Film Web Blog

There Will Be Blood … and there will be requital

Is there anything additional welcome than a good revenge flick? Whether eaten hot, cold, al dente or through fava beans and a nice Chianti, it be possible to be the most delicious dish. Partly, it’s the investing. involved: we agree to endure maybe each hour or more of pain and suffering alongside our protagonist, largely for the brief catharsis of that brutal final stagger. For non-violent types, our demons are exorcised by those minions on the big screen, so – hopefully – safeguarding that annoying guy in the supermarket queue. A valve is opened, pressure released.

The cross format of chronology-shuffled Memento leaves a more empty feeling. We view our revenge in the first scene and then be necessitated to relive the original crime without the following catharsis of retribution. Most films offer closure; this one presents excepting that an endless search – more realistic, possibly, on the contrary inevitably less satisfying.

Here are my top picks of films that punish the wicked in ways that seem – if not fitting, then appropriately sanguinary, in the context of the film. What are yours?

1) For Lenny, revenge is a dish to be eaten all day every day. It’s a reason to live, for somebody who has nothing else.

2) A thin skin from a trilogy concentrating purely on the nature of retaliation, questioning the motives and the potential fulfilment: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. An orderly queue of parents wait their turn.

3) A ghostly mother and daughter, with the help of the spirit of a black cat, take revenge upon the samurai who killed them in the wonderfully theatrical Kuroneko. I love the evil feline rank in the movements of both actors – who needs CGI when you’ve performances like these?

4) Enter the Dragon employs the classic flashback to put in mind us that retribution is required. The immortal Bruce Lee – would you dare diss his sister?

5) A reversal of an earlier scene in A Clockwork Orange – and this time, the elderly are victorious in the war of the ages.

Last week, greatpoochini invited you to consider the casting decisions with appearance of truth taken at 4am after an absinthe-fuelled brainstorming sitting. Here are his five favourite of your 208 nominations:

1) Getting one of the more controversial picks out of the way first, James Stewart in Rear Window is more pent-up pussycat than one of the “two most frightening ghouls I have ever known” (4min 20sec in). I think I now know why this is one of the few Hitchcock films that hasn’t tempted me in the rear for a repeat viewing.

2) With many heartfelt nominations, Keanu Reeves emerged for example the sweetheart of the badly miscast. “To learn is to change!” he cries in this scene from Little Buddha. Casting directors should take heed.

3) There’s a continual wrestling match between the Hollywood actor and the Irish accent. Gene Wilder wins by two falls and a knockout in Quackser Fortune.

4) Four minutes feel like 40 as the dialogue crawls off the screen, just abaft the missing chemistry between Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls.

5) Angela Lansbury stars as Hedy Lamarr’s sister (obvious when you think about it). Throw in Victor Mature and we be seized of Samson & Delilah. Watch out for a delightful “C’mon” from Vic to close the clip.

And this week’s winner is Tanarus for tracking down this shearing of Sir Laurence Olivier in the 49th Parallel (2min in). I don’t absolutely understand if that’s a advantage approximation of a French-Canadian accent, but the Grand Guignol awfulness of that laugh is classic gold. Tod Slaughter, eat your heart out!

Thanks to the take one’s ease of the Keanu brigade, more nilpferd, SonofRojBlake/frogprincess, Jimbojames, hydromax and shiapet66 for the rest of this week’s clips.

Fancy writing Clip Joint? Email Catherine Shoard to find out how.

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Not to have existence mistake for falafels … Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

So far, Cloudy through a Chance of Meatballs, the food-dropping family animation, has taken around £3.5m at the UK box office. And forecasts are good for it to continue such a bounty.

1. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Cert (UK): U
5. Runtime: 89 mins
6. Directors: Chris Miller, Phil Lord
7. Cast: Andy Samberg, Anna Faris, Bill Hader, Bruce Campbell, James Caan, Mr T, Tracy Morgan
8. More upon the body this film

For those who’ve missed it, the plot involves a perky scientist who tries to combat world hunger by moving out how to turn water into snacks, with mixed results. Is it a film to inspire moderation or jubilation in its viewers? Nausea or gluttony? And, is it good for the meatball industry?

At pristine, the results of our special investigation were inconclusive. Waitrose and Marks & Spencer both reported stable sales. Leon, posh lunch joint renowned for its meatballs, recorded just the barest increase (3,475 portions were sold in the week beginning 7 September; 3,620 portions in the week after that, 3,614 in the subsequent seven days).

