wearing a Hanson t-shirt. Vampire or not, he is clearly evil.
HOW MANY STAKES?
It’s a bargain at 4 (out of 5)
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Argento sucks the life out of Dracula
Dario Argento's Dracula 3D
Argento's version of Lucy's staking.
Coppola's version of the same scene.
And so here we have the latest adaptation of one of THE great works of horror literature, a new representation of one of the world's most enduring villains given to us by someone who was once an unquestioned master of horror cinema.
So it should be great, right? Something any self respecting horror fan should be gasping to see, right?
Um...
Well, first thing to say is that I didn't see Dario Argento's Dracula in 3D. Thank God!
Second thing to say is that, sadly, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a laughably terrible adaptation of Stoker's classic tale with, I'd imagine, the only worthwhile 3D in it being the extra dimensions added to the luscious Italian ladies of the cast who somehow ended up in this utter tosh. Okay, so the effortlessly sexy Asia Argento couldn't really say no to her role what with her legendary dad being co-writer and director. But what excuse for the rest? Judging by the cheap and shoddy production values it doesn't look as if the ladies could have made any money out of it. So, the lure of working for the (once) great man maybe?
That greatness has long since gone.
Argento's take on Drac comes across as something of a bastard offspring of Hammer's fun 50's romp Horror of Dracula mixed with elements of Coppola's awesome 1992 version. The entirety of the story takes place in the same small Eastern European town ala Horror, and it has a reincarnated love interest thing going on, as in Coppola's film. The only notable additions to the myth here is that the village elders seem to have entered in to a secret Faustian pact with Drac (Thomas Kretschmann with his scary side parting, looking and sounding like a cranky bank manager). It's a pact that sees the town get money and status out of Dracula's presence while Drac gets to suck on a few of its young lovelies in return. In to this comes librarian Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde – uncomfortable and wooden), employed by the Count to take stock of his castle's huge and dusty old library. Though this job offer soon turns out to be nothing but a ruse to lure Harker's demure young wife Mina (Marta Gastini - okay in her own petite, doe eyed innocent way) to the remote town seeing as how she bears a striking resemblance to Drac's long lost love. Of course, Harker gets vamped by buxom vampire bride Tania (Miriam Giovanelli – charismatically sexy and nicely ferocious) and promptly disappears, leading to Mina coming to town to find him. This also gives young Mina the opportunity to meet up with her old friend Lucy (Asia Argento - comatose), a bored local piano teacher who lives at home with daddy still. Not long after, Lucy pegs it due to Drac's suckage, and old codger Van Helsing (a sleepy and bored looking Rutger Hauer) turns up to try and kill Drac who he's been hunting for years. Cue lots of running around in woods, terrible CG effects, casual nudity, casual blood spilling and some of the worst performances ever from actors who should be so much better (Argento, Kretschmann, Hauer). I mean, who on earth casts the gorgeous and effortlessly sexy Asia Argento as a Lucy who is such a dull and boring go nowhere character? Yes, her role in the tale is to get vamped which then spurns our heroes on. But Lucy is supposed to be fun, wild, loving the boys, loving teasing the boys. I can see Asia doing that. I'd love to see Asia doing that. But no, here she is comatose with inaction. And yet daddy Argento still makes her get naked. Just the once mind. Gotta exploit your little girl's two biggest assets at least once per movie I suppose, right Dario?
I have no idea the budget for Dracula 3D but the movie sure looks cheap and is saddled with some of the most laughable CG effects seen in a mainstream film for a good long while. The script is appalling, filled with lines cheesier than a cheese cake made only of cheese, its plotting so haphazard and throwaway you'd think they were just making it all up as they went along. And worst of all, how on earth did the man who gave us the horrifically gorgeous, stylish and atmospheric Suspiria manage to make a film so utterly devoid of any style, atmosphere and tension? Okay, there are a couple of quite nice gore moments and maybe one reasonably effective jump scare. But that's it. The lighting is flat. The sets sparse and cheap. The FX laughable.
The sad truth is Argento couldn't even direct traffic anymore. Just watch how spectacularly he fluffs the staking of Vampire Lucy in her crypt sequence. Remember Coppola's take? Stunningly strange, bloody and genuinely creepy. Forget that here. It's hilarious. Like badly staged panto. No, the only things this movie has going for it is the undoubted sexiness and ferocious charm of Miriam Giovanelli as super hot vampire bride Tanya, giving by far the best performance in the film, and a wonderfully camp operatic rock song over the end credits.
