Ian Gilchrist gives us his thoughts on Ed Zwick’s new film Love & Other Drugs, Adam Lowes spoke to the director and the interview can be found here, and gave his thought on the film here. Read on to find out what Ian thought.

Easily qualifying as one of 2010′s odder romantic comedies, Love & Other Drugs is an awkward and half-hearted attempt to inject contemporary skepticism into a weary formula: call it a faux edgy rom-com.

It’s more watchable than most of it’s ilk, due to the undeniable chemistry of its two leads (Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway) and their great supporting cast, but in the end it’s an unsatisfying experience, even within the limited expectations one should bring to this lightest of genres. Love & Other Drugs lacks the courage of any convictions which might make its cynicism feel like something more than seasoning inadequately sprinkled over a mundane story.

Gyllenhaal and Hathaway make an almost impossibly beautiful couple; as always, she glows magnificently in that way that screen goddesses do, and he exudes a naughty boy-ish allure that is almost palpable.  Gyllenhaal’s effortless charm is the centre of his portrayal of Jamie Randall, the n’er do well son of a successful medical family (his parents are seen in one early family dinner scene which is included to reinforce his black sheep bona fides; the scene is more notable for including the second to last screen appearance of the late Jill Clayburgh, who plays Randall’s mother). Randall has opted out of entering the family business and is a lazy, callow young man who drifts along on his formidable seductive powers.

After being fired from his job as an electronics store salesman, a family connection helps get Randall into the sales training programme for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and after completion of his training he is taken under the wing of old hand field rep Bruce Winston (the always entertaining Oliver Platt). Bruce quickly realises that his handsome young protege is his ticket away from the drudgery of the road and in to a top position in Chicago if he can harness and utilise Randall’s star potential to drive their sales.

The film’s major failing is that it treats the ugliness which is the centre of the pharmaceutical industry and Randall’s involvement in it as nothing more than playful story fodder. From the rah-rah Americanisms of Pfizer’s sales training indoctrination (some of it playing like a Stark Industries product presentation a la Iron Man) to the willfully manipulative ways in which the pharma sales reps work to persuade physicians to prescribe their proprietary medications rather than their rivals’, there is a deeply amoral brand of capitalism on display, which Randall gleefully embraces.

While courting a key physician in a blatant attempt to bribe him to prescribe Pfizer’s Zoloft instead of the rival Prozac, he impersonates an intern while the doctor (Huff’s Hank Azaria) sees a patient. The patient, Maggie Murdock (Hathaway), is suffering from early onset Parkinson’s Disease, a degenerative neurological disorder which can be treated but can’t be arrested. In the course of the examination she exposes her breast, and when she discovers afterwards that ‘intern’ Randall is actually a sales rep, she quite rightly attacks him in the car lot before stalking off.

There is something remarkably unsavoury about using Randall’s (and the complicit physician’s) unethical, sleazy behaviour as the mechanism for a rom-com ‘meet cute.’ It feels as if the film’s creators have noted the intriguing ways in which innovative U.S. cable series have darkly re-imagined genre and characterisation, but having two of contemporary cinema’s bigger stars in the leads means that the most they can get away with is a sort of indie-lite approach. The nudity in the film, which is fairly frequent, is clearly included to add credibility, but in fact it is choreographed in such a coy manner (with not so much as a fleeting flash of exposed genitals) that it has the opposite effect of hipness, looking clumsy and obviously blocked to satisfy the actors’ modesty.

Love & Other Drugs is a concoction of ill fitting parts; it’s a studio movie, not a scrappy independent, so it has both eyes firmly on a (mainly female) box office. It tries however to raise itself above the blandness of the mainstream pack by having as its romantic leads a feckless, amoral lothario and a messed up beauty who talks with the machine-gun verbosity of a screwball comedy heroine.  It cheerfully showcases the exploitative practices of ‘big pharma’ without so much as wagging a reproachful finger at the avarice of the industry: it’s simply a comically naughty milieu that Randall needs love to retrieve him from (pegging love as a curative in a film in which Viagra features prominently is another of the film’s clumsy devices).

Perhaps I need to just take a pill and chill though, and not be so demanding of a film as trifling as this one. There is possibly just enough dark shadings here to make it titillating to those who haven’t watched any of the truly inspired contemporary genre re-workings that Love & Other Drugs seems slightly inspired by.

HeyUGuys recently caught up with Hollywood A-list filmmaker Edward Zwick to chat to him about his new feature Love and Other Drugs – a romantic comedy drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway which see’s the director abandon his big-budget, socially conscious action epics and return to a smaller, intimate character piece in the style of his earlier work.

HeyUGuys: Did you encounter any struggles in combining the themes of sex, love, illness, and drugs into one movie?

Edward Zwick: It’s been my experience of life that there are always conflicting and competing themes happening at any one moment – that there’s something going on with your family, something happening at work, something going on with your health and part of the juggling act of life is to reconcile all the chaos of that and I was hoping to capture some of that in a film. Some films, particularly in this genre, tend to put these kinds of people into a kind of bubble, where the real world doesn’t affect them at all and they have nothing else to deal with but each other. I find that unrealistic.

Do you know why Parkinson’s in particular was chosen as the disease Anne’s character would suffer from?

In an age where there’s a quick pill for everything, here’s something for which there is no fix. In a love story, the idea that all of our beauty and love is transient, but I felt for a young woman who has to grapple with the fact that it’s going to be much faster gives it a particular poignancy.

Did you do any research yourself about Parkinson’s?

