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Welcome to the Gangbusters page, a compendium of comedy stimuli from Giles Brody.
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Friday, August 19, 2011

MAINSTREAM COMEDY REVIEWS

Opening paragraph about how unpromising the film looks, set up for disparaging pun in the final paragraph:

"So it looks like well known blonde bombshell and well renowned shit-for-brains Cameron Diaz is playing a teacher. Is this sci-fi or comedy? And its written by the CUNTS who wrote Year One. It was with trepidation that I went into the cinema to see it for free. Would it be an A or would it have to stay late after school for, I dunno, joke classes or some shit?"

Second paragraph: brief details of the story which is consumed by details about the actor, the actor's personal life and a token credit from a film the actor would rather forget about so as to hammer home the point that they're shit.

"Diaz plays a bad teacher but really, the only thing she could teach me is how to sleep because I'm bored. In real life, Diaz goes out with fellas. One of the fellas she went out with was Justin Timberlake who is in this film as a teacher also. The last time this prick did comedy it was in The Love Guru which was bad."

Third paragraph: bemoaning the story's direction, hypothetical unasked for corrections which contain spoilers for the film as it exists now:

"The film follows Cameron Diaz's struggle to save up money for a boob job to impress Justin Timberlake. This is stupid. Were I the film's author, I would have made him the main person who needed a penis enbiggener. Jason Segal plays the goofy PE teacher she ends up with in the films final minute (SPOILER!)"

Forth paragraph: bullshit about wanting to like the film so as not to look like a troll but its all bullshit because ...

"I wanted to like this film but went in with a bad attitude. Added to that, everything I wanted to happen did not and as such I was disappointed."

Final paragraph: .... you complete the bitchy shitty joke set up in the first paragraph that jumped into your head the day the film was announced. Usually a pun on the title, the lead's profession, the director's previous films or something that only makes sense to you.

"All in all, Bad Teacher needs to stay late for Joke Class! Bad Teacher + Cameron Diaz = Bad Film."

Monday, August 1, 2011

Captain America: The Low Budget Years

from The Independent, August 1st:


The new Captain America film is a hit but, says Giles Brody, the super soldier's last outing provides a cautionary tale

Captain America is unbeatable. Last weekend the chemically enhanced super soldier knocked Harry Potter off the top spot at the US box office and, judging by its opening weekend in the UK, his new film is set to be the blockbuster of the summer.

His studio, Marvel, has recouped most of its £85m budget and the film's lead, Chris Evans, can finally forget his other Marvel franchise (the woeful Fantastic Four in 2005). But there was a time when the "Cap" wasn't beating all comers in the cinema. There was a time when he couldn't even get into the cinema.

Back then, Captain America's biggest foes were not Nazis or evil scientists, but shaky film financiers. In 1990, 21st Century Film made a Captain America film starring JD Salinger's son, Matt. The project came about when the producer Manahem Golan was given the rights to Captain America as part of his severance from Cannon Films, a company he had run with his cousin, Yoram Globus. Together they earned the nickname "the Go-Go Boys", for their fast and cheap film-making.

Then Golan couldn't afford a rights payment, which meant that unless he did something with the property, the title would revert to Marvel. The director Albert Pyun had read Stephen Tolkin's Captain America script. A lifelong fan, he convinced Golan that he could make the film on a relatively small budget of $6m and assured him that it would be made before the looming expiry date.

Many actors were considered for the hero, including Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the American footballer Howie Long. The role eventually went to Salinger, who initially turned it down over funding concerns, on the advice of his lawyer. Joining him were Deliverance alumni Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, with Scott Paulin playing Red Skull, the villain with a dastardly plan to control the president's brain.

Everything was falling into place, but for one thing. "They just ran out of money," Salinger said, in a recent GQ interview. "It was a lot of well-intentioned people that loved the story and loved the character and wanted to make a good film and just weren't able to."

Pyun told Las Vegas Weekly: "It was a miracle the production didn't shut down or fall apart. There was a day when we ran out of film and couldn't buy any more."

Golan sent his producer, Tom Karnowski to different countries with a suitcase, to pick up cash. On the days when they did have film, there was a niggling feeling that what they were making looked a bit too daft, even by superhero standards. Pyun's plan of casting two Steves – a pre-serum weakling and a post-serum man mountain – was nixed by Marvel. The latex and foam jumpsuit used was so constricting that Salinger lost a stone from overheating, making the sickly Steve bulkier then his chemically enhanced alter ego. The Captain's mask resembled a stretched swimming hat with a fridge magnet "A" on the front and rubber ears glued to the sides. Salinger wore it with all the enthusiasm of someone tricked into going to a black-tie event in fancy dress.