In summation, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a bad film. A very bad film. There's no doubt about that. But at least it's not offensively bad in a Uwe Boll kind of way. It's just ultra cheap, cheesy and flatly made. It never makes you angry. In fact, it will probably make you laugh a fair bit. Also it's never boring due to the sheer hilarity of its camp awfulness. Approach it as a camp vampire panto and you might just have some fun. Still, it does make you wonder whatever happened to the man who made horror classics such as Suspiria and Tenebre. Disappointing then to say the least. But, hey, at least it's better than Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000. Ugh! Now that's REAL Dracula suckage for you!
Argento's version of Lucy's staking.
Coppola's version of the same scene.
And so here we have the latest adaptation of one of THE great works of horror literature, a new representation of one of the world's most enduring villains given to us by someone who was once an unquestioned master of horror cinema.
So it should be great, right? Something any self respecting horror fan should be gasping to see, right?
Um...
Well, first thing to say is that I didn't see Dario Argento's Dracula in 3D. Thank God!
Second thing to say is that, sadly, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a laughably terrible adaptation of Stoker's classic tale with, I'd imagine, the only worthwhile 3D in it being the extra dimensions added to the luscious Italian ladies of the cast who somehow ended up in this utter tosh. Okay, so the effortlessly sexy Asia Argento couldn't really say no to her role what with her legendary dad being co-writer and director. But what excuse for the rest? Judging by the cheap and shoddy production values it doesn't look as if the ladies could have made any money out of it. So, the lure of working for the (once) great man maybe?
That greatness has long since gone.
Argento's take on Drac comes across as something of a bastard offspring of Hammer's fun 50's romp Horror of Dracula mixed with elements of Coppola's awesome 1992 version. The entirety of the story takes place in the same small Eastern European town ala Horror, and it has a reincarnated love interest thing going on, as in Coppola's film. The only notable additions to the myth here is that the village elders seem to have entered in to a secret Faustian pact with Drac (Thomas Kretschmann with his scary side parting, looking and sounding like a cranky bank manager). It's a pact that sees the town get money and status out of Dracula's presence while Drac gets to suck on a few of its young lovelies in return. In to this comes librarian Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde – uncomfortable and wooden), employed by the Count to take stock of his castle's huge and dusty old library. Though this job offer soon turns out to be nothing but a ruse to lure Harker's demure young wife Mina (Marta Gastini - okay in her own petite, doe eyed innocent way) to the remote town seeing as how she bears a striking resemblance to Drac's long lost love. Of course, Harker gets vamped by buxom vampire bride Tania (Miriam Giovanelli – charismatically sexy and nicely ferocious) and promptly disappears, leading to Mina coming to town to find him. This also gives young Mina the opportunity to meet up with her old friend Lucy (Asia Argento - comatose), a bored local piano teacher who lives at home with daddy still. Not long after, Lucy pegs it due to Drac's suckage, and old codger Van Helsing (a sleepy and bored looking Rutger Hauer) turns up to try and kill Drac who he's been hunting for years. Cue lots of running around in woods, terrible CG effects, casual nudity, casual blood spilling and some of the worst performances ever from actors who should be so much better (Argento, Kretschmann, Hauer). I mean, who on earth casts the gorgeous and effortlessly sexy Asia Argento as a Lucy who is such a dull and boring go nowhere character? Yes, her role in the tale is to get vamped which then spurns our heroes on. But Lucy is supposed to be fun, wild, loving the boys, loving teasing the boys. I can see Asia doing that. I'd love to see Asia doing that. But no, here she is comatose with inaction. And yet daddy Argento still makes her get naked. Just the once mind. Gotta exploit your little girl's two biggest assets at least once per movie I suppose, right Dario?
I have no idea the budget for Dracula 3D but the movie sure looks cheap and is saddled with some of the most laughable CG effects seen in a mainstream film for a good long while. The script is appalling, filled with lines cheesier than a cheese cake made only of cheese, its plotting so haphazard and throwaway you'd think they were just making it all up as they went along. And worst of all, how on earth did the man who gave us the horrifically gorgeous, stylish and atmospheric Suspiria manage to make a film so utterly devoid of any style, atmosphere and tension? Okay, there are a couple of quite nice gore moments and maybe one reasonably effective jump scare. But that's it. The lighting is flat. The sets sparse and cheap. The FX laughable.
The sad truth is Argento couldn't even direct traffic anymore. Just watch how spectacularly he fluffs the staking of Vampire Lucy in her crypt sequence. Remember Coppola's take? Stunningly strange, bloody and genuinely creepy. Forget that here. It's hilarious. Like badly staged panto. No, the only things this movie has going for it is the undoubted sexiness and ferocious charm of Miriam Giovanelli as super hot vampire bride Tanya, giving by far the best performance in the film, and a wonderfully camp operatic rock song over the end credits.
