Bias Film Reviews (1)

What I've been watching this week

Pineapple express (15+)

If you've read or heard anything about this film before, it's pretty much everything you expected it to be. The story is quite simple, it's about a casual drug user who witnesses a murder and is linked to it through his dealer, they then both go on the run together to escape some thugs that want to kill them before they go to the police or whatever, you know the type of thing, of course you do, you've seen it a million times over in these teenage comedy type films, so you know what to expect.
To be honest, it was a lot funnier than I thought it was going to be when I brought it (just out of morbid curiosity, you understand), it kept me giggling all the way through to the end, for me that's quite rare with these sorts of films, I've usually tired of all the sexual references and gay jokes by about the second half, but Pineapple express just kept on giving and I kept on lapping it up. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I'll be the first to admit that the story isn't exactly grade A materiel, but the wide variety or colorful and very likable characters more than makes up for this in the long run, as well as Seth Rogen and James Franco's endless line up of bad taste jokes and trendy drug references.

Overall I think the film was well worth the watch, considering that I wasn't expecting much in the first place it was a refreshing surprise. It lacks anything that a serious movie goer would consider "good" but for the casual comedy fan, it's bound to get a few big laughs. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was high, but what film can't you say that about these days?

7.5/10



The Mist (15+)

Even before watching this I was instantly bias towards it, being a big Stephan King fan as well as a whore for anything Frank Darabont. The Mist is an adaption of a book by King of the same name, basically it's about a group of folks from a small town who because of their circumstances get locked together in a supermarket while some weird mist spreads over the town, the idea is that they never know whats going to come out of the mist next and they all have to fight for survival whilst also fighting with each other, blah blah blah.
I'm quite a big horror/thriller fan so this film, for me, was nothing to far from the norm, despite that there were a few nice little details that I thought shone through the conventions of the average thriller movie, which really helped to give "The Mist" a nice radiant glow for a little while among other recent films of the same genre.
As far as story goes, it's pretty much a mystery right through to the end, the basic plot is set at the beginning, as you would expect, and then Stephan King kindly lets your mind run wild for as long as the film lasts. And even so, the script is flawlessly solid, backed up by some nice acting, especially by Thomas Jane who was bloody awful in the Punisher.

Overall, yes I liked the film, it had everything I was looking for, so no disappointments. It was suitably "scary" (I suppose), shot beautifully, and the acting was convincing enough for me to care about the characters enough to feel slight remorse when one of them was disemboweled or set on fire. On the other hand, it wasn't what I'd call a breakthrough in horror, or thriller for that matter, despite the boxes ludicrous claims, and I quote, "One of the best horror films ever made, with an ending that continues to shock audiences the world over", so yeah, good luck with that Mr. Darabont, I'd keep on wishing on that star if I were you, besides nothing you ever do ever again will ever be as good as The Shawshank Redemption so you might as well just kill yourself.

6/10

Bias Film Reviews (An explanation)

Sometimes, just sometimes, people do things for no good or rational reason other than for their own sheer amusement, which is exactly what I intend to do.

In the last 9 or 10 weeks I've been watching a lot more films than I have previously done in the past, probably because I have a lot more free time on my hands now than I ever have done before (not that it's a good thing to waste this watching films, but one has to do something, right?), so I thought, "why not start talking about the films that I've been watching?" and why not indeed, sure you can talk about them at the pub or with friends, family, whoever, but that just doesn't give the same level of satisfaction as, say, ranting inanely about them on the world wide web, now does it? No it doesn't. And that's just what I'm going to do, great, huh? *

This is how it's going to work, I'll update this topic every week or so with the running title; "What I've been watching this week", then I'll simply name the films, write a short paragraph about each, saying what I liked, what I hated, etc etc and then I'll score them a number out of ten, one being the most detestable piece of filth ever to grace my television (or indeed, the world) and ten being the new love of my life.

Now, you may have noticed that this article is called "Bias Film Reviews" emphasis on the word "Bias", these film reviews are going to be short, snappy, badly written and above all, composed with no thought for anyone's point of view bar my own (that is a promise by the way). I guess, what I'm getting at here is, don't come to me with your numerous disagreements that you're no doubt going to have about my review on your favorite film, because quite frankly I don't want to hear them. If you do disagree however, feel free to write a "rival" review and leave a link in the comment box or send me a nasty personal message and I won't reply. Well you know what they say, hate mail is better than no mail.