I spoke to lots of neurologists, went to support groups. I’m friends with Michael J. Fox and I read all his books and then spent some good time talking to him about it.

For a mainstream Hollywood feature, the film is very open in terms of sex and sexuality. Did you meet any resistance from the studios over the content?

It was implicit in the DNA of the script and I think they (the studios) may have been expecting something a little more demure but when the dailies came back in I was far enough away in Pittsburgh that I couldn’t hear the gasps (laughs).

Your two leads previously worked together on Brokeback Mountain. Was there already an inherent chemistry between them, or did you have to work at bringing it out?

They worked about six and seven days together on that movie and they obviously liked each other, but what they were doing there didn’t have the same depth and complexity as here. We did begin at a point of familiarity and comfort and that helps.

The film is very similar in scope to About Last Night… Do you encounter any challenges in doing a smaller intimate film again, following all your big, action-orientated pictures?

The challenges are that you don’t have the opportunity to break into a battle scene or a horse charge or a big crowd extravaganza – all you have it’s what in front of you with the two characters and has to be accomplished in the nuances of the relationship and that is the test, but it’s also the joy too.

Were you working your way through your iPod when you decided what songs to use for the movie?

Oh my gosh! The mid-nineties weren’t the greatest period for music but it was actually surprising to revisit songs which evoked emotions in us. For instance, I never though I’d hear The Macarena again, let alone use two different mixes (laughs) but that’s the joy of sourcing music for a relatively contemporary movie, which I hadn’t done in a long time.

You had a big success with The Last Samurai and your feature previous to this one, Defiance, was based in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Do you any plans for another historical epic?

There’s one thing we’re working on, which we’re having trouble getting the finance for. It’s called In the Heart of The Sea. It won the Nation Book Award in the US a few years ago and describes a real-life incident whaling boat which was actually attacked by a whale, which inspired (Herman) Melville to write Moby Dick.

Read our review of Love and Other Drugs which is out in UK cinemas today.

This afternoon Craig published an article explaining why he will never compromise by watching a movie on a phone. You can find said article here. To be clear, this isn’t meant as a direct argument against Craig’s views. How we watch film is a personal thing, i would never claim someone else’s decisions as ‘wrong’. The beauty about the world we currently live in is that we are presented with a huge range of options for how we view movies, and are all free to choose that which works best for us.

I did feel, however, that it was important to point out some of the advantages to watching media in this way, and share my positive experience of it, because it would be a shame for people to be put off of watching films on their phones. It offers a very efficient, convenient and unique way to enjoy the films that we love, and i personally don’t feel that it has to be an inferior experience.

My own introduction into watching movies on a mobile device came from my series of reviews last year on the iTunes 99p rental. I watched these films on my iPod touch, not strictly a phone, but it is still a mobile device, and the screen is the same as the iPhone’s.

I’ll admit, it was difficult initially. It isn’t particularly comfortable to hold up to your face at first, so finding a comfortable position is key. The advantage is that you don’t need a seat on the train, which you would with a laptop, and on a packed tube you don’t face the difficulties of trying to squash into an overfilled carriage with an unwieldy laptop case. For me, the biggest advantage is that, wherever i am in the world, whether it be stuck at an airport, on a boat in the ocean, or just in the dentist waiting room, i have instant access to my favourite films of all time.

A bit of background on the iTunes 99p rental is required here, i think. The idea behind it is that Apple offer a particular film a week for rental at a discounted price, the usual cost being £3.50. They do this as a way to entice people in to trying the format, and it works in theory. Whilst you might not be willing to spend the cost of a lower priced DVD in HMV on one watch of a film on a tiny screen, for 99p you are much more likely to try it.

The problem i found was, though the theory was sound, in practice iTunes were just shoving up pretty rubbish films that no-one would have chosen to watch otherwise. You can find a classic example here, and the problem of course is that if a film isn’t engaging, it isn’t going to sell the format. But here is where it becomes interesting. There were one or two films that i had seen before, and hadn’t liked. I actually feel that the experience of watching these films on a tiny devices on a packed train actually helped me appreciate them.

When you are surrounded by hustle and bustle, trying to concentrate on a 3.5 inch screen, you somehow feel much closer to the work on screen. I don’t necessarily mean just through proximity, i mean you are forced to immerse yourself fully in the film to offset the disturbance around you, and suddenly despite being surrounded by dozens of strangers, you find yourself connected with a piece of artwork. 50 First Dates, a film i’d watched on a rental DVD in my living room, and had felt contrived and saccharine, suddenly engaged me, and became genuinely affecting.

The point here is really that an engaging film should work in any environment, through any medium. Watching Gelngarry Glen Ross on an iPhone doesn’t make the powerful performances of Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris or Al Pacino any less brilliant. By the same token, watching Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen on a 40 foot Imax screen doesn’t make it a good film. In fact, it probably only helps to expose the continuing limitations of CGI effects.

I appreciate that film is called a visual medium, and that for many bigger is always better. But a film shouldn’t just be visual, a great movie requires the whole package. I didn’t like Avatar because the effort had all gone into the visual element, with only passing attention given to the story, plot, dialogue and character development. I’d rather watch an all around great film on a small device, than an overblown visual epic on an Imax screen.

I have a more direct comparison, because really the only way to judge is through watching the same film in different formats. I’m a huge fan of The Dark Knight. It does a good job with all the required elements. There were scenes shot with Imax cameras, there are fantastic action scenes. There are a couple of great performances, and the plot is well constructed. I saw it twice at the Imax, and have since watched it a dozen times on my iPod Touch. Every viewing is a joy, because a great film will always be a great film. If a movie lives or dies on its cinematography, it simply isn’t great.