In summation, Dario Argento's Dracula 3D is a bad film. A very bad film. There's no doubt about that. But at least it's not offensively bad in a Uwe Boll kind of way. It's just ultra cheap, cheesy and flatly made. It never makes you angry. In fact, it will probably make you laugh a fair bit. Also it's never boring due to the sheer hilarity of its camp awfulness. Approach it as a camp vampire panto and you might just have some fun. Still, it does make you wonder whatever happened to the man who made horror classics such as Suspiria and Tenebre. Disappointing then to say the least. But, hey, at least it's better than Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000. Ugh! Now that's REAL Dracula suckage for you!
Tuesday, 1 January 2013
MY FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2012
So here's my twenty favourite films of 2012 in descending order. Please note: I don't claim these as the best films of the year, just the ones I personally enjoyed the most. At the bottom of this post you'll also find my five least favourite films of 2012. Enjoy.
20. REC 3
The third in the Spanish horror franchise takes a stylistic left turn from found footage to ‘proper’ film and also becomes more of a black comedy ala Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson. And it works. Bloody, brutal, blackly funny and with the coolest bride since Uma went postal on Bill. Love it.
Trailer
19. HAYWIRE
Steven Soderbergh turns his hand to action movie making in this stylish and violent tale of espionage, double crosses and revenge. Mixed martial artist Gina Carano makes her film debut as the lead, playing a betrayed spy on the run to clear her name. So far so seen it all before. But Soderbergh brings his distinctive look to proceedings as well as a much welcomed pulled back camera and steady and restrained editing to the impressive chases and fights. Carano isn’t the greatest of actors but she certainly has screen presence and charisma. And she can kick ass with the best. She’s scary and sexy and can beat the biggest baddest guys to a pulp. A flop at the cinema this is still way better than the latest Bourne effort.
Carano vs. Fassbender
18. TED
Seth Macfarlane’s directorial debut is exactly the movie you’d expect and hope from the creator of Family Guy, namely lewd, crude, geeky, clever and gut achingly funny. The years best out and out comedy by a mile.
17. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
A stylish and exciting retelling of the classic fairytale with added grit, black magic and battles. It’s dark enough, violent enough and intriguing enough to grab your attention. But then add in a wondrously sexy/scary turn by Charlize Theron as the evil queen and this movie had me completely in its power. Kirsten Stewart is good too as Snow and Chris Hemsworth once more oozes gruff movie star charisma as the Huntsman. Not to everyone’s tastes maybe but as a fairytale geek I loved it. Plus much more entertaining than The Hobbit.
16. THE AWAKENING
An old school British horror, The Awakening is set in the early 1920’s in an allegedly haunted boarding school for boys. Handsomely made and wonderfully slow burn and mysterious, the film features a flawless central performance from Rebecca Hall as she tries to debunk the haunting in the school only to discover some disturbing truths about her own past. Dominic West and Imelda Stanton provide excellent support in this classy, atmospheric and highly watchable chiller.
Trailer
15. BRAVE
Pixar do it again with this gorgeous looking, funny and charming adventure about making one’s own fate and fighting for your place in life. Kelly Macdonald is splendid and positively crackles with energy and warmth as the voice of Merida, our young, feisty, flame haired heroine. The rest of the voice cast are great too including Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly and Robbie Coltrane. A lovely film, especially for mothers and daughters everywhere.
14. ARGO
Ben Affleck directs and stars in this true story about the rescue of American diplomats from 1979 revolutionary Iran. Affleck directs in a straightforward and non-showy way letting the story and the actors do all the hard work. It pays off. Argo is a tense thriller with a nice line in humour and Alan Arkin stealing the show and all the best lines as a cynical movie producer who helps with the rescue plan. Great stuff.
13. THE TALL MAN
A darkly disturbing and thought provoking film from Pascal Laugier, the director of the infamous Martyrs, that goes places you aren’t expecting it to go. The Tall Man sees small town doctor Jessica Beil investigating the legend of the Tall Man along with the disappearance of several children from what is a dirt-poor American mining community. Beil is excellent in what is a multi-faceted role and Laugier raises all sorts of troubling questions and moral quandaries around issues such as poverty, parenting and how best to improve the lives and futures of our children. Powerful, affecting and horrific in its own special way, The Tall Man is intelligent horror filmmaking.
Trailer
12. PARANORMAN
A beautifully made stop motion animation from the studio that gave us the sublime Coraline, Paranorman is an affectionate ode to horror movies and to the important role scary stories play in childhood. It’s good to be scared it tells us. However it is not good to let your fear get the better of you and to then hurt others because of it. The movie looks great and the voice talent does sterling work. There are even a couple of proper scares in there to make you jump. But the film finds its real power towards the end as the truth of things is revealed and its message of not letting fear lead to bad things hits home in a sad and genuinely affecting way.
