I know I’ve been a bit lazy on this blog lately. Life has been busy and will continue to be. But I’ll put up a few bits over the weekend, starting with this:

Every other trailer I’ve seen for this movie makes it look absolutely terrible, which saddens me as I think there are few who can rock as hard as the D. Whilst I still think the movie is going to be bad, this trailer does ROCK.

I’m not normally a particularly emotional guy when watching films. I mean, when it gets really sentimental or there’s a really, really sweet ending, I might get that little lump of ‘awwwwwww’ that we all get, but that’s about the size of it. I don’t walk away too upset when a film is bad, and whilst I am touched when a film is very emotional, I can usually walk it off.

Last night I watched a film that was bad for a weird reason: it was too close to real life (also badly written, acted, and generally annoying). I mean, limited narrative, but all the emotional manipulation that you expect from (bad) people, not movies. And there was no other purpose to the film: the whole thing seemed designed to make you feel uncomfortable, sad and depressed. Which it was successful at.

I don’t really want to name the film as I’d kind of like to hear people’s opinions on it unprejudiced by my view, so I’ll keep stumm. But I’m still shaking off the funk (really, disproportionately depressed by it), so if you have any amusing emails or links, I’d probably particularly appreciate them today.

I got really upset watching Clerks. 2 last night. I loved the original film; genuinely off-the-edge-of-the-world humour (the wall wasn’t close to being in range), simple problems you could empathise with, believably unbelievable characters.

This tragic, mutant, elder step-cousin of a film entirely fails to live up the standards set by the original. Matt observed that one key problem is the fact that there simply aren’t enough jokes. There aren’t: I think there’s like, seven, in the whole film. Relative to the original, which had a healthy jokes per minute count… well, there’s no comparison.

There’s also the issue of the pointless filler scenes. Instead of jokes, which were clearly too much effort to script for a whole 90 minutes of film, Kevin sticks in a whole bunch of quivering-lip-indie-music-playing-lets-all-be-sad-for-the-characters scenes, which are designed to provide the same emotional impact that a punch to the heart would. Needless to say, they don’t. They reminded me of the scene from Friends when Joey moved out and was looking through a fake rainy window – except that scene actually made me feel something. The scenes are tedious, pointless filler, hot though Rosario Dawson is.

The next thing, which is related, is the fact that this really feels like a post-Jersey Girl film. Kevin Smith seems to have gone through some kind of middle-aged meltdown: now one of my favourite directors is behaving like a man who has had a particularly helpful course of therapy and is quite pleased about the world. Possibly there are also some sedatives at work. Anyway, end-result – the film has all the emotional poignance of a damp fish. None of the gut-wrenching emotion of Chasing Amy, and none of the raucous humour of the first Clerks or even Mallrats**.

Next, all the characters (with the exception of the My Name is Earl dudes) were tedious. They don’t seem to have moved on at all in 10 years, and then over the course of the film, each experiences some kind of significant epiphany. Rubbish. Although the new kid, Elias, is quite funny.

[Sigh]. Film critics know little. The idiots in Cannes who gave this a standing ovation are… well, idiots. Kevin, I really wish someone had slapped you whilst you were making this film (possibly someone like Will Ferrell or Vince Vaughan, and not your wife) and pointed out that you had completely missed the point. Those guys know how to do coming of age movies, which is essentially what this is.

** I actually think that Mallrats is the best Kevin Smith movie ever, bar none, but accept that my view here is controversial…

Got to see a special sneak preview of Borat last night. It is deeply, deeply disturbing. It is racist, anti-semitic, misogynistic, crass, homophobic… lots of other bad things. Of course, it is only superficially so — playing on all these prejudices to highlight the fact that a lot of random Americans have those ridiculous opinions.

At least, I hope that’s what its doing. Because I found it very, very funny. As did most of the audience.

It is full of cringeworthy moments, absurd stunts, unbelievable ‘reality’ set-pieces, and actually manages to sustain quite a coherent narrative as Borat travels across “U S and A” – an impressive act in itself.

