It's just a jump to the left.... and then a step to the right.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show.....

Put your hands on your hips...
and bring your knees in tight.

The weirdest and most disturbing film i have seen for a while. Saying that- it is absolutely brilliant and i really do admire Tim Curry's ability to act as a transsexual for an hour and a half.
The music is brilliant and the story line kinda makes me want to laugh from start to finish. Meatloaf's appearance as Eddie was brilliant, but no one can take the spotlight off Tim Curry.
The twist in the plot at the end was something i didn't expect and i have to admire the script writers for it.

I'm sat here wondering if weather one of the script writers suddenly came running in to the studio claiming that he had the best idea ever.... a musical about transsexuals from transsexual Transylvania! I'm not sure that even they could imagine what sort of success it would have! It's weird, and not everyone's cup of tea, but it has some great songs and secretly we all love doing the time warp.

If you haven't seen it and are maybe a bit hesitant, you're not going to lose anything by watching it and who knows, you might even enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdbLirsZ_4Q- join in with it!

A present from the pig

I have to admit that I have not yet found a role played by Morgan Freeman that I don't like. I can argue that one of his films isn't the greatest, but I have to admit that that is not because of him... I just don't like the film.
I decided to watch 'Red'. I looked at the cast list and decided that I had to see it (it was also on our list).

I was amazed. It's absolutely hilarious and just had me laughing all the way through. A retired CIA agent is supposed to be taken down by the CIA, but because that retired agent is Bruce Willis, you know that it is never going to happen. Karl Urban does well to try and match him, but there is just no way that he's going to win.
So you've got 4 retired agents, and one Russian counter partner whose role is absolutely genius. In any other film, you'd probably think that this was going to be an average comedy/action, most of them would die, but Bruce Willis would make it through and kick Karl Urban's but. Not in this film, not when you're team is Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren.

They pull off their lines with strait faces and their creative thinking for hiding weapons and houses is unbelievable. If i wasn't a fan of the film by halfway through, John Malkovich stashing an enormous amount of fire power inside a toy pig (similar to Abbey's Hippo, if any of you are NCIS fans) just raised the standard of the film so much.

It's a great film for a night in with your parents when you don't want to watch something that involves thinking. It does the job of Romcoms better than they do!
And if you're wondering what RED stands for?? Retired, extremely dangerous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMCh4etBbkU- that's the trailer for Red.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfB8QwYBPxY- and this is the trailer for the sequel.

and guess what.... Red 2 comes out soon (if it hasn't already)!

A trip down memory lane...

A trip to the sea... with some monsters

I know that the next post was supposed to 'A History of Violence' but Est hasn't uploaded it yet. We're kinda behind and should've uploaded at least one more post. I've got to write another post and hopefully that should be up within the next few days.


A childish adventure, to the middle of the sea, to claim back some sheeps skin from a woman that wanted to turn me into a pig.
This is basically the story line for Percy Jackson 2. Upon finding out that Pierce Brosnan had quit while he was ahead... the chances of this film being a success were gradually falling.
I loved Percy Jackson and the lightning thief, Steve Coogan made me laugh quite a lot and that Anabel character was bad ass. In this film her character could be considered superfluous. She does nothing of note besides insult the cyclops half brother of Percy.
Thing is- anyone who studied classical civilization and read Homer would know from reading 'The Odyssey' that Polyphemus is also the son of Poseidon. Odysseus taunts him when he is trapped on the island and pokes out his eye, provoking Poseidon to respond badly to Odysseus.... so i'm left wondering who Tyson is.

Now I'll admit that I haven't actually read the books, so I can't follow the plot, but as i'm told that the film and the book are very different, I'm glad that I didn't.