11. LOOPER
Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller is a riveting tale of nature vs. nurture and of changing ones fate. Bruce Willis comes back in time, avoids being murdered by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his younger self, before setting out to change his fate and the future in a radical way. Small scale but with big ideas Looper is a quality thriller that plays with genre in a similar way in which Johnson’s film Brick did. Willis and Levitt are great, as is the lovely Emily Blunt. But it is young Pierce Gagnon as Blunt’s son Cid who proves quite astonishing in what is a challenging and significant role. Quality scifi.
10. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO
David Fincher’s English language version of Stieg Larsson’s darkly disturbing crime novel is a better film than the Swedish original, being far more cinematic and losing the TV movie feel. Daniel Craig is very good as investigative journalist Blomkvist who’s trying to uncover the mystery of the long vanished niece of Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger. But it is Rooney Mara as damaged-but-genius hacker Lisbeth Salander who makes the biggest impact. Noomi Rapace was fabulous in the Swedish film and is still the definitive Lisbeth, but Mara comes a very close second. Intense stuff.
9. THE RAID
Welsh director Gareth Evans’ Indonesian action flick is a stupidly violent, stupidly inventive movie that puts almost all Hollywood actioners of recent years to shame. A bunch of special forces cops enter a building owned by a crime boss who locks the building down and offers his tenants big rewards if they kill off all the cops. What follows is an uber-violent bloody battle as our main cop hero Rama must fight his way to the big boss before then escaping the building in one piece. It’s as simply plotted as that, but is pure bone breaking, bullet ridden genius in its execution. A sequel is on its way. Yay!
Claycat’s version of The Raid (awesome!)
8. CHRONICLE
Josh Trank’s found footage superhero drama is a genius little film that delves in to a troubled teenaged psyche before eventually unleashing the fury of a super villain on to the world in a gritty and ‘realistic’ way. A group of teenage friends develop telekinetic powers after encountering an apparent glowing meteorite in the woods. It’s all fun and pranks at first but things soon get dark and deadly as one of the group of teenagers growing fury at the world finally pushes him over the edge. Cue a big final superhero smackdown filmed in a handheld digicam documentary style but with the huge scope of the end battle of Superman 2. Brilliant stuff!
7. THE HUNGER GAMES
Gary Ross’s film of Suzanne Collins young adult best seller is thankfully far and away from being just another sappy Twilight tweenfest. Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence is fabulous as Katniss, our young and resourceful heroine who, to save her younger sister, agrees to take her place in the barbaric future sport of the title – an annual fight to the death against lots of other children in a huge forested arena. Themes of fear and control and societal repression abound in what is a brutal (though thankfully not gratuitous) and intensely compelling story of inner strength and outer resistance. At last, an intelligent and daring movie franchise aimed at tweens with a strong, selfless and likeable female main character who we can all admire.
6. SKYFALL
Bond is back in Sam Mendes’ stylish, exciting and thematically rich deconstruction and reconstruction of the 007 mythos. Daniel Craig is an intense, emotional and deeply scarred but also humorous Bond, Javier Bardem is the best Bond villain in years, and Judi Dench proves to be perhaps the best Bond girl ever. The stunning Istanbul chase at the start is the action highlight but the drama and the characters hum with power all the way through to the deeply personal ending of what is a Bond film quite unlike all other Bond films. After the rubbish Quantum of Solace we can breathe a collective sigh of relief and say that Bond is most definitely back!
5. JOHN CARTER
Andrew Stanton’s mega-budgeted adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic pulp scifi novel A Princess of Mars may have been a box office flop but I for one bloody loved it. A long time fan of Burroughs’ Barsoom tales I thought Stanton captured the epic romantic sweep of the books extremely well. And boy, did it look good, especially the gorgeous Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, who made the role her own in a performance of great sensitivity and steely strength. What a woman! As Carter, Taylor Kitch was fine while great support came from Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Dominic West and a stupidly charismatic James Purefoy. Michael Giachino’s score soared and the FX were mostly stunning. A damn shame then that we won’t get a sequel. Get your ass to Mars!
John Carter has a big fight
4. DREDD
Oh thank God, they got it right. That was my first thought after watching Pete Travis’ Dredd. Forget Sly Stallone’s rubbish Judge Dredd movie, this is the real deal. Karl Urban goes all Eastwood in his spot on performance as the UK’s favourite fascistic future lawman. The plot is essentially the same as The Raid but the execution is gratuitous art house with some stunningly beautiful imagery of utterly horrific things. A violent, no nonsense future thriller, Dredd kicks unholy ass. Urban rules as Dredd but kudos too to the splendid Olivia Thrilby as rookie Judge Anderson and to the always great Lena Headey as vile villain Ma-Ma. Sadly Dredd made no money at the box office so there will be no sequels. Boo!
