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Cockney Mackem

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Posts posted by Cockney Mackem

  3. Posted

    3 hours ago, Team Fred said:

    I’m Team Fred and I like this movie.  I don’t love it, but I like it.

    I love Rik Mayall (MAY-ul) and have seen literally everything he’s ever appeared in, as should everybody.  He was a comedic genius, not only with with eye-gouging, ball-stomping slapstick, but also with deeply ironic character work.  It’s a shame that he’s not better known in the States, because he really was one of the great comic talents of all time.  That said, it’s just as well Drop Dead Fred wasn’t his launching pad into Hollywood superstardom, because its failure kept him on English television, where he made Bottom, the undisputed pinnacle of his career. 

    One reason I like, but don’t love, Drop Dead Fred is that the role of Fred, the unbridled id, is wrong for Rik Mayall; this absolutely should have been an Ade Edmondson vehicle.  He was Rik’s partner in the Dangerous Brothers and Bottom, and even Waiting For Godot in the West End, and played Vyvyan on The Young Ones.  In their comedic relationship, it was Ade who was always the one who did whatever he wanted however he wanted without any shame, screaming every line, while Rik was always the ego-restrained id, a pompous and boastful narcissist with a carefully guarded and largely phony persona who wanted and pretended to live a wild life, but when caught or confronted attempting to feebly do so, would be so embarrassed that he would adamantly deny it and even voice his moral superiority over it.   That complex hypocrisy was the brilliance of his characters, and it’s completely absent here.

    So, when’s Casey coming back to watch Guest House Paradiso?  She’d love it...

    I don't think the filmmakers put as much thought into it as you did. They just wanted to have a lot of this kind of thing:

    tenor.gif?itemid=9599079

    And put a touchy feely 90s ending on it.

     

     

    • Like 3

  4. Posted

    2 hours ago, grudlian. said:

    My perception is that I'd compare him to Yahoo Serious but even less impact. A foreign novelty comedian who had one failed movie I'm the early 90s and seemingly disappeared back to his home country.

    Before this movie was announced, I could not have named Rik Mayall and wouldn't recognized on sight even though I'd seen Drop Dead Fred multiple times as a kid. I'm mildly surprised to hear he was a legend in the UK and I'm (mildly) familiar with at least big name British comedians from 80s-90s.

    Oh yeah he was HUGE over here. Not all that surprised that he's not known in the US because if the show doesn't cross the pond they don't get seen. SNL isn't really shown in the UK so I've lost count of the number of comedy actors I've seen show up in a film and think, they're new who's that and they're a household name on a par with Will Ferrell.

    So Rik Mayall was an absolute mainstay of British TV comedy for at least two decades:

    The Young Ones was huge in the UK in the early 80s, and the cast even had a number 1 hit single.

    The Comic Strip Presents... wasn't as widely seen but very influential and some big names got a break in their shows/films. He also had notable guest star appearances in three if the four seasons of Blackadder, as well as an iconic turn as a sleazy politician in The New Statesman (think House of Cards with dick jokes). And of course Bottom, which was especially violent and crude. 

    Fun facts: he had a blink-and-you-miss it cameo in American Werewolf In London; and one of his Comic Strip appearances was as iconic bass player in Bad News, a spoof rockumentary which came out at the same time as Spinal Tap. They released an album, produced by Queen's Brian May, which includes a gloriously unlistenable cover of Bohemian Rhapsody.

     

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    On 7/26/2019 at 10:38 PM, AlmostAGhost said:

    I don't mind the bit too much, but I can't wrap my head around the endgame of it. What's the point?  Just incessant repetition? Is that the comedy of it? *shrug* Paul's amused by it, so I guess that's enough though.

    Shouldn't be any legal issues with giving away the discs, or re-selling. IP law lets you do that. There's more IP issues going on in their t-shirt store anyway, lol.

    I have to admit I like it when someone commits to the bit.