I watched scratchy, jumpy VHS cassettes on a Granada VCR for fifteen years. I have suffered through poorly converted, badly transferred DVDs, some which i had to flip over halfway through. I have sat in a cinema, and watched a movie with the sound out of sync by half a second, and missed several minutes of movies because of projection problems. To me, the crisp transfers, great sound quality and feeling of complete control i get with watching movies on a handheld device offer a better experience, consistently, than i have often had with other formats.

If you don’t want to watch films on a phone, that’s fine. You shouldn’t, and indeed don’t, have to. I won’t criticize you for it, and i don’t think it is the wrong attitude to have. But for those who have never tried the medium, or are contemplating whether to spend the money on a digital film for consumption on your journey to work, my advice is give it a try. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, it’s all about personal choice. But i do think it’s a shame not to give it a chance, just once. And hey, for 99p, why not give the iTunes weekly rental a try. You never know, you might get the chance to sample Surfer, Dude too. That’ll really harsh your morning mellow…

What do you think? How do you choose to watch film? You can find the related forum thread here, and join in the debate.

Bazmann – You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

Although the ability to watch films on phones or pocket sized devices has been around for a while, the choice to watch a film on a phone again became a hot topic following the announcement of the new iPhone. Speaking to friends/film lovers I was pretty shocked at how many said that they were more than happy to watch films on devices such as the iPhone and already had in many cases.

Now the reason I was so shocked was because watching a film on a small device (for convenience I will define this as just a few inches in size, the iPhone is 3.5″) seems like such an unappetising and, to be honest, unthinkable proposition. Why would you watch a film in such an inferior way? Aside from the visual issues in watching a film designed to be projected on a large screen on a tiny screen there is also the importance in immersing yourself in a film. Immersion must be quite hard when you are holding a phone on a busy commuter train.

It is important though that any debate surrounding this issue is treated in an intelligent and mature way. Although I personally will never watch a film on a phone this subject is not a dichotomy, a simple argument about being right or wrong. I do not believe that anyone who disagrees and is willing to watch a film on their phone is wrong. Unfortunately the internet has the irritating effect of polarising any debate, “Avatar’s the greatest film ever made”, “Avatar’s the worst film ever made”. This is not what draws me to film criticism, intelligent debate draws me to film criticism.

On the day of the iPhone announcement, Roger Ebert tweeted the following:

This generated a mixture of positive and negative responses and unfortunately they were just that, positive or negative responses, not a debate. Although Ebert has not yet elaborated further, he was, I’m sure, quickly responding with his opinion on the subject. It was a statement regarding a personal attitude he holds, one I also hold, and not necessarily a judgement call, although it was treated by many as such.

So with this in mind I will briefly outline the reasoning behind my statement and hopefully this will encourage further debate on the subject and not just negative or positive confirmations.

I believe that watching a film on a small device is the far end of a sliding scale of compromises. Films are made for an intended viewing experience. I will concede that in some cases films are made with the understanding that they are going straight to Video/DVD or that they will be watched in 4:3 and in these cases the filmmaker may deliberately make the film in certain way to accommodate this. I will even concede that if at some point a filmmaker makes a film that he/she intends to be watched on a phone I would then watch it on a phone, although the prospect does not excite me. For the most part though films are intended for theatrical distribution and for a large number of years this was the only consideration. For these films the filmmakers made the films with a cinema in mind. The intended audience watched the film in a cinema with a large screen projected by a professional.

One such filmmaker is David Lynch who, in the clip below, makes his feelings very clear on the experience of watching films on your phone.

Even just watching a film in a screening room at a Post Production facility highlights the difference between how the filmmakers will watch a film and how films are generally seen in cinemas. From the post production screening I see it as a downward sliding scale that currently ends with watching a film on a phone. Barry (also from HeyUGuys) mentioned to me that he felt that watching a film on an iPod was preferable to watching it on VHS, thereby making the VHS the bottom of this scale. This is his choice and view but it is not one I share and I think it is worth briefly mentioning why. Watching a well kept widescreen VHS made from a well sourced print on a good television is preferable, in my opinion, to the same film viewed on an iPod.

I believe though that any way in which one watches a film is a compromise and this debate boils down to how much of a compromise are you willing to make. As I have said, even a cinema experience is a compromise. I came across a good example of that this year.

When I reviewed Kick-Ass in March it was after attending a large press screening. In my review I mentioned the “super-saturated colours” and the positive effect this had on my enjoyment of the film.

Upon rewatching the film again at the cinema, but this time not at a press screening and two weeks after its release, aside from the change in atmosphere (something I also consider important) the first thing I noticed was the big difference in how the film looked. The “super-saturated colours” were gone and the print had been poorly treated, with noticeable damage. The film was also probably projected as a single reel and the joins between reels had been poorly done and their were noticeable jumps and pops. Although I still enjoyed the film, it just wasn’t the same. This is, of course, anecdotal but it highlights where, even in viewing films at the cinema, there is a compromise. This is a compromise I try and eliminate where I can (attending trusted cinemas helps) but one that is still preferable to what I consider greater compromises represented by the experience outside of a cinema.