Trailer
3. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
2012 is the year the rest of the world discovered what I already knew – Joss Whedon IS God! The Cabin in the Woods, written by Whedon and Buffy/Angel alumni Drew Goddard, and directed by Goddard, is a gloriously clever, funny, wicked homage/undercutting of the entire horror movie genre. See this and you’ll never look at a horror film in quite the same way again. The cast has fun playing twists on intentional archetypes, while the script is so damn sharp you could slice ham on it. Okay, so it isn’t actually that scary, but the fun to be had here is huge. And if you get it, then you REALLY get it. This year’s film with the biggest potential for DVD freeze framing, The Cabin in the Woods is an endlessly inventive blast.
Truth or dare
2. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Christopher Nolan only went and bloody did it. The study of a man broken down by a lie and a perceived loss of purpose, TDKR may not quite reach the same dizzy heights as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight but it is still a deeply intelligent, thunderingly intense thriller. Bale is fab yet again, this time joined by Tom Hardy on splendidly odd and imposing form as Bane. However it is the beautiful and monstrously talented Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle who steals the movie with such slinky purr-fection. Yes, a few plot points don’t make much sense and the story relies on a few too many coincidences and contrivances to make it perfect, but its grandly thematic, operatic sweep overcomes such trifling quibbles. In the end The Dark Knight Rises ends up as 99% the triumph we’d all hoped it would be. And that’s good enough for me.
Trailer…in Lego
1. MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS
Oh Joss, you wonderful man you. Who else on this puny little planet could have been the ringmaster for such a huge and potentially messy and convoluted circus? Thank God then that Marvel had the brains and the balls to hire him for the gig. Of course, to us, his fans, it made perfect sense from the start. The man does motley outsiders who come together to form their own functional family unit in his sleep. It’s his bread and butter (see Buffy, Angel, Firefly). He is also a life long comics nerd who has actually written for Marvel and also runs his own comics line for Dark Horse. So a no brainer then. Except that his only prior movie making credit was the utterly brilliant but box office flop of Serenity. Anyway, he got the gig. And The Avengers came out…. And made a Billion-and-a-half dollars world wide while getting almost unanimous critical acclaim. So what if it ain’t so deep and clever? What The Avengers is, is big, brassy, funny, balls to the wall FUN! Don’t underestimate how hard it would be to make a movie like this work. So many big characters to balance, so many stories to serve, actors to give their appropriate screen time to, big action and drama beats to cover. But Joss does it all with so much apparent ease. You watch it and think, of course, that’s how you make a movie like this. Okay, so he isn’t the most cinematic of directors but he more than compensates where his talents really lie - in character and in making you care about the people. That is at least partly why The Avengers works so damn well. Plus it is very, very funny. Oh, and it also has the “And Hulk… Smash!” moment, my single favourite moment of any film this year. A moment that never fails to make me lose my shit. In the end, what The Avengers is, is the purest form of escapist fun to be had at the cinema this year. In many ways The Dark Knight Rises may be the better film, but for pure putting a huge silly grin on my face movie going, Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury just can’t be beat. Make mine Marvel and bring on Phase 2. Oh yeah, and Joss IS Boss!
Live to Rise (Soundgarden music video)
Almost made its: The Woman in Black, Detention, The Hobbit, Prometheus, Kill List, 21 Jump Street, Young Adult
MY FIVE LEAST FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2012
5. WRATH OF THE TITANS
Not so much a Greek tragedy, more a Greek travesty. If you thought the first one was pants then I dare you to watch this dim-witted toss of a sequel.
4. THE DEVIL INSIDE
The kind of horror film that give horror films a bad name being stupid, dull and deeply unscary. Do yourself a favour and do not try to ‘possess’ this silly little devil. If you want a low budget mockumentary film about demonic possession then go get the excellent The Last Exorcism instead.
3. THE DARKEST HOUR
Never has an alien invasion been so bloody dull and uneventful. The cgi energy beam aliens were shit but I was still rooting for them to hurry up and kill the annoying American teens arsing about in Moscow doing bugger all for 90mins. If they turned a corner they might have run in to the equally annoying American teens getting ready to go visit Chernobyl. Sigh.
2. THIS MEANS WAR
Laugh? No. No I really didn’t. At all. Here, McG wastes lots of Fox’s money on a big budget and deeply stupid, deeply tiresome and woefully unfunny romantic action comedy that somehow manages to take the genuinely likeable and talented Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Reece Witherspoon and make you hate them with a passion. Hmm, quite the achievement really when you think about it. Way to go, McG.