     

    For example, there was an Irish comedian called Dave Allen, a genius who incidentally did some terrific sketches parodying films like the Exorcist. In his younger days he lost the tip of a finger in some sort of accident, but he would never say how he did it. His own son would ask like "Come on really, how did you do it?" and Dave would make up a different silly story every time. Eventually the great man died without ever telling his son how he did it, which his son loved because he committed to the gag to the very end

  7. Posted

    On 7/26/2019 at 3:45 PM, grudlian. said:

    I really don't want Paul to give in to the Transformers Reference Of The Fallen bit. I was mildly annoyed that he kept giving it time in the mini episodes, but I really respect the commitment of the guy. I'd love for people to I Am Spartacus this and do it at other shows.

    Surely this has to go on forever, where this fella keeps going but the gang never do a Transformers film...

  8. Posted

    On 6/22/2019 at 10:07 PM, E.Lerner said:

    This is basically the twist of a certain Black Mirror episode, but instead of a holonovel/game, the program is a modeling simulation — calculating probabilities, suggesting possible outcomes, and informing decision-making in the real world. (I never watched it, but the finale of Enterprise takes place in one of these, in the holodeck of the Enterprise D during the events of the TNG episode "The Pegasus")

    That's what I keep gravitating to when I try to explain what the kid was trying to accomplish with this game — his way of asking his dead dad what to do about his abusive new dad. But the problem I keep coming up against is whether Dill has agency or whether he is essentially being controlled by his son.  I just don't know if there is an internally consistent answer there.

    If anyone would like to try a good version of this kind of thing, may I suggest a novel called Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyre?

  10. Posted

    8 hours ago, PollyDarton said:

    Maaaaaan... this movie would have been so much more famous and arguably so much more... watchable if Val Kilmer was Joe. He would have raised the insanity level, which his honestly what this film needs. 

    So I bought this dumb movie because it was the same price as renting it... and I said to myself "It can't be that bad." Anyhoo... If anyone wants to Rabbit this thing one evening this week I'll host.

    I would have enjoyed it if Val Kilmer had played the part as his character from Alexander, including costume eyepatch, exclaiming oaths to Zeus and dodgy Irish accent

    • Like 2
    • Haha 1

  12. Posted

    This may not be either a correction or an omission but I found a nice snippet in an interview with Michael Biehn about the film. He said he only got the part because Val Kilmer pulled out, and clearly Kilmer was wise to pull out. He summarised the film by saying "that's the Nicolas Cage you get when you don't ask him to pull it back a little bit." 😆

    • Like 2
    • Haha 1

  14. Posted

    Hopefully the gang gets round to doing Jaws The Revenge as well, because that takes bad film-making to an unprecedented, operatic level of shit. The shark is after the Brodies. How does a shark know the Brody brother works for Amity Police, and that he's on duty that night and will come to clear the trap at the harbour? How does the shark know that the other Brody brother works in the Caribbean, and that the Mum is going to fly down there? The shark is *waiting for her* when she gets there - does it have access to airline passenger manifests? Can it use a computer?

    I have a theory that in Jaws The Revenge the shark is in some kind of aquatic FBI and the Brody family are the antagonists. The first shark was unethically hunted by the Chief and his accomplice with the fishing boat. The second was investigating that murder and was electrocuted in a murderous cover up with the help of a complicit Amity community.

    In Jaws 3, another shark is investigating this seagoing crime family, and stumbles on the rampant animal cruelty and exploitation at Sea World, and not only pays with her life trying to expose it but her child dies at well.

    Jaws The Revenge is in fact a downbeat policier following a relentless shark FBI agent who won't rest until the Brodies pay for their crimes. He's crossing all sorts of lines because THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL. His captain at the precinct says "That's it Jaws, you're too emotionally involved, I'm taking you off the case." "God dammit Cap, not when I'm this close!" "OK Jaws, you've got 24 hours, and if you're wrong it's your dorsal fin in the fire..." In the end there is no justice for the sharks because the humans are too powerful and ruthless. Forget it Jaws, it's Chinatown.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    Can't do the linkies like Cameron H but for *reasons* I'm listening exclusively to songs by people born in Scotland at the moment so:

     

    AC/DC, Hell's Bells (Angus Young, Glasgow)