I also feel that the so-called ‘home cinema’ is a compromise but one that mostly due to the availability of films showing at cinemas and my own finances is a compromise I have to constantly make. In an ideal world I would only watch films in cinemas, expertly projected from director approved high quality prints. I except though that in order to see the number and variety of films that I want to, this is not a realistic prospect and I have to make compromises and watch films at home. I am still careful though to ensure my compromise is as slight as possible. Well sourced prints, good quality transfers, correct aspect ratios, good quality original audio tracks are all important when I rent or buy a DVD or Blu-Ray and I will import or wait if I know there is a better version that I could watch. Some may say this is going too far or that I care too much but this is the ‘price’ of loving films and wanting to experience them in the best way you can, with consideration given to your finances, time and location.

I love cinema and to me it is important. If its not that important to you I understand why you might not care but I find it so strange that so many people who appear to love cinema are so willing to compromise and watch films in a way that I believe is at the very bottom of a downward sliding scale of compromise. I feel that films deserve better than the experience of watching them on a phone; this is, for me, a compromise too far.

So in the interests of open debate I encourage you to respond to this piece with your own take on my thoughts regarding this scale of compromise and your own viewing habits. Please leave your comments below or head over to the forum to discuss the subject and I will be happy to respond to any questions or criticisms.

Photo Source: The Prince Charles Cinema as photographed by :: K a t e ::

Every week Apple offer a film for rental at a discounted price of 99p on iTunes. For several weeks, the selections were pretty poor. Then last week saw a quality jump, with Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake.

 Would this week continue the improvement? The answer would be a resounding yes, as to coincide with the DVD release of Terminator: Salvation, we’ve been treated to James Cameron’s 1984 classic, the original The Terminator.

 In the future, a post-apocalyptic war rages on, as small pockets of human resistance fighter struggle for survival. The predators intent on their destruction are man’s own creation, machines. Robotic soldiers pursue what remains of our race, the genocide of an entire species almost complete. One man (Arnold Schwarzenneger) is sent back, through time, to before the civil war began. He begins tracking down all the Sarah Connors in the phonebook eliminating them one by one. Someone else is also sent back.

 Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) is an ordinary woman, with a dead end job, and a life going nowhere. When the news reports a serial killer is hunting down people with her name, she tries to find a safe place. But there is no safe refuge from this killing machine, and he tracks her down. The second man sent back comes to her rescue. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) has to convince Connor that she holds the key to mankind’s survival, and together they must evade both the police and an unstoppable cyborg killing machine.

 You’ve all seen Terminator, you don’t need my opinion on the story. Does it still hold up today? Thematically, it’s still just as relevant. Our dependence on technology to live continues to increase unabated. Large corporations still hold far too much power and exert too much influence. Our paranoia towards the secret experiments conducted by the men and women in political power hasn’t decreased in the last twenty-five years. The action is as exciting as ever, the sub-par acting to be expected from an 80′s action movie.

 The effects, great at the time, obviously are incomparable to today’s standards. The stop-motion effects particularly have aged badly. Whereas in a horror film like The Thing the jerky look of this technique give the alien creatures a suitably creepy, otherworldly feel, in a movie based on a premise of then futuristic technology it does let the movie down a bit.

 Unfair criticism, as i said it was good for the time. After all, no amount of cutting edge technology and CGI could make Terminator: Salvation anything more than a big let down. Definitely worth a pound of anyone’s money, if you haven’t seen it for a while give The Terminator a watch, and remind yourself why we are all looking forward to Cameron’s Avatar next month.

 The Terminator is available on iTunes at the discounted price until Midnight Monday 30th November, and on DVD and Blu-Ray now.

 Bazmann – You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

The iTunes 99p rental. For many weeks now the bane of my existence, where once i looked with anticipation to discover what had been chosen, i now look with dread. Fatal Instinct, Surfer Dude, Starter For 10, just some of the rejects i’ve been subjected to.

Imagine my surprise, then, when i found that this week’s selection might actually be watchable. Let’s take a look, then, at Layer Cake.

Initially wanting to be an actor, Matthew Vaughn thought better of it, and began in the British film industry. Vaughn served as producer for several of friend Guy Ritchie’s mockney gangster flicks, including Lock, Stock… and Snatch. Watching Ritchie work, Vaughn clearly decided it was a better gig, directing. His first film would follow Ritchie’s in the British gangster genre.

Daniel Craig is XXXX, a terrible conceit, so i’ll refer to him as Craig. Craig is a business man. He has personal guidelines, wears a suit, and won’t deal directly with his end consumers. His business? Drug dealing.

Craig conducts himself in a professional manner, so is perturbed when crime boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham) orders him to buy drugs from an amateur, and sends him on a fool’s errand to track down a missing girl. Things go from bad to worse when it is revealed the seller, named The Duke (Jamie Foreman), stole the drugs from a group of ex-military Serbians, killing one in the process. Whilst trying to negotiate the purchase of the drugs, and looking over his shoulder for a Serbian hit man, Craig discovers the missing girl is daughter of rival gang boss Eddie Temple (Michael Gambon). Jimmy has set him up.

Craig takes care of Jimmy, but with a deal still to be done, and his life still at risk, he finds Eddie pulling him in a third direction. Craig was on the verge of retirement, but now has a job on his hands just staying alive.

It’s impossible to judge Layer Cake without reference to Ritchie’s work, so i’ll make use of the comparison. Whilst Snatch et al. feature working class style shady characters, Craig’s smart, intelligent well spoken business man is a breath of fresh air. He is a calm character, but when it all starts to go wrong he finds himself slowly being brought down to the level of the hard nosed villains and petty scumbags he has taken great pains to avoid. Craig’s is a surprisingly well rounded character. He doesn’t like guns, he isn’t a fighter, and he goes weak at the sight of a gorgeous woman. Then, when he is forced to get his hands dirty, he reluctantly does what is necessary, but suffers emotionally for it afterwards. As he tries to plan, and tie up loose ends, it doesn’t come together easily for him.