1. STRIPPERS VS. WEREWOLVES
Oh sweet baby Jesus, make Billy Murray (dad of yummy Jamie) and his friends stop making these ultra cheap, ultra terrible British ‘horror’ movies. I managed only half of this one as it was so unbearably terrible on every conceivable level. Just avoid, okay? Your life is way too short for this sort of punishment.
Proof of terribleness
20. REC 3
The third in the Spanish horror franchise takes a stylistic left turn from found footage to ‘proper’ film and also becomes more of a black comedy ala Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson. And it works. Bloody, brutal, blackly funny and with the coolest bride since Uma went postal on Bill. Love it.
Trailer
19. HAYWIRE
Steven Soderbergh turns his hand to action movie making in this stylish and violent tale of espionage, double crosses and revenge. Mixed martial artist Gina Carano makes her film debut as the lead, playing a betrayed spy on the run to clear her name. So far so seen it all before. But Soderbergh brings his distinctive look to proceedings as well as a much welcomed pulled back camera and steady and restrained editing to the impressive chases and fights. Carano isn’t the greatest of actors but she certainly has screen presence and charisma. And she can kick ass with the best. She’s scary and sexy and can beat the biggest baddest guys to a pulp. A flop at the cinema this is still way better than the latest Bourne effort.
Carano vs. Fassbender
18. TED
Seth Macfarlane’s directorial debut is exactly the movie you’d expect and hope from the creator of Family Guy, namely lewd, crude, geeky, clever and gut achingly funny. The years best out and out comedy by a mile.
17. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN
A stylish and exciting retelling of the classic fairytale with added grit, black magic and battles. It’s dark enough, violent enough and intriguing enough to grab your attention. But then add in a wondrously sexy/scary turn by Charlize Theron as the evil queen and this movie had me completely in its power. Kirsten Stewart is good too as Snow and Chris Hemsworth once more oozes gruff movie star charisma as the Huntsman. Not to everyone’s tastes maybe but as a fairytale geek I loved it. Plus much more entertaining than The Hobbit.
16. THE AWAKENING
An old school British horror, The Awakening is set in the early 1920’s in an allegedly haunted boarding school for boys. Handsomely made and wonderfully slow burn and mysterious, the film features a flawless central performance from Rebecca Hall as she tries to debunk the haunting in the school only to discover some disturbing truths about her own past. Dominic West and Imelda Stanton provide excellent support in this classy, atmospheric and highly watchable chiller.
Trailer
15. BRAVE
Pixar do it again with this gorgeous looking, funny and charming adventure about making one’s own fate and fighting for your place in life. Kelly Macdonald is splendid and positively crackles with energy and warmth as the voice of Merida, our young, feisty, flame haired heroine. The rest of the voice cast are great too including Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly and Robbie Coltrane. A lovely film, especially for mothers and daughters everywhere.
14. ARGO
Ben Affleck directs and stars in this true story about the rescue of American diplomats from 1979 revolutionary Iran. Affleck directs in a straightforward and non-showy way letting the story and the actors do all the hard work. It pays off. Argo is a tense thriller with a nice line in humour and Alan Arkin stealing the show and all the best lines as a cynical movie producer who helps with the rescue plan. Great stuff.
13. THE TALL MAN
A darkly disturbing and thought provoking film from Pascal Laugier, the director of the infamous Martyrs, that goes places you aren’t expecting it to go. The Tall Man sees small town doctor Jessica Beil investigating the legend of the Tall Man along with the disappearance of several children from what is a dirt-poor American mining community. Beil is excellent in what is a multi-faceted role and Laugier raises all sorts of troubling questions and moral quandaries around issues such as poverty, parenting and how best to improve the lives and futures of our children. Powerful, affecting and horrific in its own special way, The Tall Man is intelligent horror filmmaking.
Trailer
12. PARANORMAN
A beautifully made stop motion animation from the studio that gave us the sublime Coraline, Paranorman is an affectionate ode to horror movies and to the important role scary stories play in childhood. It’s good to be scared it tells us. However it is not good to let your fear get the better of you and to then hurt others because of it. The movie looks great and the voice talent does sterling work. There are even a couple of proper scares in there to make you jump. But the film finds its real power towards the end as the truth of things is revealed and its message of not letting fear lead to bad things hits home in a sad and genuinely affecting way.
11. LOOPER
Rian Johnson’s time travel thriller is a riveting tale of nature vs. nurture and of changing ones fate. Bruce Willis comes back in time, avoids being murdered by Joseph Gordon-Levitt as his younger self, before setting out to change his fate and the future in a radical way. Small scale but with big ideas Looper is a quality thriller that plays with genre in a similar way in which Johnson’s film Brick did. Willis and Levitt are great, as is the lovely Emily Blunt. But it is young Pierce Gagnon as Blunt’s son Cid who proves quite astonishing in what is a challenging and significant role. Quality scifi.
10. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO
David Fincher’s English language version of Stieg Larsson’s darkly disturbing crime novel is a better film than the Swedish original, being far more cinematic and losing the TV movie feel. Daniel Craig is very good as investigative journalist Blomkvist who’s trying to uncover the mystery of the long vanished niece of Swedish industrialist Henrik Vanger. But it is Rooney Mara as damaged-but-genius hacker Lisbeth Salander who makes the biggest impact. Noomi Rapace was fabulous in the Swedish film and is still the definitive Lisbeth, but Mara comes a very close second. Intense stuff.
9. THE RAID
Welsh director Gareth Evans’ Indonesian action flick is a stupidly violent, stupidly inventive movie that puts almost all Hollywood actioners of recent years to shame. A bunch of special forces cops enter a building owned by a crime boss who locks the building down and offers his tenants big rewards if they kill off all the cops. What follows is an uber-violent bloody battle as our main cop hero Rama must fight his way to the big boss before then escaping the building in one piece. It’s as simply plotted as that, but is pure bone breaking, bullet ridden genius in its execution. A sequel is on its way. Yay!
Claycat’s version of The Raid (awesome!)
8. CHRONICLE
Josh Trank’s found footage superhero drama is a genius little film that delves in to a troubled teenaged psyche before eventually unleashing the fury of a super villain on to the world in a gritty and ‘realistic’ way. A group of teenage friends develop telekinetic powers after encountering an apparent glowing meteorite in the woods. It’s all fun and pranks at first but things soon get dark and deadly as one of the group of teenagers growing fury at the world finally pushes him over the edge. Cue a big final superhero smackdown filmed in a handheld digicam documentary style but with the huge scope of the end battle of Superman 2. Brilliant stuff!
7. THE HUNGER GAMES
Gary Ross’s film of Suzanne Collins young adult best seller is thankfully far and away from being just another sappy Twilight tweenfest. Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence is fabulous as Katniss, our young and resourceful heroine who, to save her younger sister, agrees to take her place in the barbaric future sport of the title – an annual fight to the death against lots of other children in a huge forested arena. Themes of fear and control and societal repression abound in what is a brutal (though thankfully not gratuitous) and intensely compelling story of inner strength and outer resistance. At last, an intelligent and daring movie franchise aimed at tweens with a strong, selfless and likeable female main character who we can all admire.
6. SKYFALL
Bond is back in Sam Mendes’ stylish, exciting and thematically rich deconstruction and reconstruction of the 007 mythos. Daniel Craig is an intense, emotional and deeply scarred but also humorous Bond, Javier Bardem is the best Bond villain in years, and Judi Dench proves to be perhaps the best Bond girl ever. The stunning Istanbul chase at the start is the action highlight but the drama and the characters hum with power all the way through to the deeply personal ending of what is a Bond film quite unlike all other Bond films. After the rubbish Quantum of Solace we can breathe a collective sigh of relief and say that Bond is most definitely back!
5. JOHN CARTER
Andrew Stanton’s mega-budgeted adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s classic pulp scifi novel A Princess of Mars may have been a box office flop but I for one bloody loved it. A long time fan of Burroughs’ Barsoom tales I thought Stanton captured the epic romantic sweep of the books extremely well. And boy, did it look good, especially the gorgeous Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, who made the role her own in a performance of great sensitivity and steely strength. What a woman! As Carter, Taylor Kitch was fine while great support came from Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Dominic West and a stupidly charismatic James Purefoy. Michael Giachino’s score soared and the FX were mostly stunning. A damn shame then that we won’t get a sequel. Get your ass to Mars!
John Carter has a big fight
4. DREDD
Oh thank God, they got it right. That was my first thought after watching Pete Travis’ Dredd. Forget Sly Stallone’s rubbish Judge Dredd movie, this is the real deal. Karl Urban goes all Eastwood in his spot on performance as the UK’s favourite fascistic future lawman. The plot is essentially the same as The Raid but the execution is gratuitous art house with some stunningly beautiful imagery of utterly horrific things. A violent, no nonsense future thriller, Dredd kicks unholy ass. Urban rules as Dredd but kudos too to the splendid Olivia Thrilby as rookie Judge Anderson and to the always great Lena Headey as vile villain Ma-Ma. Sadly Dredd made no money at the box office so there will be no sequels. Boo!
