Conan The Comedian

Worldwide audiences may not be familiar with Conan O'Brien. I first came across him through his guest appearances on John Stewart's syndicated comedy news programme The Daily Show when O'Brien shared the Comedy Central network with him. He's a lanky 'ginger' with an irreverent wit who hosts late night chat shows. A couple of years ago O'Brien was promoted from cable TV to take over NBC's prime time broadcast The Tonight Show (practically an American Institution), from the previous host Jay Leno. And all was well and ratings were up. Then, in a very public and humiliating turn of events, Jay Leno wanted his old job back...and NBC relented.

Although O'Brien was handsomely financially compensated, it left the comedian with a passion for entertaining without a job and under a legal obligation not to appear on TV for at least 6 months. The documentary Conan O'Brien - Can't Stop shows the behind the scenes of the live US tour that O'Brien put on to vent his frustrations and to feed his need to keep putting on a show.

It's an interesting insight into the pressures of TV, fame and touring an evolving variety show. It doesn't always portray O'Brien in a flattering light as he often comes across as egotistical, selfish and addicted to fame and attention...but it's probably not that different from that of any other live artist on a grueling tour. Fascinating.

Arthur Is No King Of Comedy

Much as Dudley Moore's original '80's comedy Arthur depended on whether you think the lead actor is actually funny, the remake leans on star Russell Brand in much the same way. Now I like Brand. His cheeky charm, verbose wit and rock star psychological baggage (he's an ex-drug/alcohol/sex addict) give him an unspoken backstory that adds layers to any character he plays.

It's a shame then that this tame remake fails to fully embrace the R rated depravity the casting of Brand can offer. The script is weak although everybody's trying their best, especially a game Jennifer Garner and a terrifyingly gruff Nick Nolte. Disappointingly Helen Mirren, as Arthur's nanny doesn't quite handle the comic timing as ably as she did in last years RED, although she comes into her own when the inevitable sentimental drama comes into play. Finally, love interest Greta Gerwig is an appealing, but quirky, leading lady in the Zooey Deschenal mold and I look forward to seeing her in other stuff.

Fun and mildly diverting fluff your enjoyment of which is dependant on the man child known as Russell Brand. You decide.

Green Has Lost It's Sheen

With so many super hero movies inhabiting our screens over the last few years, comic book based films have largely had to stay fresh and interesting to keep audiences interested. So instead of the usual superhero origin tale like Superman - The Movie or Sam Raimi's Spider-Man we've had weird and wonderful yarns like Hellboy, Thor, LXG, Watchmen, Super and Kick Ass, which all add new and interesting spins on the standard super hero template. Unfortunately Warner's Green Lantern adaptation plays the universal super hero origin story playbook step by step. The last time it was done this closely to the comic book bible was Marvel's Iron Man in 2008. But thanks to a revelatory star turn by Robert Downey Jnr, some deft direction by Jon Favreau who managed to balance the fun and humorous with the intense and dramatic, and a fast moving, witty script the film was a winner.

Green Lantern's script is a mess. When it should be bold, exciting and imaginative it's instead predictable and Earthbound. And when the movie does get to spread it's wings showing the Green Lantern Corps, outer space battles and the traing sequences as hero Hal gets to train in the use of his powerful magic ring...it all feels rushed and all too brief. This might be down to the fact the studio, the normally reliable Warner Brothers, lost their bottle when it came to the more fantastical elements in the story, fearing they will put off a mainstream audience with limited imagination. Or, even with a gigantic $200 million budget, they didn't have enough money to give Green Lantern the true interstellar adventure he deserved.

Ryan Reynolds (deserving to be an A-list actor but the films he's in keep letting him down) does his best but he can't raise the fun level much above the base line. And everybody else is simply OK. Blake Lively is pretty but blank, Peter Sarsgaard is mainly low-key as the Earthbound baddie (he's entertainingly bonkers in one short scene and then he returns to subdued and dull) and the rest of the cast aren't well written enough to have any impact whatsoever.

Tonally it's a mess too. Good though they are, the spacebound scenes are a little jarring up against the Earth set stuff...something this summers Thor didn't have a problem with. And dramatically it doesn't flow very well. Hal mopes around a lot trying to decide if he wants the responsibility of being an interstellar policeman, but since he uses the ring when he needs to, it's never in doubt that he will take up the mantle. Also, his love/hate relationship doesn't make a whole lot of sense as if whole chunks of dialogue have been chopped out and left on the cutting room floor.

Although the film looks gorgeous and the effects work is pretty solid (as long as you don't have an allergic reaction to CGI) the over-abundance of unimaginative and talky Earthbound stuff often gives the film a TV pilot feel. If the official numbers are to be believed Green Lantern has a budget $5 million more than the latest Transformers film, which frankly has every cent of it's $195 million budget up on the screen.

It's not bad at all, but for a movie with a great star, a dependable director and based on a hot and wacky comic book property, it's disappointingly so so.