Layer Cake could easily have slid into predictability, but Vaughn keeps it fresh, with enough surprises along the way to keep you guessing. Where Ritchie introduces a myriad of characters, who don’t get resolution until the big bow at the end, Vaughn cleans up as he goes. Vaughn uses flashbacks in a similar way to Ritchie in Snatch, which here are distracting and feel out of place. There are some genuinely good moments here. The scene where Craig is given a gun by Gene (the excellent Colm Meaney) is simple, yet with some wonderfully nuanced acting, feels like it belongs in a truly great movie.

Little scenes like this scattered about hint at directorial greatness, and it’s only really the more comedic scenes which drag this movie down. The more outlandish characters detract from a serious movie that generally explores some very interesting themes. The main crux is the story of a man who thinks he can stay clean in a murky world. With his rules and manners, Craig thinks he is above the petty criminals that share his circles, but learns the hard way that easy money is a difficult thing to earn.

If you can forgive the somewhat anti-climatic resolution, which suffers a little from fuzzy logic and suspect motivations, Layer Cake is a very good film, with flashes of brilliance. Where Lock, Stock… and Snatch are knockabout light entertainment, Vaughn’s first feature contains some real depth, and many, well, Layers.

I’d been looking forward to Kick-Ass because of the concept and great source material. Now i have another reason, because i think Vaughn has the potential to be a truly great film maker.

Layer Cake is available on iTunes at the discounted rate until Monday Midnight 23rd November, and on DVD now. And is definitely worth watching if you haven’t already.

Bazmann – You can now follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann

Last week, presumably due to a technical error, there was no 99p rental on iTunes. Now i’ll be honest, based on the suspect selections of recent weeks, it was nice to get a week off. I also considered the possibility that Apple had maybe decided to stop it altogether.

 I thought that would be a great shame. Then it came back this week, and i had to watch Carl Reiner’s Fatal Instinct…

 Ned (Armand Assante) is a police officer, and a lawyer. He believes greatly in the justice system, which is why he has no trouble defending the criminals that he arrests. His wife, Lana (Kate Nelligan), presumably feeling neglected due to her husbands time consuming dual role, is having an affair with her mechanic, Frank (Christopher McDonald). Upon discovering a clause in Ned’s life insurance that pays triple if a particular, highly unlikely accident occurs, enlists her lover to assist in a convoluted plan to bring about said unlikely scenario, in an attempt to become nine million dollars richer.

 Meanwhile, a mysterious woman, Lola (Sean Young), who Ned ran into at the fairground, begs his services. The presence of the attractive stranger immediately raises the ire of Ned’s assistant, Laura (Sherilyn Fenn) who is secretly in love with him. Regardless, Ned and his new client embark on a tumultuous affair, despite his love and devotion to his devious wife.

 Eventually, he spurns his lover, just before his wife’s dastardly plans are put into action. During an attempt to shoot her husband, Lana mistakenly shoots a recently released convict, who had murderous intentions of his own towards Ned, who had arrested said convict and then failed to win the defendant’s case. Ned, believing his wife had been trying to protect him, takes on Lana’s case as her lawyer.

 Ok, i’m gonna stop before it really gets silly. Fatal Instinct is a parody of Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, and all the other erotic thrillers that were once in vogue. It’s somewhere between Naked Gun and Scary Movie in it’s style of comedy, featuring the very worst elements of each. It’s just not funny.

 There’s no comedy here, just tired wordplay and poor sight gags, that on the whole don’t really make sense. I laughed once, when Frank attempted to creep out of Ned’s bedroom as he slept. Predictably, he made a huge racket in the process, but Ned didn’t stir. That’s it! And that was only funny because i’d had to sit through so much that wasn’t just to get there.

 It’d be unfair to make a judgement on the actors performances in this film, as they have been given so little to work with. Sherilyn Fenn does, however, appear to belong in another movie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that her character hasn’t been given much in the way of bad puns, and as a result she appears a lot more grounded than the silliness around her.

 In short (and i have kept it short for you), Fatal Instinct is easily one of the worst movies i have ever seen, and iTunes should be ashamed of themselves for subjecting me to it. Tut tut.

 Fatal Instinct is available on iTu… Oh what’s the point, no-one is still reading. Buy yourself a couple of Wispas instead. Yummy.

 Bazmann

NBC Universal kindly gave us us a competition for one lucky HeyUGuys reader to win an iPod Nano. We had loads of entries but there could only be one winner.

To enter the competition, each entry had to describe what film has made them most scared and why. Reading what made you all scared gave us a lot of laughs but the winner of the iPod Nano is Roslyn Marshall with her entry below – congrats Roslyn!:

“My most terrifying Horror Film is Arachnophobia! I remember my brother renting it from the video store and telling me it was a ‘comedy’. There was no comedy – it was my worst nightmare! I spent my time sweating, hiding behind a cushion, and the rest of the night wide awake. I could only fall asleep once I’d pushed toilet roll up the taps and in the plug holes of the bathroom! I was always scared of spiders, but that film put the nail in the coffin on that one ““ I run a freakin mile if I see one now!”

Well done Roslyn, your fear of spiders and your brother have in fact won you an iPod Nano. Maybe you could download Arachnophobia to watch on your iPod as a lasting memory!

The way we watch movies is changing. In five years time, the studios believe, all our home entertainment will be delivered digitally. Apple know this, and already have a large quantity of movies available via iTunes and Apple TV.

