The Post-Christmas Binge: Take 5 From The DVD Pile

Despite my last posting on New Year's Resolutions, one that I made in all seriousness was to make myself write more. Regardless of whether or not it'll actually be seen. Not for any glorification purposes, purely just to keep my brain ticking over in a somewhat creative manner. Which is all very well and good, but the doing of it... that's the tricky part.

While mulling over 'hings to write about, it clicked that the answer was right in front of me. Because I was watching TV at the time. I know, I know, there's a million people writing about what they watch more regularly and concisely than me. But my Christmas haul (and holidays.... ho) largely comprised of DVD's in all manner of genre shapes. Films, television... well, that was about it, really.

A combination of crappy weather, lack of funds and that general lazy feeling that sweeps over the post-Christmas haze and into the new year ensured that alot of viewing time was clocked up, and I actually made good on starting to watch (or re-watch) things that I'd always meant to, but never quite got round to it. So here's a small (five point, because more than five as I've previously stated seems excessive) selection of my post-festive film viewing. The TV pile is a list unto itself.

1. American Hustle

Apparently there's some male cast members in there, but damned if I can see them...

I figured I'd start the year by blowing the dust off of my Cineworld card and justifying my having a shitty Orange contract, and made my first trek to the pictures for David O. Russell's latest offering. I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook, although mostly for presence of Jennifer Lawrence. The Fighter was a far better film, with better performances, but this comprised the cast of the two. It was also a warm up for the forthcoming Wolf of Wall Street- something about privileged douchebags being douchey with money that I find so wholly entertaining.

American Hustle was, at best, an amusingly gritty confection. There were good performances- of course J-Law was flawless, and Christian Bale continued his chameleon-like character preparation by cutting about with a gross beer gut and nasty combover. Amy Adams looked amazing but faltered with a dodgy accent, and Bradley Cooper was so smug I wanted to reach into the screen and pull his stupid perm out of his head. Although he's supposed to be a douchebag, so fair play...?

There were moments when I thought the film was really going to take off, that the hustle was well and truly underway. However these moments were punctuated by boggy follow ups that didn't really go anywhere, and as a result the film felt as bloated as its leading man. Lop off about 20 minutes and it would've been leaner, meaner and a good sight more gripping. It never really got to the nitty-gritty of the corruption its core cast were trying to expose, but the 'good times' never really felt so good. Good, but not the classic its title suggested.

2. Lost Highway

What. The utter. Fuck.

The boy and I made the (probably foolish) decision to watch Lost Highway after bingeing on the first series of Twin Peaks (more on that later). After about five episodes, we put on Lost Highway somewhere in the region of 1am. Shit got real. And also very, very surreal.

Dynamite hairdo though 'tricia, really, well done. Also nice rack. You'll see.

In short... if that can be done... this film is a headfuck masterpiece of sex, suspicion, sex, a killer soundtrack, entirely unreliable narrators and... sex. The soundtrack features pretty much all of my Spotify playlist- think Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Smashing Pumpkins and David Bowie. Hardly surprising, considering it was compiled by Trent Reznor- who also produced one of my other favourite film soundtracks, Natural Born Killers.

If this film can be summarised in any way, it's a noir horror almost-roadtrip. It deals with themes of identity. People may or may not exist, and may or may not be other people. Characters disappear and reappear, or they might not. Characters from one story, seemingly opposites from one another, are thrown together via mysterious and tragic circumstance and the whole thing flows like one of those dreams where you and your family are being murdered and you can't wake up (the kind I had when I finished watching it somewhere in the region of 3am). Definitely one which will benefit from repeat viewings, after wading my way through more Lynch.

3. Django Unchained

I'd already seen this Southern epic in the cinema at the start of last year. Thankfully the boy hadn't, which was the perfect excuse to spend another three hours in Tarantino's sun bleached deep South. The plot is as sprawling as the deserts our heroes Django (Jamie Foxx) and Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) trek across hunting bounty and searching for Django's wife, from whom he was separated.