Trailer
3. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
2012 is the year the rest of the world discovered what I already knew – Joss Whedon IS God! The Cabin in the Woods, written by Whedon and Buffy/Angel alumni Drew Goddard, and directed by Goddard, is a gloriously clever, funny, wicked homage/undercutting of the entire horror movie genre. See this and you’ll never look at a horror film in quite the same way again. The cast has fun playing twists on intentional archetypes, while the script is so damn sharp you could slice ham on it. Okay, so it isn’t actually that scary, but the fun to be had here is huge. And if you get it, then you REALLY get it. This year’s film with the biggest potential for DVD freeze framing, The Cabin in the Woods is an endlessly inventive blast.
Truth or dare
2. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
Christopher Nolan only went and bloody did it. The study of a man broken down by a lie and a perceived loss of purpose, TDKR may not quite reach the same dizzy heights as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight but it is still a deeply intelligent, thunderingly intense thriller. Bale is fab yet again, this time joined by Tom Hardy on splendidly odd and imposing form as Bane. However it is the beautiful and monstrously talented Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle who steals the movie with such slinky purr-fection. Yes, a few plot points don’t make much sense and the story relies on a few too many coincidences and contrivances to make it perfect, but its grandly thematic, operatic sweep overcomes such trifling quibbles. In the end The Dark Knight Rises ends up as 99% the triumph we’d all hoped it would be. And that’s good enough for me.
Trailer…in Lego
1. MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS
Oh Joss, you wonderful man you. Who else on this puny little planet could have been the ringmaster for such a huge and potentially messy and convoluted circus? Thank God then that Marvel had the brains and the balls to hire him for the gig. Of course, to us, his fans, it made perfect sense from the start. The man does motley outsiders who come together to form their own functional family unit in his sleep. It’s his bread and butter (see Buffy, Angel, Firefly). He is also a life long comics nerd who has actually written for Marvel and also runs his own comics line for Dark Horse. So a no brainer then. Except that his only prior movie making credit was the utterly brilliant but box office flop of Serenity. Anyway, he got the gig. And The Avengers came out…. And made a Billion-and-a-half dollars world wide while getting almost unanimous critical acclaim. So what if it ain’t so deep and clever? What The Avengers is, is big, brassy, funny, balls to the wall FUN! Don’t underestimate how hard it would be to make a movie like this work. So many big characters to balance, so many stories to serve, actors to give their appropriate screen time to, big action and drama beats to cover. But Joss does it all with so much apparent ease. You watch it and think, of course, that’s how you make a movie like this. Okay, so he isn’t the most cinematic of directors but he more than compensates where his talents really lie - in character and in making you care about the people. That is at least partly why The Avengers works so damn well. Plus it is very, very funny. Oh, and it also has the “And Hulk… Smash!” moment, my single favourite moment of any film this year. A moment that never fails to make me lose my shit. In the end, what The Avengers is, is the purest form of escapist fun to be had at the cinema this year. In many ways The Dark Knight Rises may be the better film, but for pure putting a huge silly grin on my face movie going, Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury just can’t be beat. Make mine Marvel and bring on Phase 2. Oh yeah, and Joss IS Boss!
Live to Rise (Soundgarden music video)
Almost made its: The Woman in Black, Detention, The Hobbit, Prometheus, Kill List, 21 Jump Street, Young Adult
MY FIVE LEAST FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2012
5. WRATH OF THE TITANS
Not so much a Greek tragedy, more a Greek travesty. If you thought the first one was pants then I dare you to watch this dim-witted toss of a sequel.
4. THE DEVIL INSIDE
The kind of horror film that give horror films a bad name being stupid, dull and deeply unscary. Do yourself a favour and do not try to ‘possess’ this silly little devil. If you want a low budget mockumentary film about demonic possession then go get the excellent The Last Exorcism instead.
3. THE DARKEST HOUR
Never has an alien invasion been so bloody dull and uneventful. The cgi energy beam aliens were shit but I was still rooting for them to hurry up and kill the annoying American teens arsing about in Moscow doing bugger all for 90mins. If they turned a corner they might have run in to the equally annoying American teens getting ready to go visit Chernobyl. Sigh.
2. THIS MEANS WAR
Laugh? No. No I really didn’t. At all. Here, McG wastes lots of Fox’s money on a big budget and deeply stupid, deeply tiresome and woefully unfunny romantic action comedy that somehow manages to take the genuinely likeable and talented Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Reece Witherspoon and make you hate them with a passion. Hmm, quite the achievement really when you think about it. Way to go, McG.
1. STRIPPERS VS. WEREWOLVES
Oh sweet baby Jesus, make Billy Murray (dad of yummy Jamie) and his friends stop making these ultra cheap, ultra terrible British ‘horror’ movies. I managed only half of this one as it was so unbearably terrible on every conceivable level. Just avoid, okay? Your life is way too short for this sort of punishment.
Proof of terribleness
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