To encourage us to try this form of media, every week iTunes offers one movie for rental at 99p, a considerable discount from the usual price of £3.50. Every week I  review the movie that has been chosen. This week, to coincide with Halloween, they’ve selected… Airplane creator David Zucker’s Scary Movie 3.

The first Scary Movie was the first proper spoof movie for a while when it was released. Opening at a time when gross-out movies had hit their prime, it was a big success. Infused with The Wayan family’s edge and relevant humour, it was a mix of old style Zucker/Abrams puns and more contemporary American Pie-style sex comedy, and was pretty funny at times.

Scary Movie 2 was unnecessary, but the big box office of the original made a follow-up inevitable. The second film also made big bucks, but the humour fell flat. The Wayan family were out, and Zucker himself, the king of this kind of comedy in the eighties, was brought in to freshen up this third instalment.

Anna Faris is back as Cindy. She is now a news reporter, and when she comes across the story of a crop circle at a farm, she gets a feeling something big is afoot. The crop circle was discovered by Charlie Sheen’s Tom, and his brother, wannabe white rapper George. George travels into the hood to participate in his first rap battle.

Meanwhile, Faris’ friend Brenda is terrified. She watched a haunted videotape a week ago. Anyone who watches the tape dies seven days later. And that’s not seven working days either. Cindy believes the crop circle and the mysterious tape are linked. She tries to warn the country via her news station, but no-one is listening.

No-one, that is, but President Harris, Leslie Nielsen. He travels to find Cindy in an attempt to discover the truth, whilst she learns an ancient lighthouse might hold a key to the mystery. With the video broadcast across the nation, can Cindy stop the evil spirits before the population of the US is murdered by this supernatural phenomenon?

Zucker was obviously brought in to work his magic on the franchise, but it’s clearly an impossible task. Scary Movie 3 is mainly a mash-up of Signs and The Ring, two mediocre movies to start with, offering barely enough material to fill a two minute You Tube short put together in someone’s basement. All the humour is either obvious, repetitive, or just not funny.

Without decent gags, the poorly conceived story (if you can call it that) is left hopelessly exposed. Good endings are notoriously difficult to write, but when you’ve already struggled (in vain) with the beginning and the middle, you’ve got no chance. The only genuinely funny material comes at the beginning during the rap battle, and to be fair Faris’ psychic nephew does get some funny lines. But when Nielsen arrives, it turns into a pseudo naked gun story, with the finale becoming an absolute farce. And not the good kind.

Charlie Sheen is a very good comedy actor, particularly suited to this kind of humour, but is given nothing to work with. The brightest spark is Anthony Anderson (Transformers 2). He is saddled with a very generic ‘token black guy’ role, but has great comic delivery, and can make the lamest lines at least sound funny. Perhaps most impressive is Faris herself. Not necessarily for her performance, but for her unwavering commitment to the role. At the climax, when all around her are losing their acting heads, she sells her part to the bitter end.

Scary Movie 3 made a lot of money, as did Scary Movie 4. The law of diminishing returns may apply to the comedy, but not to the ticket sales. And that’s the true horror. For as long as they keep flogging this dead horse, there’s clearly no shortage of people who will pay to see it.

Scary Movie 3 is available on iTunes at the discounted rental price until Midnight Monday 2nd November. It is available to buy on DVD now, as indeed are 1,2 and 4…

Bazmann

As well as music, iTunes does films too, to buy or rent. Rentals usually cost £2.50 to £3.50, but every week those nice chaps (or chapesses) hand select one to be available at a much lower 99p. Every week i review the selection, ‘cos quite often it can be a little obscure…

This week, to celebrate 40 years of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, they’ve chosen the first Python movie 1971′s And Now For Something Completely Different.

Straight off, i should mention that, despite the fact it was released as such, it isn’t actually a movie. To capitalise on their popularity, they re-recorded 90 minutes of their sketches, put a title on it, and released it in theatres. As just a longer collection of their usual tv sketches, with no narrative of any kind weaved through it, it’s impossible to review it as a film.

There are three types of people. Big Python fans, who will obviously love it, those who hate Python, who will clearly just be left scratching their heads. The third group, which i belong to, like some sketches, but are completely baffled by others. If you also belong to this group, be warned – thirty-odd minutes of this hit-or-miss off the wall humour works, eighty-odd minutes is a feat of endurance.

The main problem here is that the big sketches, The Dead Parrott, The Vocational Guidance Councillor, The Funniest Joke in the World, are kept until the last half hour. This makes the preceding two thirds an exercise in endurance. Most of the misses come first, and by the time you reach the funniest skits, you’re feeling a little too jaded to appreciate them. With the only real difference a slightly higher budget, and slightly better film stock, newcomers to the comedy of John Cleese etc… would be better off with The Best of Monty Python on DVD, featuring all the best routines here, plus some others that were left out.

What And Now For Something Completely Different does is expose what has been the problem with the British film industry for a long time. Too many movies made off the back of Tv series, such as The Porridge Movie, Cannon and Ball’s The Boys in Blue and several Morcambe and Wise movies. And even films like Brassed Off, The Full Monty, and even Four Weddings, whilst not spun off of particular TV shows, are not much more than glorified extended TV episodes. Come on, The Full Monty could easily have been compressed into an episode of Auf Wiedersein Pet.

I would have much preferred iTunes had chosen Holy Grail, or even better The Life of Brian. I can’t deny, however, And Now For Something Completely Different is definitely Python at it’s purest, with it’s mix of irreverent, madcap humour, and Terry Gilliam’s bizarre and distinctive animated interludes. One for fans only, really. And big fans at that.