*Don't answer that

Re: Projects. The fall of "High Rise"

*See bottom


Well, it's official High Rise is no longer in the pipe line. It's been terminated due to scheduling conflicts of people involved and me not really having the time or effort required to put into such a film.

If your unfamiliar with this issue, let me explain from the beginning. Whilst at college I and a fellow student were commissioned by the media department to write, direct, produce and edit a short film (10 minutes to be exact, although later we were told the film could in fact be of any length, shame they didn't have the foresight to tell us that at the beginning) . In any case, a short while previous to this task I had been writing a number of different short comedy scripts for another college project, which came in rather handy as one was exactly 10 minutes long, the required amount of time, and fit the criteria rather well. After a lengthy re-writing process the film was ready to start entering production stages, unfortunately I'd been having some rather heated 'discussions' with my head of department about my work rate and just attitude in general and shortly after this, I left the college.

Now, I had still intended to be very much a part of the film and had the media departments blessing to carry on working with it (it is my script after all), even though I was no longer a student, but sadly, I've had little time to contribute lately, what with running a part time job and trying to find full time employment, not to mention writing letters and filling out copious amounts forms and Internet bollocks. Anyway, I felt bad laying the work load all on one person, even though she had extra help at college it just wasn't fair, so after meeting up and talking about it, we've decided that it would be best to discontinue the film, at least until a later date when we both have time for such a project. I won;t say that I'm not slightly annoyed about it all, I was looking forward to filming and final casting etc etc but on the bright side this does give me time to write a follow up, or perhaps extend the current script.

If anyone is interested in reading "High Rise" I'll be posting a link to the script as soon as I figure out how to actually do that. It's a short comedy piece based around the lives of two very different individuals who have ended up sharing a flat together in the middle of a tower block. It's mostly shit, self confessed, but for some reason it got a brilliant reaction in the class reading, hence it actually going into production in the first place, I'd like to think they were laughs of genuine humor, not sarcasm...although that's probably wishful thinking.

*Check out the fucking whack photoshop job on that logo. You just know that shit was knocked up at the last minute as a joke.

Re: Vinyl

In one of my recent posts titled "Vinyl" I promised that I'd share any recent interesting finds and purchases (as well as sales) that I'd come across regarding vinyl.

I thought that this would be a better time than any to update this topic for several reasons. The first of which is that through sheer luck and chance I've came into possession of a large amount old/vintage vinyl records and singles, ranging in genre and age, the collection is huge, I have no idea of exact (or even rough) numbers but lets just say that I'm going to have a lot to look through and listen too in the coming months. I've been assured that collection includes some rare little gems for me to discover along the way, so I'll gradually be posting anything that I may come across. The second reason is that I've been doing some sorting out of my own collection I've came across some odd finds that I hadn't really thought about before now that I'd like to share!


Gallows 7" singles;
Abandon ship 7" with etched B side. (Part one of a two part set)

This 7" set came as a promotional offer from HMV when gallows debut album "Orchestra of wolves" was first released, I think it might have had something to do with me pre-ordering it several weeks previous. In any case it was a bugger to get hold of, the store that I purchased the CD album from said that they did'nt keep them in thier branch, luckly I found myself in Norwich a few weeks later and decided to try my luck at thier branch, by some miraclous stroke of luck they had one left, although at first the cashier didn't seem to have a clue what I was talking about, and it took about 15 minutes and two senior staff to actually find it in some corner of a stock room, presumebly. Worth it in the end though, I'm never one to pass up anything free!


This single is the first part of a two part single release, both singles come together in a neat little sleeve with the iconic 'octopus' artwork by Dan Mumford (who's artwork I'm a big fan of by the way) , the second single in the sleeve is two sided single containing the tracks "Belly of a shark" on side A and the much lesser known B side track "Nervous breakdown", which if I'm not mistaken, is a Black Flag cover (It's actually spectacularly good and would have made a cracking album filler, alas). When the two singles are laid out flat next to each other they look something like this;


Which, I think you'll agree, is pretty awesome. And when the presentation sleeve for the singles is laid flat it looks something like this;

Outer spread:


Inner spread:
Before now I hadn't really considered how common or rare these were, after doing a little bit of research there doesn't seem to be many of them around, I can't find exact print numbers anywhere on the internet or the sleeve or inner sleeve's, neither can I find anywhere on the internet that sells them, either as a pair in the way I have them, or individually. In fact, apart from my copy they seem to not exist at all, interesting.

Teeth, sweat and tears (not)

Today followed the by-yearly trip to the dentists which was, as I'd expected, as awful and unpleasant as I'd guessed it would be. The dentists is not something that I ever think I've seen eye to eye with, ever since childhood as far back as I can remember I've hated it with a passion.