So to judge and review the film. Luke is back as the villain, along with his side kicks, Chronos, Polyphemus and other half-blood side kicks. I loved Nathan Fillion as Hermes, he was exceptionally good at it, but overall I just felt that the film was lacking. Perhaps with the loss of Pierce Brosnan, they tried to fill his gap with the comedy introduced by the character Dionysus, but it wasn't the same. The guy that replaced him had less presence and less importance. The film was certainly lacking the main events, such as the action that you get from being in Medusa's lair.
So I'm trying to work out why the film is so bad in comparison. Is it because they diverted from the story line so much and therefore lost some of the action? Or is it because the first film was so good that they were never going to outdo it?
I remember seeing the adverts for it and i wasn't all that convinced about it. I can now say concretely that it is not as good as the first one and they should've quit while they were ahead. They have left it open for another film and I will be on the other side screaming for them to not waste the money. As we all know, Sequels, are never as good. Even if there are many books, as proven by 'The Two Towers' and all Harry Potter when Chris Columbus stopped directing them... they just aren't as good. Harry Potter had 8 films, so by the last 2 it was decent. The Return of the King picked up the falling world of Tolkien that The Two Towers had left in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KoOtiuSjuI

I'm not saying that this was a bad film, certainly not as bad as some of those that I have just mentioned, but it was way off the standards of the first film.
I know it's a family film and it does appeal to young children. It is the kind of film that you watch when you are forced to reunite with your family on Sundays or when it's your cousins birthday and you have to put in an appearance.
I'm gonna be honest and say that I still watch the first one quite a lot. I like watching it on my days off or in the evenings, but i don't think that i will be doing that with this one.

For those of you that haven't seen it:

Percy Jackson basically hasn't done anything useful or worthy of note since returning the lightning to Olympus. He constantly gets between the god of war's daughter. When Luke sends a bull (Hephaestus's) to camp half-blood, we learn two things... 1) Tyson is flammable and really strong, 2) Luke has poisoned Tallia's tree and that is how the Bull managed to force his way in. Tallia is the daughter of Zeus and she was killed by a cyclops on the edge of the border of camp half-blood. Her spirit protects the boundaries and doesn't let anyone that isn't a half-blood in.

In order to save the tree and keep the grounds protected, Percy and co set off on a quest to go to the sea of monsters and get the golden fleece (commonly associated with Jason and the Argonauts). Percy was not chosen by Dionysus, Clarice was (god of war's daughter). They end up teaming up together when they get swallowed by the monster (possibly Charibdis?).
Long and short of it is that Luke wants the fleece to restore Chronos, the Father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon who is a Titan. Chronos was killed by his three sons because he used to eat all his children. Luke shoots Percy when he has the fleece, except that Tyson takes the bullet or whatever it is and falls in the river. Of course because he is a son of Poseidon, he is healed by the river and therefore is around to fight the final battle. Luke restores Chronos and consequently gets eaten by Chronos. Percy defeats Chronos, in the meantime Anabel dies (told she was useless) and the fleece is used on her. They return with the fleece to camp half-blood and use the fleece on the tree, which also revives Tallia. The prophecy, therefore becomes complicated and could relate to either Percy or Tallia.

That is it in a nut shell.
If you want to watch it... feel free. I wouldn't put it on your list of 1001 movies you must see before you die.

2 cups of coffee and some popcorn

So I get the first post... and our first film of the challenge is 'Shall We Dance'. I can imagine that some of you have no idea what this actually is... well- it's an old musical staring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. It was made in 1937 and no, it is not the 2004 remake staring Richard Gere and Jenifer Lopez that we are watching.
Synopsis:
As always with Fred Astaire, it's about dancing. Fred's character Peter.P.Peters is a ballet dancer. He secretly wants to blend ballet dancing with the modern day jazz dancing. Peters sees a picture of the famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Rodgers) and falls in love with her. Unfortunately for him, she's already taken and doesn't really warm to him when they first meet. 
They get false rumors from the media, claiming that they are married and eventually they get married in New Jersey, so that they can get divorced and Keene can marry her Fiancee. Of course, after getting married, she doesn't really want to divorce him, but with a few hiccups she leaves him and only comes back on his Broadway ballet show to serve him his divorce summons. It's never clear if they divorce or not.

Cast List:

• Fred Astaire as Peter P. "Petrov" Peters
• Ginger Rogers as Linda Keene
• Edward Everett Horton as Jeffrey Baird
• Eric Blore as Cecil Flintridge
• Jerome Cowan as Arthur Miller
• Ketti Gallian as Lady Denise Tarrington
• William Brisbane as Jim Montgomery
• Harriet Hoctor as herself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oYh1ycMTAs
Just a feel for the blend of jazz, tap and ballroom. The dancing in this clip is spectacular for the period of time.
Review:
George Gershwin's dance scenes are unchallenged. Gershwin writes a different dance for each scene and blends the modern jazz with the ballet to fabulous effect. It is a musical that in some ways is almost similar to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Starlight Express'. A musical that has to be dazzling and magical. The plot is a typical 1930's plot and therefore to make the film something more than everything else that was out there at the time, Gershwin had to develop breathtaking dance scenes, he had to bring something entirely new to the table. 
I don't know how famous Astaire and Rodgers were but i certainly didn't grow up with the same knowledge about them as i had for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. You only had to see their name on the cover of a film for it to be packed out in the cinema with ques going to the end of the road and round the roundabout.
Rodgers and Astaire provide something different. It could be contested that what you are looking at is more like an older 'Dirty Dancing' or 'Take The Lead'. Films that are entirely about dancing but merge and blend the traditional ballroom dancing with other elements.

I'm taking a look through the hit songs in this film and I have got to be completely honest and say that the only name i recognize is: 'Lets call the whole thing off'. According to Wikipedia, this film contains the largest score of Gershwin music, which is somewhat surprising because George and Ira Gershwin also wrote the music for the hit musicals 'Funny Face' and 'Lady be Good!'

Let's not forget that the requirement at this time to be in a musical was that you had to be able to sing and dance. We as the younger audience who didn't grow up going to the cinema to watch these films, often overlook the huge role that the leads play in their films. Bing Crosby wrote most of the music for the films that he was in, collaborating with the likes of Danny Kay, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Louis Armstrong. Fred Astaire, being a dancer, choreographed all the dance scenes for the hit numbers in this film. Which tells me that I should judge the film on its dancing and not on the music as such, so that is what I am going to do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS9rCo-sA9Q Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers performing the last number of the film 'Shall we dance'.

Again Wikipedia informs me that this film made less than half the amount that the previous Astaire/Rodgers film had made. This isn't important to me, I appreciate musicals for their singing, dancing and comedy. The box office success tells me nothing about an old fashioned musical (it can be questioned as to weather it really tells me anything about musicals being released today). It just means that it didn't appeal to the audience as much as the previous films had done, but that can be accounted for by the audience. What is popular with the audience this year doesn't mean that films of the same genre will be popular next year. The point of this blog is to re-asses and credit films. Very few musicals that flop on opening night/box office/within the first week are actually bad musicals. You only have to look at Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' to know that this is true. It flopped because it was about the situation in Argentina and that all changed suddenly, within the first week of it's opening. 

Conclusion:
Now I don't know much about Tap dancing and can't really appreciate it properly but I can appreciate the ballet and ballroom dancing that also takes place. I wrote that it was somewhat similar to Starlight Express... I don't mean that the musical takes place on roller blades, it doesn't. What I mean is that  once you have seen it, it looses its magic slightly the second and third time round.
Exceptionally comical, i'll give it that, however, it is not as easy to watch as something like high society. I'm sure someone who was trained in ballet (that which I am not) will disagree with me. While trying to feature Jazz dancing (to be predicted by the Gershwin's), it does not really have any jazzy songs, certainly not in the same way that Louis, Bing and Danny do jazz.
Pushing all that aside, it's still a great film, especially as it is in black and white and is certainly does not require too much brain power... making a nice film to relax to at the end of the week.
It is almost unanimously agreed that this film is not his best film for dancing, even so, it's a great icon of what film producers were trying to do in the 1930's. Almost like taking Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' and making a film of it (but not Disney). The idea that you can have a film almost entirely about dancing that doesn't really need a story line is a priceless idea and one that hasn't really made it in today's age. I can probably list the films that are really about dancing on my hands and would probably have trouble trying to think of more than ten.
So my overall conclusion is that, with a cup of coffee (or hot chocolate) and some popcorn, this was a really good way to start my week and certainly didn't have me wanting to vomit or hide (as the next film will have me doing).
Is it a good film?... I think so... would I watch it regularly?... probably not, it's not that kind of film.
If you haven't seen it, take a chance on it. Watch it and then post your comments for us!

I realised that we haven't explained what we are doing and why...
My sister and I have set ourselves a challenge to watch 120 films in 2014 and then post about them! We aim to watch about 2 films a week. 
We can't watch films that we have both seen and the sister that has seen the film doesn't post about it.
We have films from most categories. Feel free to comment as we go along.
Hopefully... the next post should be 'A History Of Violence'... watch out for it!
See you all soon.