Mummy Knows Best

Hostage thrillers are usually a winner for me. There's a simple 'what would you do?' story angle which sucks the viewer into the film, providing the director doesn't muck it up or the hostages and hostage taker remain sympathetic and authentically menacing respectively.

Mothers Day is does a solid job of giving the suburban hostage drama a stretch of the legs. It's pretty taut, adds enough variation of location, character, backstory and twists to keep things from becoming dull and there's a likable cast in the form of Shaun 'Iceman' Ashmore, Jaime King and Brianna Evigan. And it's got a righteous, yet barkingly psychotic turn from Rebecca De Mornay as the mad mommy of the title. The story might be unremarkable but there's enough style and integrity in this little package for it to come up trumps.

Green Light For The Emerald Knight

Probably in an effort to build awareness for it's megabudget adaptation of DC Comics Green Lantern, Warner Brothers Studio decided to make some direct-to-video animated adventures for the interstellar Super Hero. The first Green Lantern: First Flight, released in 2009, was a fun retelling of the heroes origin. Now they've got a follow up adventure Green Lantern: Emerald Knights with the bonus voice casting of Nathan Fillion (who should be in everything) in the title role.

The film keeps it interesting for the kiddies (which this is obviously aimed at) by breaking the main story up into 10 minute flashbacks providing the back stories of some of the other Green Lantern Corps like Jason Isaacs' Sinestro, Henry Rollins' Kilowog and Kelly Hu's Laira. The animation is your standard Saturday morning fusion of Japanese manga and Yank cost cutting but it zips along, the voice casting is charming and, lets face it, has a grander scale than the soon to be released live action version promises. Ah, the beauty of animation!

June Pick N Mix

Marvel's Iron Man first, if misguided, spin off..



A Chat Show starring Return Of The Jedi's favorite fish boy...



A Star Trek movie parody...



An alternative ending to Back To The Future...



And a brilliant mash-up of the greatest movie threats of all time...

Shirley, I CAN Be Serious About Airplane!

Which movie has not only got the greatest number of jokes in it, but also the greatest number of gags that work, and not just the half arsed ones shoved in there for filler?

It's Airplane! of course, the directing debut team of David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams. An ever so straight faced spoof of the melodrama Zero Hour, Airplane! takes nearly every Airport gag in the book and spits them back out at you at an alarming rate. Robert Hayes and Julie Haggerty make excellent leads (Hayes deadpan exclamation directly to camera, "What a pisser!" is my favorite moment in the movie) but it's the hiring of established 60's movie stars Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves and the never-better Leslie Neilson, all with their deadpan but cheesy deliveries, that pushes this into genius territory. A special mention must go to Stephen Stucker's camp Control Tower operative Johnny who nearly steals the whole show.

If it wasn't for the genius of John Landis, Airplane! would be my favorite comedy ever.

...And They All Died, Horribly Ever After...

My expectations of Joe Wright's junior hitman movie Hanna were aligned by my memories of Luc Besson's Leon; an urban, small scale thriller/drama. But Hanna is so much more than I expected. It follows Saoirse Ronan's teenage girl, naive as she's grown up secluded from civilization by a protective father, yet highly educated and trained to kill.

It works on several different levels.

It's an offbeat coming of age drama set in the world of international espionage with Hanna's Dad, an always cool Eric Bana, letting her go her own way and unleashing Hanna on the outside world.

It works as commentary on the passage of our lives, from a protective upbringing with our parents and school, then leaving them to learn about the world through our own experiences, gaining new knowledge and perspectives about romance and family, and then dealing with the loss of our parents and eventually facing our own mortality. There's a spiritual element as well with Hanna seemingly ascending to a higher level of understanding about life and herself, before finally coming to terms with her own identity.

Another way to read the film is as a wider view on the assent of mankind from primitive man hunting animals with primitive weapons in the wilderness, through to the establishing of rudimentary townships, the discovery of science and electricity, to idealistic rural communities, and the descent into crumbling conurbations... before reminding us that in all mankind's progress, we still kill in a primitive way.

And then there's a very deliberate fairy tale quality as Hanna grows up in a Brothers Grimm inspired log cabin in the woods, is pursued by Cate Blanchett's 'wicked stepmother' character, and the climax takes place in a fairy tale theme park.

It's a deceptively simple tale with lots of depth that's made even better by some standout performances from Ronan, Blanchett and a barking Tom Hollander. For a guy who's mainly directed period drama or Oscar baiting dramas, Joe Wright handles the action and suspense expertly. And finally, The Chemical Brother's pulsating original score adds energy that no amount of Avid-farts could provide.

Like Hanna herself, this is a small unassuming movie that packs a punch.

The Ass Of Jack vs Super Stringy Horse Cum

It so happens that with every new Jackass film there is so much footage that doesn't make the cut, either because it's not deemed funny enough or the stunt doesn't quite work as planned, that there's enough footage to make an entire new movie. That's the case with Jackass 3.5 which is the unused leftovers of Jackass 3D combined with some revealing behind-the-scenes interviews.