Being a Tarantino film, there's plenty of cussing and bloodshed ahoy. The performances are excellent, and despite its fearsome running time only really drags towards the end (when Tarantino adopts an Australian accent that makes me wonder if he's ever actually met an Australian person). I adored Inglourious Basterds, but didn't much care for Kill Bill or Deathproof, so this really could've gone either way.

                                             

Not quite the 'Candy Land' I envisaged... ever.

Thankfully my fears were put to rest, although perhaps not one I could watch again in a hurry. Mostly because it's nearly three hours long. Also its depiction of slavery is as nasty as you'd expect: it doesn't hold back and plays with its exploitation and historical genre mashing. Still, I enjoyed the fact that I could root for Christoph Waltz in this one, whereas despite his sweet performance, Hans Landa was nothing but a squirmy, scheming, cringe-inducing Nazi bastard. So that was nice... As a nice counterpoint to all the violence, it's also hilarious, something I felt was missing even from Inglourious. I'm more than excited for the tentatively titled Hateful Eight, that's for sure.

4. Pacific Rim

Autobots wage their battle, 

to destroy the evil forces of... oh. Wait.

I love Guillermo del Toro. I read an article in Empire years ago- early teens at most- where he was talking about the sound design in his Spanish Civil War ghost story, The Devil's Backbone. This article got me interested in two things: sound design and Guillermo del Toro. I even dig the films he takes on as producer: The Orphanage and Julia's Eyes are utterly chilling examples of how to be scary without a) being a tired exorcism movie and b) terrible, bland special effects.

Unfortunately Pacific Rim wasn't an unsettling, subtly creepy ghost story: quite the opposite. It was a loud, brash, boys' toys story, where the scariest thing was Charlie Hunnam's American accent. I get that it's not aimed at me: it's for boys who grew up in the late 80s, when Transformers reigned supreme and anything was cool as long as there was a robot involved. Obviously the boy loved it, being its target audience. I loved the presence of Charlie Day. I would've liked Charlie Day to appear in every scene, but alas, no.

We had more fun predicting the Speak & Spell dialogue. I didn't get why Jaegers (dudes in robots) had to fight the evil Kaiju (supposedly terrifiying sea creatures) when Idris Elba could've chewed them up and spat them out them along with the scenery. Still, it was all very loud and... smashy... the cheesy dialogue was helpfully blown away by giant robot vs sea monster fights, which helped. In saying that I'm sure more people were killed by thewir battles on land as they smashed through cars and buildings with little regard for the civilians they were supposed to be saving... I'll call it del Toro acting on a boyhood whim and reserve my real judgement for his co-authored series of books, The Strain Trilogy (which I can't read yet because I mistakenly bought the third one. Damn).

5. Serenity

I can't... it's too soon...

I first saw this when it was released in the cinema, somewhere in the region of eight years ago. I liked it fine, although I felt I was missing out on an inside joke. The dialogue seemed disjointed and I didn't feel any kind of connection to the characters. I told myself I'd go back and watch Firefly and finally, I did. A mere couple of weekends ago, I'm ashamed to say. The boy got the series on Bluray, which meant my DVD collection got another new addition. Now I could understand the torment every other sci-fi/ Whedon fan has been feeling for almost a decade. Yay...?

Suffice to say I much preferred Serenity second time around. While I still felt it was a bit more emotionally empty than the show (the feels... so many feels...), my newly found character engagement meant that I felt truly happy, devastated and connected at all the right points. There were a fair few plot points which were left to dangle from the series, but this is a small niggle: it's basically a second series condensed into a film, and there's bound to be alot left out. However infuriating it may be.

I was reluctant to watch it purely because I didn't want it to be over and damnit... now it is. I'm gonna have to get baws deep in my TV boxset pile and make up for the gaping, Firefly-shaped loss I now feel. On the plus side we've got Much Ado About Nothing to look forward to. It'll... it'll have to do.