Indeed, there is nothing particularly super about this Captain. He spends most of his time retreating. He feigns car sickness twice, to rob cars. Even the elderly president he is sent to rescue proves more adept at beating up the bad guys.

The film was shot entirely in Yugoslavia – set-pieces in Alaska and California were abandoned. Action sequences were cut or deleted. Money was scrambled together for reshoots but they were not enough to help what Entertainment Weekly called its "shapeless blob of a plot".

The film convinced Salinger that he would be better off behind the camera, as a producer. He offered to perform a cameo in the new film but was defeated by scheduling. Today, the old Captain is philosophical about his time as a superhero. "Maybe future superhero movies were a little bit better because of the mistakes that were made".

To see how far the Captain has come, Albert Pyun's 124-minute Director's Cut of 'Captain America' is available from his www.pyun.com; 'Captain America: The First Avenger' is in cinemas nationwide"


Special thanks to Alice, John and Dave H.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-cap-wasnt-always-so-marvellous-2329534.html

"Smell-o-vision" article for The Independent, 11th July



It featured in Time magazine's poll of 100 Worst Ideas of the Century, where it trumped, among others, mohawk haircuts and swine flu.

And now, like mohawk haircuts and swine flu, "Smell-O-Vision" is attempting a comeback. American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez announced that Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D will be released in "aromascope". The director told The Philadelphia Inquirer: "We brought 3D back the first time. We had to come up with a 4D, and the obvious choice was smell." He won't divulge what smells to expect ahead of the movie's 19 August release date, but does warn of a mischievous "smell prankster".

"Aromascope" is an improvement on the scratch and sniff "Odorama" cards from the likes of John Waters's 1981 comedy Polyester. To release the odours, audiences can "swipe" their finger (like an iPhone) over the panels. The film has Ricky Gervais giving a short tutorial before the film as robodog "Argonaut". It also has has the potential to be the rarest entry in the malodorous history of smelluloid – a box-office hit.

Samuel Roxy Rothafel was the first recorded pioneer of smell-cinema when he placed cotton wool soaked in rose oil in front of an electric fan during newsreel footage in 1906. 1960 was the next significant year for the aromatic cinematic industry when, in a clash Variety dubbed "the battle of the smellies", two producers competed to release the first fragranced film.

The producer Mike Todd Jr teamed up with Swiss inventor Hans Laube for 1960's Scent of Mystery, starring Peter Lorre. Laube's "Smell-O-Vision", first unveiled at the 1939 World Fair, emitted odours prompted by the movie's soundtrack. His costly and complicated system delivered scents via tubes leading to the audience's seats. Rival producer Walter Reade Jr's "AromaRama" was considerably less sophisticated, simply blasting smells through the cinema's air conditioning vents. Reade Jr's travelogue documentary Behind the Great Wall was the first into the cinema, treating audiences to 72 different smells from the orient. The film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "The artistic benefit of it is here demonstrated to be nil."

Released weeks later, Scent of Mystery's advertisements heralded Laube's invention as a cinematic milestone, "First They Moved (1895)! Then They Talked (1927)! Now They Smell!" Todd Jr hyped the film through his newspaper connections and his own groan-inducing puns ("I hope it's the kind of picture they call a scentsation!"). Critics and audiences were unanimous in their appraisal of the film: it stunk. The smells were either too strong or too faint, the audience's sniffing too distracting, the whirring and hissing of Laube's brainchild too intrusive. Critics dismissed the whole thing as an unpleasant gimmick.

But it doesn't end there. In 2006, Japanese company NTT piped odours into cinemas for Terrence Malick's The New World. Their machine allows customers to "download" different scents. A recent press release from the University of California and SAIT in Japan proclaims they've developed a smell-o-vision device, which could add another aspect of realism to your TV viewing. The compact device produces around 10,000 scents.

Should smell-o-vision take off, expect a seismic shift in top 10 film lists. Trainspotting's popularity as a modern classic will go down the toilet, as will anything not set in a bakery. Chocolat will hurtle to the top of IMDB's top 250. Perhaps climate control will be the next innovation, with the cinema temperature corresponding to the film? Sweat your way through the hottest day of the year in Spike Lee's scorching Do the Right Thing! Watch Doctor Zhivago through a haze of your own frozen breath! Enjoy Andy's triumphant rain-drenched prison escape in The Shawshank Redemption while being soaked by the cinema's sprinkler system.

As with 3D and CGI, the reaction will depend largely on the entertainment it's enhancing. Perhaps a smell-o-vision version of 2006's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer could convince audiences of its value? For now, Rodriguez is leading the way in "new" old gimmicks.



Big thanks to David, Charlotte and John

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/have-you-smelled-any-good-films-lately-2311575.html