Monday Movie Mentions #18…

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Toy Story (1995)

1200px-Toy_Story_logo.svgI could talk about any Pixar movie in this spot, because with the exception of one or two, they are all really good, which probably gives Pixar a better batting average than any other studio in Hollywood.

It’s hard to believe Toy Story came out in 1995 – over half of my life ago – because it is one of the few cinema experiences that stands out to me all these years later. When it was released there was nothing like it, and that’s not hyperbole. It was fresh and new at a time when there was very little innovation on the big screen.

0ca8b97dc3435081fad5d604c26eed35--childhood-characters-pixar-characters You will find a new computer animated release almost every week in 2017, but in 1995 it was extremely rare. People saw it as a novelty. Toy Story was a litmus test of sorts. Had it been a flop most of the animated movies we have seen over the last two decades may not have been produced, but not only was it a major financial success, it was also extremely well written and the critics and public alike loved it. As such, it set the benchmark for every cgi release from that point on.

Toy Story is a great movie, but it’s not even the best one in that trilogy, let alone the best thing Pixar has released. If you’ve not seen it, you owe it to yourself to give it ninety minutes of your time.

Sunday Song Suggestions #18…

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We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel – 1989

This song came out at a time when I was really finding my way with my musical tastes and preferences. I was familiar with some of Billy Joel’s work, but he was someone I thought of as belonging to my parents’ generation. We Didn’t Start the Fire was what really put him on the map for me.

This is certainly a unique song with a unique concept, and it became one of Joel’s most popular singles. The lyrical history lesson – which is presented almost exclusively as a series of names, places, and events – takes us from his birth year of 1949 to 1989, the year of the song’s release. The staccato rhythm of the verses shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. It’s deceptively clever and well put together.

We Didn’t Start the Fire is a song that I have long hoped would be given an update. It would be simple (from a lyrical standpoint) to record a second iteration, where all the content described is from the last thirty years instead of the preceding forty… but apparently ol’ Billy is not too keen on the idea.

This is What’s Under the Bed…

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I’ve written hundreds of stories in my life, over a million words (you’ll have to trust me on that one). I’ve written comedies and thrillers. I’ve written romance and drama. I’ve written sci-fi and fantasy. I’ve written westerns and stuff for kids. I’ve even penned some erotica (much to my mother’s embarrassment), but what I’m writing now is possibly the first real monster story I’ve tried… well, ever.

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I mention this only because for the longest time – in my head – I was a horror writer. I think somewhere in there I still am. I read horror and that’s what I wrote, or so I thought. But looking back over those hundreds of titles and those million words, it turns out that very little of it would actually fit in the boundaries of the genre. Maybe ten percent; fifteen at a push.

I’ve always wanted to write a pure, no-nonsense monster tale – one that doesn’t necessarily live in the real world, and doesn’t feel the need to apologise or explain itself either. Sometimes horror just is and creatures just are.

This may just be my first time.

Friday Fiction Fixes #17…

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The Jonah by James Herbert – 1981

herbertjonahOddly, it was my dad – who I would never say was a big reader – who became my first point of contact with the works of James Herbert. He was possibly the only author my dad made any time for. Back in the mid eighties I was far too young to read anything by the dark master of British horror, but that always stuck with me and when I was old enough I got through a bunch of Herbert’s novels.

The Jonah is the last Herbert novel I read, but it’s unfortunately one of his lesser offerings. It’s about a detective who has had misfortune follow him throughout his life. Despite the author’s history, it’s a dark police thriller which can only very loosely be described as horror.

The writing is fine and the narrative is moderately entertaining, but Herbert’s penchant for shoehorning in an obligatory sex scene rears its head again in a somewhat unrealistic romantic sub-plot which is signposted from miles away. However, The Jonah – for its shortcomings – is quite a short novel, so it’s not something that you will have to wade through for too long.

James Herbert was absolutely capable of producing great stuff and he produced a number of classics throughout his career. The Jonah is certainly not bad, but a classic it is not. If you want a good entry-point to his work, there are far better places to jump into the water.

Tuesday TV Testimonials #17…

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MythBusters (2003 – 2016)

MBOpEd_PIC1MythBusters was a very long-running science experiment show that bagged almost 300 episodes before it finally threw in the towel. It was one of my favourite things on TV over the last decade, and if you exclude ongoing dramas it’s right up there near the top of the pile.

Every week, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (who were soon supported by regular team members Kari, Tory, and Grant) would try to ‘bust’ some commonly held ideas such as… could you penetrate the ground or kill a person with a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building?; and, was it possible for a stream of urine to freeze in the winter? That kinda thing. Other more unique curiosities included… can a person falling off a building glide to safety using a sheet of plywood?; and, can being underwater protect you from bullets? The results were often very surprising.

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I swear, Kari wasn’t dressed like this during the show!

If it all sounds not particularly earth shattering, that’s probably because it wasn’t. But it was always fun. There was much silliness, many explosions, and a whole lot of ballistics gel throughout its run, but the well presented and thought out experiments were backed up by what sometimes seemed like pages of theory, and it wasn’t uncommon to learn something along the way either, which can’t be a bad thing.

Monday Movie Mentions #17…

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United 93 (2006)

220px-United93Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe that it’s been sixteen years since the September 11th attacks – the watershed ‘JFK’ moment of my generation – but here we are, still feeling the effects of that day and living our lives differently because of it.