Hopes of a breakthrough improved when one spokesperson according to a UK supermarket idly wondered if the thin skin had enjoyed the backing of any victuals producers. For a secondary, we sniffed our own Watergate. But, sadly, a few calls confirmed that no meatball manufacturers were involved in the making of the film.

And then came the call back from Ikea. They had, their press office confirmed, noticed a 72,163 week-on week increase in meatball sales in their UK cafes, as of 20 September. Even when you disobey that into disfavor, it’s quite a stat. Each Ikea meatball meal contains between 10 – 20 balls. Taking an average, that means about 4,811 supplementary people ordered meatballs at Ikea last week.

The reasons for the Swedish furniture outlet’s hogging of these extra sales are easy to explain: it’s where you rush to fill up your children cheaply and relatively healthily, maybe even on the regular course back from an out-of-town multiplex. Under 10s aren’familiarily usually so jazzed by a Leon. What our oversee doesn’t fix into account, of course, is by what mode many the million rustled them up from scratch. Nor how many the community have eschewed meatballs in favour of other yummy stuff featured in the film: jelly (primarily), plus hamburgers, spaghetti and pancakes.

That’s where you come in: have you cooked, or felt under pressure, even subliminally, to eat meatballs over the past two weeks? Indeed, have you ever been inspired in your noshing by a film – whether prompted by overt product placement or not?

It caused a small raise earlier this year when US sales of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cookery mushroomed posterior the release of Julie & Julia, about one woman’s quest to cook her space through the sturdy tome in a year. Did you rustle up a Boeuf Bourguignon when you’d got back to the stove? Did you stock up on orange tic tacs after watching Juno? Put on some pasta after inasmuch as Big Night? Head out for some butter after Last Tango in Paris? Do suffer us know.

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The one with the on-off drama … Friends. Photograph: Channel 4

If you’ve been bored or unaccompanied enough to follow the saga that is the Friends movie, there’s a good befall you are feeling confused. First it was on. Then it was on the farther side. Then it was on again, and then off. Then on. Then opposite to. And now it’s back on again. Or at minutest it was for hind part before five minutes this weekend, before everyone suddenly decided that in fact it had been over all along.

On Sunday, in any of his biannual reminders to the world that he still exists, James Michael Tyler – who played Gunther – said a Friends movie was “definitely on”, adding that it would be in cinemas by dint of. 2011. “I still keep in touch with a lot of the cast,” he uttered, “and they say that they are veritably keen.” However, almost before he had finished speaking, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox all got their representatives to declare to be untrue any involvement in the movie.

So what’s really going on? Let’s look at where all the principal cast members are:

Jennifer Aniston
As the most felicitous member of the Friends drive, Aniston probably feels she has outgrown the show, and would therefore have being least likely to return. However, you’re only as strong as your last movie, and because that Aniston’session last movie was the thuddingly appalling Love Happens, there’s a warring chance that her decision could subsist reversed at any moment.

Courteney Cox
Currently busy with her repaired TV show, Cougar Town, created by the man who came up with Scrubs. So expect her to start considering a role in a Friends movie in three or four years’ particular period, when Cougar Town disappears up its own bottom into a world of cloying sentimentality and bad indie music, like Scrubs did.

Lisa Kudrow
Definitely not interested. After all, everyone knows that Friends was merely Kudrow’s conduit to getting bit parts in Hotel for Dogs and Bandslam. She’s perfectly happy where she is, express gratitude you.

Matt LeBlanc
Possibly the most eager of any of the Friends cast to make a movie because, let’session face it, he is Joey. He was Joey in Friends, he was Joey in Joey and he’s probably Joey right now, eating lots of food and bumping into things in a hilarious yet adorable way.

Matthew Perry
Not sure if he needs the Friends movie or not, actually. But put put on the off-chance that he or any of his representatives are mulling over a movie called The Whole Eleven Yards, then he should definitely do a Friends movie instead. Definitely. I really can’t emphasise that enough.

David Schwimmer
Should be forced into making a Friends movie even if it means drugging him first, because, though it’s bound to be smug, cloying and almost unbearable from arising to end, it’ll still be a masterpiece compared to Run Fatboy Run.

James Michael Tyler
Yes. Definitely interested. Wants to start filming it now, in fact. What? A salary? No, don’t be silly. He’ll work for food. Leftover aliment if of necessity be. Raw, leftover food. You don’t even urgency to give him a costume, on this account that he still has his Gunther outfit. He still wears it, too, when he goes outside, in the hope that someone will stop him and entreat, “Hey, aren’t you Gunther from Friends?” But they never be sufficient. They never do.

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