In essence, good stuff. Go see it if you have a strong constitution and have ever found Sacha Baron Cohen funny. Don’t if you haven’t.

Not wanting to spoil you, I instead leave you with this clip from Borat at Comiccon. You like?

…opens soon, and thanks to an awesome blogger targeting scheme, there’s a chance to get free tickets! Don’t think there are any tickets left, I’m afraid (not in London anyway) but I’ll leave a taster for you here:

Arvind arranged for us to be given a tour of his movie set! Sugar House Lane, due for release in March 2007 (or thereabouts) enters its final week of production this week and we got to see the set in full splendour – a fantastic old warehouse near Bromley-by-Bow. The Art Department have really gone to town and its a remarkable, remarkable sight. The graffiti (which is hysterical, and one of which references a Myspace link) was put together by the rival East London and West London graffiti massives. Awesome.

Loads of photos on Flickr, as ever, but I really would encourage everyone to check out the blog — there’s content from loads of people involved in the production of the film, behind the scenes video, and photos from their Flickr photostream.

For those wondering what the movie is about, here’s the official synopsis:

Crackhead, Killer, Accountant.

Disillusioned middle class city boy Tom is looking for something in the back streets of London; he thinks D – a young desperate drug addict can give him what he needs. But what D’s offering comes with more than just a price tag…

Holed up in a derelict warehouse, with the impending threat of local crimelord Hoodwink at their backs, both men play an intense game of cat and mouse; scrambling to cut a deal and make sense of the very lives they may be about to lose.

The crew and cast seem awesome – check them out on imdb. I’m very excited. And I’m very pleased at how well they’re doing the whole social media thing; Flickr, YouTube, competitions for readers of the blog, the whole shebang. Please check it out, link to it, write about it, and let me know if you want an iconic SHL sticker – I have a few to give out!

Another exciting movie coming soon is Sugarhouse Lane, a new film from Slingshot Studios. Yep, that’s right, it’s Arvind’s company’s first movie! It’s just finished its first week of shooting, and as I understand it things are going well.

Slingshot’s taken on the social media thing to help support the development and marketing of the film, and Sugarhouse lane has its own blog, Flickr photostream, and has been uploading some content onto Youtube as well – see below.

It’s hugely exciting. I’m not privy to any special news as yet but will follow the film’s official outlets and see what I can get out of Arvind as well… in the meantime, enjoy the time lapse graffiti / set creation video they’ve put up:

Oh — and Arvind — you were right. Sugarhouse Lane is a much better name for the movie than Collision. V. excited!

There are a few exciting movies coming up. Sure, I still haven’t gotten over the excitement that was A Scanner Darkly. If you haven’t seen the trailers for the below, check them out – although I appreciate that none of these are ‘news’, some of you may have missed that these were coming.

They’re making a live-action film of The Transformers – directed by Michael “I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor” Bay. The teaser looks ok, but I’m just excited about the possibility of a real-looking transforming Optimus Prime. What a hero. They’ve even recruited Peter Cullen, who voiced Prime in the original 1984 series, return to the role – “Autobots, transform and roll out.”

Ah, such satisfying geekery.

Then, there’s the Prestige, which Tom pointed me to. This has Batman and Alfred from Batman Begins (Christian Bale and Michael Caine) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) with Scarlett Johannson facing off against each other as performing magicians around the turn of the century. Except they seem to be having a Deathmatch, and there’s a chance one of them has real magic… Directed by Christopher Nolan, this also looks like it might be entertaining…

Lastly, Nic Cage has Ghost Rider coming out soon, which looks suitably ridiculous. I anticipate it being mediocre at best (why can’t Marvel follow DC’s lead and focus on quality rather than quantity!) but the visual effects look v. entertaining, and when Nic Cage says ‘let’s ride’ and transforms into a flaming, harley riding skeleton – well, it’s cool!

More on other films to come soon. But just wanted to get some anticipation out of my system!