There are a handful of movies that have been made about the tragedy, but United 93 is as good an account as you will find. It’s probably not the kind of movie you’ll sit through more than once, because you’re not going to get any joy or substance out of a second viewing. It doesn’t pull any punches in its delivery, and it’s impossible to forget what it is you’re watching.

We can argue about how accurate the depiction is, and how much of it was amended and tweaked for ‘dramatic purposes’, but when you’re talking about the single worst act of terror committed against the civilised world, it’s a little redundant to start picking at these things.

United 93 is an extremely tough and sobering film to watch, as rightly it should be, and there’s nothing to smile at here: no levity at all to remind you that these are actors on a stage. But it’s a movie we should not disregard, about a day that we never will.

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Sunday Song Suggestions #17…

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Come Get Some – Rooster – 2004

Back in the early part of the new millennium there was a proliferation of British indie music taking over the UK charts, almost all of which left me cold. Rooster was the only band that could realistically be labelled as such that I got into, and certainly the only one whose music I bought.

Come Get Some was the lead single from Rooster’s self-titled debut album and with its simple yet effective guitar sound, and the throaty and classic vocals of lead singer Nick Atkinson, it should really have set them off on a long and prosperous career.

Unfortunately, like a lot of musical acts, the band was swallowed up by the industry and Rooster had been and gone before a lot of people had even heard about them. There was a second (and final) album the following year, but the band was never better than when they came right out of the gates.

But 2017 is, after all, the Chinese year of the rooster… so perhaps a reunion is in the offing.

Friday Fiction Fixes #16…

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The Swarm by Arthur Herzog – 1974

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I picked up The Swarm from a second-hand store many years ago, and it sat at the bottom of my to-read pile of books for a while before I got around to reading it.

The Swarm is an entertaining and fairly short read about an influx of killer African bees to the United States, and follows them as they move from town to town, taking out everyone in their path. Although an entirely fictional account of events, it takes a leaf out of what Michael Crichton did in most of his novels by including enough scientific-looking charts, graphs and diagrams throughout the text to make what you are reading seem authentic.

The Swarm was published in the early seventies, at the height of the general fascination with disaster stories, but where Hollywood was more focused on earthquakes and buildings catching fire, this novel benefits from tapping in to the public’s fear of the unknown. Bees, yeah… but killer bees.

In fact, the novel was somewhat influential in ushering in a plethora of less than stellar stories about animals taking over, over the next decade or so. Of course, The Swarm itself was turned into a particularly awful B-movie a few years later, but the less said about that the better we’ll all be.

Tuesday TV Testimonials #16…

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The Greatest American Hero (1981 – 1983)

250px-Greatest_am_heroThe Greatest American Hero was a lighthearted drama and another one of those underrated eighties gems that doesn’t get the love it deserves. It’s biggest claim to fame is probably the fact that it had one of the most memorable theme songs of the era, but the show beneath the music is worth remembering too.

William Katt plays Ralph, a school teacher whose students appear to defy the regularities of society, because they are all at least five years removed from having any right to appear as such. Ralph is accosted by a spacecraft while he is leading his unfortunate (or perhaps, not so) class trip of young adults into the desert. He is then given a special alien suit imbued with superpowers and instructed to use it to fight crime on Earth… because, of course he is.

greatest-american-heroTo be fair, as TV premises go, it’s a little on the hokey side and fairly rough around the edges, but it’s enough to get the show off and running. The Greatest American Hero benefits from a good supporting cast including Robert Culp as an FBI agent and unwilling partner, and the aesthetically appealing Connie Sellecca as his lawyer and long-running love interest.

On one hand it’s fall into relative obscurity is understandable: The Greatest American Hero only lasted 40 episodes, so it had probably been and gone before a lot of people even realised. On the other hand it was really the first original show to tackle (and poke fun at) the ‘everyman superhero’ idea that now seems to be commonplace.

Monday Movie Mentions #16…

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Scarface (1983)

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Al Pacino is one of the best actors Hollywood has thrown up in this or any other generation, and he has been a vital cog of many classic movies. The character of Tony Montana is transcendent – even people who have never seen Scarface know who he is – and when all is said and done, Pacino’s interpretation here will perhaps go down as the most iconic performance of his illustrious career.

Scarface is a wacky snapshot of cocaine-fuelled eighties excess, set under the Floridian sun. It’s a gangster movie, but one that is as gloriously over the top as its running time. It has a great soundtrack, a cornucopia of quotable lines, one of the most bloody and exhilarating finales ever, and these days has a very large cult following.

But Scarface is not without its fair share of criticism. It’s unrelentingly violent, a little saggy in the middle, and it’s portrayal of women is lazy at best and misogynistic at worst. With his exaggerated accent, Pacino initially seems badly cast a Cuban refugee, but once the credits roll three hours later, his mesmerising and intense portrayal is difficult to ignore.

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Nope – that ain’t sugar.

Back in the late nineties, when the internet was just beginning to find its feet, there were many websites dedicated to collecting movie soundbites that you could download and play at your leisure. The most popular of these (and no, I’m not making this up) were Schwarzenegger and Tony Montana clips. I had dozens of WAV files that I would play via Winamp, chronicling Tony’s rise from the gutter to the top of his cocaine mountain, and his subsequent fall down the other side.

But to distill Scarface into a few seconds of sweary audio would be a disservice to the movie. It’s one of the best examples of its genre, and definitely the most fun to watch.