The Interview Review

Is a film ever offensive enough to kill for? Apparently someone thinks so, but fortunately, the only real casualty of The Interview so far is Sony’s pride. The damage done by those exposed emails will likely be bandaged up nicely when The Interview eventually takes in a tidy profit from its online and cinema release.

When the presenter of dumbed-down celebrity interview show ‘Skylark Tonight’ learns that North Korean despot Kim Jong-un is a fan of his show, Dave Skylark and his producer Aaron decide to do what any journalist would do and secure an interview with the supreme leader. On discovering that they will be granted access to North Korea and its dictator, the CIA get Dave and Aaron to agree to assassinate Kim through poisoning him. Things become complicated as Dave begins a bromance with the madman he has been sent to kill and Aaron falls for a North Korean woman.

If you can’t already tell by the plot, The Interview is an incredibly silly film. From its opening Eminem cameo to its over the top tank vs helicopter finale, its frequently as dumb as its characters. Dick jokes, shit jokes, gratuitous swearing, casual racism, sexism and a splash of homophobia are all doused on the script making this a film aimed squarely at an audience that enjoys the juvenile side of life. Those looking for any smart satire need not apply or need to look very, very carefully and far beneath the thick layer of surprisingly bloody violence and unsurprisingly salty humour.

 It’s fun to see writer/director Rogen taking the straight role to James Franco’s off-the-chain dumbass extraordinaire. Their chemistry is fantastic, making it a shame when their simultaneous romances threaten to pull them apart. The Interview is basically a buddy comedy with Kim playing the Bond villain bad guy with some unexpected layers. It’s not worth killing anyone over but put it this way; if I was Kim Jong-un (or Katy Perry for that matter), both have good reason to be pretty fucking pissed with The Interview.

Watch the trailer:

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Film Song of the Day: “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore knows how to get people talking.  The director of controversy-baiting documentaries from Roger and Me to Capitalism: A Love Story is never afraid to mix the darkly comic with the shocking, powerful and disturbing.

In his Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine, he uses Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World not for comic effect and certainly not to show how wonderful the world is....

READ MORE of this article over at Filmoria.

One by One The Movie Trailer

Some of you may know that I have been working on an independent film for some time now.  It is still in the final stages of completion but the viral marketing is about to kick into overdrive.  

One by One: The Movie.  Starring Rik Mayall (Blackadder, The Young Ones, Bottom) and a hugely talented but relatively unknown cast, this is a British independent film I have been closely involved with nearly since its inception.  Directed by first-time writer/director Diane Jessie Miller, it is a controversial drama about a group of people keen to get those around them to open their eyes to new ways of seeing the world we live in.  It's brimming with thought and thoroughly researched ideas on the state of the world and has engaging characters in a shocking and thought-provoking narrative.  Having worked on this for over two years with some incredibly talented and dedicated people, I can't wait for the film to be completed and to get a release so it can be seen on the big screen. Watch the trailer below:



Funding is still needed to complete the film so if you feel like investing in a great project that a huge family of talented cast and crew have been sweating over for a long time now, here's the link to get involved: http://www.indiegogo.com/onebyone

The website for the film is here if you want to learn more about the project!  http://www.onebyonethemovie.co.uk/

I got to see a preview of the film on 28th January this year and I was gobsmacked.  It looks and sounds amazing and the performances are absolutely brilliant, none more so than the fantastic Heather Wilson who gives the film it's solid emotional core.  It delivers a hard-hitting gut-punch of an ending and the director and many others are still working tirelessly to get the film perfect before they will take it to international film festivals next year.

Check out some of the websites and other projects of the incredibly talented crew below:

The hilarious and deeply odd web series Hand Island created by Ash Parker and several other key crew members on this film.

The man behind the score: Simon Norman a.k.a. Stoltz

And futhermore, here is a music video for Duane Lamont that many of the One by One crew members (including myself) were involved in.  Want to know who filled that room with smoke at 0.40?  Yes... me!

I will be eternally grateful if you could follow One By One on twitter, share the trailer on your blog or donate/invest through the link here.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of the trailer in the comments section below.

Centipede Unleashed

The BBFC have decided to reverse the ban on Human Centipede 2.  After making 2 minutes and 37 seconds of cuts, the film will be released in the UK.