Leftovers it might be but this is still very funny, very twisted stuff and it's always a pleasure to spent time with Knoxville, Steve O, Wee Man and the gang.

Best Of TV - For The Uniform

I've done it once before on this blog, but I'll start reviewing a few great episodes of classic TV shows as an example that stuff on the small screen can sometimes rival that on the big screen.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of consistency. It had a decent enough premise but most of the early drama was squandered as the struggled to understand and define it's own identity. Only in the second half of it's run, with the establishment of a huge returning ensemble cast, Galaxy changing conflicts (The Maquis Threat, The Dominion War), expanded mythology (wormhole aliens) and a more devil-may-care, balder badass Avery Brooks as promoted Captain Sisko did things get more dramatically satisfying.

Although there's plenty of great hours to choose from, the one DS9 episode that I keep returning to is For The Uniform. So what's so great about it?

1/ Although not part of the epic Dominion War arc that dominated DS9 (in it's later years, it does rely on a great deal of backstory and mythology built up in previous episodes. This wealth of backstory concerning a rebel group The Maquis and the defection of one of the DS9 crew, Security Chief Michael Eddington, does give depth to the plot and characters in the way that the events of The Hobbit might enrich your experience of Lord Of The Rings.

2/ It's a tale of brinkmanship; essentially two guys on opposing sides trying to outwit each other in a game of cat and mouse. When you've got a clash of competing intellect like that, you don't need much action to generate genuine excitement (it's why Wrath Of Khan is still so great).

3/ Again, like Wrath Of Khan, it celebrates the courage and abilities of a crew willing to push their skills to the limit, flying a spaceship into battle that's badly damaged and barely working. It's a World War II two movie about an inferior submarine trying to out-maneuver a superior enemy. The sequence of the crew trying to relaunch a battle damaged USS Defiant embodies the exhilarating and exciting can-do-anything-if-we-put-our-minds-to-it attitude as they quickly and calmly solve problems and avoid disaster.

4/ For The Uniform does a great job of solving The Wrath Of Khan problem of never having the main characters meet by inventing a bridge based hologram to allow Captain Sisko's opponent Michael Eddington to appear on the bridge and have a face to face confrontation. Not only does it up the level of drama, but it reduces the viewscreen FX budget, and allow the space station bound supporting cast to appear in the show too!

5/ As with other examples of Star Trek, the episode allows a classic piece of literature to be interwoven into the narrative, in this case Les Miserables. Using a classic story, DS9 not only highlight it's subtext about repressed victims of society but deepens the characters of Sisko and Eddington by comparing them to the novel's hero Valjean and it's villain Javert.

6/ There's some nice performances in the episode too. I was only familiar with actor Ken Marshall's work as the cocksure hero from Krull, but he gives Eddington many the many layers needed to show a terrorist who's convinced his action are for the good of the meek and oppressed. There's also some very nice character stuff with Terry Farrall's Dax and Avery Brook's Sisko which is the nearest you'll get to the Kirk/Spock/Bones relationship in spin-off Trekdom.

7/ Best of all though is that the episode highlights what DS9 could do that no other Trek show could do; have the Captain be a complete cock. Whether he's full on bluster mode (the punch bag scene shows Brooks at his hamming, bluster best) or whether he's making morally dodgy decisions that will allow him to win this week, it's brilliantly refreshing in any TV series to have a central character be able to occupy a more anti-hero role.

Great stuff, all aided by the fact it's a spaceship set episode with them travelling around blasting the crap out of each other (which is like cat nip to a kitten for me).

Priest Is Without A Prayer (But I'm Not Religious Anyway)

Things didn't look good for Priest. From the same director of the lame Legion and a hoard of scathing reviews, I was expecting the Paul Bethany comic book adaptation to be a steaming pile of poo doo. Fortunately it's an ambitious, large scale science fiction tale with nearly enough, but not quite, budget to pull it off.

In a story that mirrors the classic John Wayne western The Searchers, a retired killer (of vampires) heads out into the wilderness, along with the girls loyal but inexperienced boyfriend, to rescue his teenage niece from the clutches of the barbarian natives (vampires). It's got a look that's not too far removed from The Mutant Chronicles and a 2000AD comic vibe as with the Priest himself coming across like Judge Dredd leaving Mega City to go into the Cursed Earth to battle muties.

Apart from some dodgy effects work (the badness of which is nullified by a hyper-stylised 300-ish look) the visual aspects of the story have scale, with some dusty western photography, epic landscapes and some surprisingly coherent action sequences.
Priest can't be described as 'good', but it is very much a guilty pleasure movie for those that like a bit of far-future sci-fi nonsense. Yep, there's not an aspect of the plot that's not been done better elsewhere, the great cast are phoning it in, and the budget always feels like they spent $10 million on booze rather than the CGI, but it's got vision, style, action-aplenty, a sinister Karl Urban and a cute Lily Collins.

Enjoyable bollocks.