There's something about the way the building smells as soon as you walk through the door that puts me at unease, a sort of clinical musty smell mixed potently with a foul sweaty odor that's only made worse by the mountains of air fresheners and strong smelling flowers dotted strategically around the surgery . The next thing you notice is the staff, medical receptionists are, in my opinion, among the most bitter, cynical, arrogant and generally unhappy people you could ever hope to meet. When I arrived I was greeted at the desk by a woman in her mid 50's (at a guess) but she could have been 80 or older from a distance, the only presentable thing about her was a disturbingly unfitting blue uniform that she was wearing over a kind of vomit colored turtle neck sweater, I don't think I've ever seen a person look so uncomfortable in their own skin, but having said that this is the stereotype for a lot of medical staff now-a-days (and not just receptionists either), anyway, I wasn't there to see her.

After sitting in a foul smelling claustrophobic waiting room for 10 minutes listening to the only available channel on the tiny television in the corner (some awful learning program for children, you know the type of thing, presented by some creep in a stripey sweater called Nigel) I was called in to the surgery. Now, contrary to everything else, I actually rather like my new dentist, I'd never met him before but I was pleasantly surprised to find that unlike the rest of the staff he seemed quite cheerful and happy to be there, not something often seen in dental surgery's! A rather well spoken fellow with a french accent.

Not that this put me at ease at all, the overall experience was still terrible, something that I'm glad I won't have to endure for another 6 months! Luckily, according to the french bloke, I'd been a good boy and looked after my teeth enough for him to be happy for me to leave without any kind of dentist style death sentence for staining my teeth with tea and chipping them on my old lip rings, oh well, like he said "Eh vot can jou do?".

Vinyl

I've recently started getting interested in vinyl and record collecting instead of buying CD's or downloading albums. Mainly because of the large jump in sound quality, but as a music enthusiast this allows me to buy and listen to a lot of material that I previously hadn't listened to or, in some cases, even knew existed!

From now on I'm going to update this with some of my more rare or valued purchases and sales, along with anything I come across that I feel is particularly interesting. I might also post links to any stuff that I'm selling at the time of the post, if I do, it'll most likely be on eBay.

May 13th: Not a lucky number. W/ Tim (right)

Great Yarmouth

Battery died early in the day. Awesome day, just few photos to compliment it.

Projects

As stated in the previous post I'm going to use this blog to help keep up with my current affairs and that for one means current projects that I'm working on. No longer being at college and without a job to go to I often find myself wrapped up in ideas that have usually flourished due to boredom and general arrogance to give up on eventually making something worth while.

Current projects (In no specific order)

• Organizing first band practice sessions and music tech equipment.
• Filming master edits of my current on/off short sitcom "High Rise" (This includes final character casting and all stages of pre and post production)
• Lyric writing projects. This covers all lyrics for the 4 tracks the forth coming "unnamed" EP to be mastered later in the year.

More information on all three ongoing projects as they progress. Expect to see on the set footage from "High Rise" shortly, including interviews with the current cast and crew and still photography.

As for band organization, this may take some time due to rather complicated individual member commitments and our current distance problem, if it can be called that. A lot of these problems will hopefully eradicate themselves over the coming months as we're all brought closer together, with the coming return of our main guitar player from his long term moving to the outer Hebrides and the coming together of several other local musicians. More on this as it progresses (Also keep an eye open for band member unavailing, planned to happen soon) .

Lyric writing is as of now, a constant process, not knowing how long it is going to take or when final versions of songs will finally take effect, unfortunately this is a rather lengthy and argues task but one that must undoubtedly be finalized before more serious progress with any releases is made, small time or not.

More on all of this as it progresses.

Opening statement.

Blogging has, up until now, been something that I have purposely avoided on the internet for several reasons that I don't feel the need to go into now, but never the less it's been seemingly pointless to me (as well as other things), hence I've never looked at it twice. And yet here I am, writing this now, the first installment of what I presume will be many more to come following the unforeseen future.

Of course me being here in the first place means that the previous statement has now changed and I have seen use in blogging. No less than using this blog as an every day account of my thoughts and feelings on certain subjects and recent goings on, as well as other things that I see fit to articulate in this space. This use is, by all means, incredibly conventional and has been done a million times over, but never the less I feel that it's going to help me get some affairs in order, that I feel, need to be swung into some sort of semi-luminescent lighting for others to see, all be it a rather dim one.

Oliver Burton.