Guess what?  Now the film has recieved countless words written on it in the press, all that free publicity will probably have doubled or tripled its potential audience.  The trailers have bigged up the fact it was banned and the next trailers will probably big up the fact its been cut.

So the damage has been done.   I'm probably the millionth person to comment on this and I'm sure I won't be the last.  Hardcore horror fans will no doubt still be scouring the web for an uncut version, but the rest will now be able to get a reasonable idea of what all the fuss is about when they see th edited version on DVD.

Reviews suggest it's a poor film that would have likely been seen by very few.  But after all this controversy, it's a film that so many like me will feel they have to see now if they want to consider themselves a credible horror connoiseur.

Well at least now it's got a release, perhaps we can all stop banging on about it!

Shit Storm!

Rape, torture, sadism? Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll? What gets a film banned in this day and age? The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) has achieved the very difficult task and been rejected a certificate by the paternalistic Godfathers of British cinema, the BBFC.

Refusing to classify a film is the closest you can get to a ban. The film cannot be shown in public cinemas or sold on DVD etc without a certificate. Will this stop the sick little puppies so desperate to watch it getting their dirty paws on it?

With the internet making it easier to obtain anything you damn well want with a few clicks of a button, and Australia releasing the film, it won’t be long before the centipede crawls onto the web for curious eyes to devour.

So what is it that’s convinced the BBFC the rest of us can’t handle such a film? How about “the spectacle of the total degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, rape and murder of… naked victims”?

Throw in a “strong and sustained focus throughout the work on the link between sexual arousal and sexual violence and a clear association between non-consensual pain and sexual pleasure” and you’ve got a recipe for controversy.

Couldn’t they just have cut the film and released a shorter, sanitised version? Apparently not… “The BBFC considered whether cutting the work might address the issues but concluded that as the unacceptable material featured throughout, cutting was not a viable option and the work was therefore refused a classification.”

Three questions immediately spring to my mind:

1. Who wants to watch this shit?
2. Who comes up with this shit?
3. If the folks at the BBFC watched the film without becoming psychotic, raping, murdering human-centipede-making degenerates, then why can’t anyone else watch this shit?

Firstly, a surprising amount of people want to watch it. People who saw the first film and liked it; people who see anything that gets banned or causes controversy; many gorehounds, horror fans and sickos from all across the globe. Just look at the YouTube comments on the trailers or director Tom Six’s Facebook page for proof.

Secondly, Tom Six is the man responsible. See him here and see what he has to say in the teaser trailer:

Despite his claim of death threats on Facebook, go look at all the love he gets from fans on his wall! People love him and they love his movies. They argue if you don’t like it, don’t watch it!

Have they got a point? Should adults be allowed to watch whatever the hell they want (as long as no one was really harmed in its making)? It’s all make-believe after all. If the BBFC examiners managed to resist urges to harm people after watching the movie, couldn’t the rest of us?

But then there’s the argument that just sort of goes BUT WHY THE HELL WOULD ANYONE WANT TO WATCH OR MAKE THIS SHIT??????? Should people even be allowed to make a film like this? What drives a person to watch a film that features “degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, rape and murder"?

As a horror fan I’m slightly biased. I’ve seen some (for want of better words) f**ked up shit in films. For my dissertation I had to watch formerly banned nasties, such as I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left. I’ve seen the awful 10 minute scene of brutality that caused a storm (but was passed uncut) in Irreversible. I’m afraid I’ve seen a fair few films with plenty of “degradation, humiliation, mutilation, torture, rape and murder". Please don’t think any worse of me.

For me horror is horror. The more horrific a horror film is, the more impact it has and the more satisfied you are when you leave the cinema. You go to watch horror films to feel horrified and disgusted. You go for a thrill ride; to be terrified, disturbed and to survive a grueling experience (from the safety of your seat). The films make you shake, sweat, grip the seats or the person next to you. They make you jump, scream, look away and thank the higher power that you’re not in the situation the characters are in.

The Human Centipede was horrific; the premise, the script and the film itself. It was also silly and not to be taken seriously. But the sequel sounds altogether nastier. More vicious, sick and twisted than its predecessor and containing a character so corrupted by watching the first film that he has decided to create his own human centipede.

So is this perhaps what’s got the BBFC in rejection mode; a film that features a character affected by a film? Or is it just that the film has reached new depths of depravity? The Australian trailer below even uses the controversy and banning as a unique selling point. So what do you think? ‘Has horror gone too far?’