And Now For Something Completely Different is available to rent on iTunes at the discounted price until Midnight Monday 26th October, and is available on DVD now.

Bazmann

The iTunes 99p rental – so good they do it every week. It’s easy, you go into the films section of iTunes, locate the movie picture that states ‘this weeks 99p rental’, point and click. It only takes 30 minutes to download on my computer, and my broadband is super-slow speed. It’s not surprising the concept is number 16 in the ‘Future 100′ in this months Total Film.

It’s been a couple of bad weeks, with Surfer, Dude and Starter For 10 on offer. So it’s with a sense of trepidation i say… Let’s take a look at Megan Fox and Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

I must start by saying that i am not, and never have been, a teenage girl. There is no situation in which this movie is aimed at me, but i’ll try and provide balance as far as possible.

Lola Cep (Lindsay Lohan) is a girl from New York, dragged kicking and screaming by her mother to live in a little town in New Jersey. Lola has aspirations of being a star, and has a penchant for being over dramatic. On her first day at her new school she instantly bonds with geeky Ella, over their mutual love for rock band Sidarthur, much to the consternation of resident mean girl Carla (Megan Fox).

A rivalry instantly forms as Carla senses a rival for her spot as coolest girl in school. This animosity is fully brought to surface by the imminent auditions for the school play. Both girls are desperate to win the lead role, an updated Eliza Doolittle, in a contemporary musical set in modern day New York.

Tragedy strikes, however, when the news comes through that Sidarthur have broken up! This is Lola’s last chance to see her idol Stu Wolf sing live at the farewell concert. Thoughts of the play are cast aside as Lola has to somehow get tickets, and convince best friend Ella to lie to her parents so they can get to the concert in New York. All this whilst Carla gloats that not only has she got tickets to the concert, but thanks to her father’s connections she will also be at the after show party at Sidarthur’s apartment. Will Lola pull it off, and fulfil her dream?

Made before high school musical, Teenage Drama Queen could have got a jump on Zac and friends if it had got this right. The resolution to the jeopardy of who will get cast in the lead role is badly telegraphed as soon as Lola starts singing in her audition. The whole play thread is then put on the back burner in favour of the very silly trip to the concert. Hilarity doesn’t ensue, it’s all a bit predictable, and it all gets a bit messy.

As Lola browbeats her friend into the ill-advised jaunt, and coupled with the revelation that Lola lied about her Dad dying, and even her real name (which is actually Mary), it’s difficult to see exactly why you should be pulling for her.

 It’s only when we, finally, get back to the musical that things pick up a bit. When you’ve got someone with the talents of Lindsay Lohan, you should make use of them for the whole movie. Say what you want about her now, here she can sing, dance, and yes even act well. It’s a shame Lohan is taking the film’s lead nowadays and wasting her talents. That’s the most interesting story here. Lohan gets the better of Fox, whilst in the real world the roles have now been reversed. Fox is the more successful actress based on two Transformers movies alone, and with some big movies coming up next year she is one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Lohan is now a shadow of her former self. She reached a career low with I Know Who Killed Me, and it’s unlikely her part in next spring’s Machete is going to set the world alight.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen missed the opportunity to be a trailblazer. There’s nothing here that wasn’t subsequently done better in High School Musical and Mean Girls. The Eliza Doolittle play, and the rivalry between Lola and Carla are the highlights, but are overshadowed by the poorly conceived quest to meet Sidarthur.Oh, and i won’t even go into the embarrassment factor of a 30-something male watching Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, on an Ipod Touch, on a packed train in the morning.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen is available on iTunes for rental at the discounted price until Midnight Monday 19th October. It is also available on DVD now. But buy the far superior Mean Girls instead.

Bazmann

Digital copy is the future. Apple certainly think so (well, they have to). To this end, iTunes hopes to slowly introduce their consumers to the ease of movie downloads by offering a rental every week at the ridiculously cheap price of 99p. You couldn’t even buy I Know Who Killed Me on DVD for that.

As usual, this is my review of this week’s selection. I can only assume this weeks choice is an attempt to cash in on Zombieland’s popularity, both films featuring as they do one Woody Harrelson. Let’s take a look at Surfer, Dude! (Yeah, i know. Hey, i didn’t choose it…).

 The surfer dude of the title is Steve Addington (Matthew McConaughey). The Tony Hawks of surfing, Addington has just returned from a round the world journey catching the best waves on the planet. He comes back to find all is not well, however. He has no money left, his manager’s lawn mower business is failing, and Addingtons sponsors have sold up, meaning his image rights have transferred to new owner, ex-surfer Eddie Zarno (Jeffrey Nording). Zarno is in the process of putting together a fully-immersive surfing simulator called Free Wave. He is also running a Real World reality-style tv show, with the world’s greatest surfers living together in a house. Already signed up is Latino heartthrob, Lupe La Rosa (Ramon Rodriguez), amongst others.

 Addington however doesn’t believe in contracts, and has no interest in reality tv or video games. He just wants to ride the waves. But with Zarno using every underhand trick in the book to try and force Addington to sign, and a record wave drought across the coast, there are a lot of things weighing against him, harshing his mellow. Going on a weed and women fast until the waves come back, Addington also finds this resolve threatened, when he meets east coast business woman Danni Martin (Alexie Gilmore). Can he continue to rebel against the commercialism of today’s society, or will he be forced to sell his soul to the man.

