The Next Big Thing

This posting every day thing isn’t really working out for one reason and another. Spent most of yesterday in the cinema... and it started well with a screening of “Angels With Dirty Faces” in the morning. Part of Glasgow Film Festival’s Cagney "season", the expression “they don’t make then like that anymore” certainly struck me when I was watching it. Being able to see these films on the big screen is genuinely magic.

From GFT, I made for the less-conducive climes of Cineworld for “Joe Dies at The End”. While not outright awful, its contempt for conventional storytelling becomes increasingly premeditated/irritating. Consider Bill and Ted take the "Lost Highway" in a version of “Go” or “The Hidden” for a post Scott Pilgrim world without the inherent charm of any of those. Add a hint of Donnie Darko and it plays out like a pilot for a TV show that will almost certainly never be made. Based on an internet phenomenon, it ultimately suffers from not being as smart as it seems to believe it might be.

And the location meant that by the time I made it down from the top floor of the cineplex then I just got back to the station as the train was pulling out. Part of a litany of events that peppered the whole day but I digress.

The final viewing of the day was “Django Unchained”. I’d bodyswerved reading anything about it and went in expecting to like it as I generally do with Tarantino movies. I like the way he appropriates and has created an audience made of people who would never go to see the stuff he filches from. With the exception of Christoph Waltz’s excellent performance – he gets all the best dialogue, it’s a series of set pieces built around the premise of "Blazing Saddles" as realised by Sam Peckinpah. The gore is B+Q red though and maybe a couple of fart gags would have loosened it up a bit. It’s way too long and choreographed. In my opinion, having rap in the soundtrack of a western is just wrong. DU is just too up itself to be entertaining to me and I think the John Legend song just tipped it all over the edge in populist self congratulation. He could have used Richie Havens, that would have made all the difference. I reiterate, to me. Go see it yourself but just don't expect to be blown away.

Disappointment is something I should be used to by now but it still rankles. I could use a suprise or two of the upbeat variety right about now. Let’s hope that tomorrow’s “Good Vibrations” screening provides a little of that.