    Twin Atlantic, Heart and Soul (All of Them, Glasgow)

    Garbage, Only Happy When It Rains (Shirley Manson, Edinburgh)

    Biffy Clyro, Wolves of Winter (Simon Neil, Kilmarnock)

    Big Country, Fields of Fire (the incomparable Stuart Adamson, Dunfermline)

    Waterboys, Fisherman's Blues (Mike Scott, Edinburgh)

    Chvrches, Leave A Trace (Lauren Mayberry, Glasgow)

    Mogwai, Remurdered (Stuart Braithwaite, South Lanarkshire)

    Idlewild, You Held The World In Your Arms (Roddy Woomble, Irvine)

    Jesus and Mary Chain, April Skies (Jim Reid, East Kilbride)

     

    • Like 6

  18. Posted

     

    As for Carl Hiasen, I've always felt he was the poor man's Elmore Leonard, in that he could create some pretty off the wall and humorous stories mixed with crime and thriller elements, but he could never really sew it so perfectly like Leonard could.

     

    Hiaasen is not on Elmore Leonard's level for sure, but who is? But in fairness, Elmore Leonard suffered from a lot of misfiring films of his books by people who couldn't get the tone right. I think Hiaasen deserves the benefit of the doubt.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    God, June fuckin NAILED it on her criticisms and did an excellent "This Week in Feminism."

     

    This "movie" is fucking disgusting in every single aspect. From the judges ability to scoff at a single mother who doesn't currently have a job, to the way she scoffs at dancing as a profession, to the way every man turns into a gd Tex Avery cartoon the minute she walks on stage, to Jerry being written off as "harmless" when he full on stalked her (and later we discover built a shrine to her), to Ving blaming Demi being on edge on her fuckin period, to Burt Reynolds referring to her as a creature, to literally every scene in this movie. I can't even go through everything that made me cringe because I'll basically be posting the whole script and highlighting the parts where the other dancers have each other's backs because that's literally the only good thing this movie shows, but then June is right in that not even Demi sticks up for the girls because she is seen as "above" them. I'm so fucking sick of these fucking types of movies that posit themselves as liberating women when they do nothing but shit on them for 2 hours. Yeah I feel super duper liberated now...

     

    So with all of that said I have a few questions:

    • What did Terminator 2 even do to get her fired? Why is it her entire career as a secretary hinges on what this asshole's criminal record is like? Did he do something through her job? Like did he steal something that he wouldn't have gotten hold of if he hadn't been married to the FBI's secretary?
    • She mentions how impossible it seems to get $15,000 for an appeal in 6 weeks, but she also says this is already 8 weeks in to working at the Eager Beaver. Has she not already made some money? Is that the additional money she needs now that she is already so much in?
    • If she truly did not want to be an erotic dancer, then why is she? I understand the hopelessness women can feel and understand that many women do not feel they have a choice when it comes to becoming a dancer or a sex worker, but we don't actually see that kind of hopelessness here. She goes from court to 8 weeks later without the audience being clued in to the fact that she tried to get any other jobs. I know they want us to accept that she felt this was her only option (and I believe she says to the detective that this is the job that will pay her enough in such short of time), but this all just goes back to how fucking awful this movie is to women and to erotic dancers.

     

    Fuck this fucking movie.

     

    And yet, believe it or not, the novel it's based on is good

  21. Posted

    Believe it or not, the novel on which this is based provides a much better portrayal of Demi Moore's character and it would be interesting to see if June's (100% legit) complaints about the film are the same for the book. The book isn't as leering obvs, and the characters are more 3D, and with Carl Hiaasen he manages to make you believe that yes, mad shit like this really does happen in Florida.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    The irony of glam metal was that it superficially embraced femininity while at its core being pure macho chauvinism.

     

    I always thought it was Guns N'Roses that killed glam, being that they came from Los Angeles and had a direct local impact on the scene. Not a metalhead so I may be off here.

     

    IMHO Glam killed Glam, by ripping a hole in its Spandex tights and disappearing up its own arsehole

    • Like 1
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