 Surfer, Dude doesn’t start off badly. The idea of a spiritual man bucking against modern society could have been interesting. A comedy about surfing’s biggest star locked in a house with arrogant young upstarts could have been amusing. In fact, there are several plot threads that could have been picked up to make an interesting movie. Instead, Surfer, Dude paddles about and lets the big waves crash by. It’s no exaggeration when i say nothing happens in this movie. We follow Addington as he smokes weed, talks spiritual nonsense with his stoner friends, and looks wistfully out to sea, desperate for an ocean breeze to pick up.

 The scenes involving Zarno’s attempts to pressure him into towing the line are intermittent and half-hearted. Harrelson (wisely) goes AWOL for the middle part of the film. Not comedy, not drama, it just doesn’t know what it wants to be. Four writers are credited for the screenplay, never a good sign, and it shows.

 The biggest problem i had with Surfer… is that i didn’t find the protagonist the least bit likeable, something the story hinges on. Particularly considering his presence in nearly every scene. The whole idea is that Addington has no interest in technology or commercialism, he wants to be one with the wind. However, he’s just come back from a round the world trip, via commercial airline flights, paid for by his previous sponsors, to surf on his board, again paid for by his sponsors. It’s hypocritical. Added to that, he’s tapping up his manager for cash, a man clearly struggling to support his family, and isn’t prepared to do anything in return. Worst of all, in the end the moral of the story seems to be, if you stick to your guns, and sleep with the right woman, it’ll all be sorted out for you. There’s just too much contradiction between the sentiment and the execution.

 It’s hard to believe McConaughey, so good in Amistad and A Time To Kill, has fallen so low. But on evidence, this actually looks to be somewhat of a personal project for him. He’s an executive producer, and the part of a laid back, spiritual stoner dude seems taylor-made for the naked player of the bongo drums. In fact, he even indulges in some nude musical instrument action here too. The only real spark comes from Rodriguez’s La Rosa. Saddled with the poorly written comedy relief in this year’s Revenge Of The Fallen, he suffers from a similar fate here. However the arrogant, brash upstart gives him a much better character to play with, and he plays it with gusto in the criminally few scenes he’s given. If the movie had focused a lot more on the rivalry between La Rosa and Addington, it would have been much better for it.

 Watching on an ipod touch, i found myself easily distracted by the comings and goings on the train. A poorly written, badly executed mess of a film, Notable only for a great performance by star of the future Rodriguez. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

 Surfer, Dude is available for rental on iTunes for 99p until Midnight Monday 12th October. It’s also available on DVD.

Bazmann

You know the drill by now. iTunes offer a random film for cheap rental every week, I take the bullet and let you know if you’d be better off buying a can of Coke and a Twix.

I aim to raise the profile of the 99p rental, and it’s working already. Just six weeks since I started and in this month’s Total Film magazine they’ve named iTunes 99p rental number 16 in their ‘Future 100′. Nice to know they’re fans of HUG.

Starter for 10 is based on the book by David Nicholls, who also adapted the screenplay. Directed by Tom Vaughan (What Happens in Vegas), it’s the story of Brian (McAvoy), who leaves his working class town and his widowed mother to go off to Bristol University. When he arrives he finds he has nothing in common with his room mates. He meets a girl, Rebecca, at a party that night but his nervous patter screws up any chance he had. Dejected and drunk, he stumbles back to his digs. Along the way, much to his excitement, he finds a notice for University Challenge auditions. At the auditions, he helps an attractive girl, Alice, with her test questions and as a result, she beats him to the final team place. Named as first alternative, he makes the team after all due to one of their team-mates suffering a mishap.

The set-up for Starter For 10 leads you to believe it’s going to be about Brian and his team striving for victory. However, the contest, and indeed Brian’s academic studies, take a back seat to his romantic (mis)adventures. Though he is clearly better suited to the intellectual and sensitive Rebecca, he strikes up a relationship with the sexually charged blond-bombshell Alice instead.

Whether this movie is intended as drama, comedy or romance isn’t clear, but it fails on all three counts. When Brian stays with Alice’s family for Christmas, his poor social skills lead to misunderstandings that are clearly meant to be humorous, but fall flat. The one-liners are weak too. At the auditions, only four people turn up to begin with, and we’re treated to the obvious ‘only the top four will make the team’. The drama should come when Brian’s best friend takes a shine to his love Alice, but by this point we’re past caring.

That’s probably the biggest problem here. Whilst we’re supposed to find Brian’s bumbling charm endearing, he’s really just annoying, and his shallow relationship choices actually fairly obnoxious. James McAvoy, so good in The Last King of Scotland, initially appears to be slumming it here. But then you realise he’s not even doing the best with what he’s been given. The only real acting stand-out is Catherine Tate as Brian’s Mum, and that’s not a great recommendation.

The outcome of the contest, when we finally get back on track, is unexpected. In fact, compared to the rest of the film, it’s almost a stroke of genius, the only good moment. It’s far too little, far too late however. The best thing about watching on an ipod touch was that i could just pick it up and watch the film in short bursts.

Part of the reason i started the 99p rental segment was so i’d be forced to watch films I normally wouldn’t bother to watch. And sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. But I’d give ten points to anyone who could answer me the question – how does anyone see this film as a good investment, when great British films like Academy Award winner Slumdog Millionaire, and the forthcoming Harry Brown struggle to find funding?

So, my opinion of Starter For 10? Even more pointless than Exeter University, the team with the lowest score in the last 30 years of University Challenge. Starter For 10 is available at the discounted rental price until Monday 5th October at Midnight. Is it available on DVD? Seriously, who’d buy it..?

Bazmann