The Auteurs website recently rebranded themselves MUBI and today have announced a new partnership with Sony Playstation to bring film streaming to your PS3.

The Mubi service launches on PS3 in autumn this year in Europe, Australia and New Zealand with expansion to further countries currently being considered.

If you’re not familiar with Mubi, it is a great site where you can watch films online and it also serves as a cinema social networking site, a Facebook for cinephiles if you will. As Mubi’s previous name suggests it focuses mainly on the more ‘arthouse’ end of the cinematic spectrum.

Although it is a great site and the collection of films they currently have is wonderful the prices do not seem very competitive. Although a few films are free and a few are priced at £1 each, the majority cost £3 and a monthly subscription costs £12. Now this may seem reasonably cheap and similar to other services such as Lovefilm or iTunes but when you look at what it offers and compare it to the US service Netflix, where you can get their Watch Instantly (a streaming option that works on multiple devices) package and one DVD at a time for just $8.99 (just over £6), it looks less appealing. The Netflix service also offers a variety of films rather than the niche selection that Mubi has, allowing you to watch the latest Hollywood blockbusters as well as classics from Werner Herzog, Ingmar Bergman or Akira Kurosawa. Take a look at The Criterion Cast’s excellent site which lists Criterion films on Netflix for just a small sample of some of the arthouse titles available on Netflix.

I also think that it is significant that when watching a film online you get none of the benefits that DVDs and Blu-Rays have to offer, such as commentaries, deleted scenes and making of documentaries. Extras such as these are particularly appealing to fans of Mubi’s kind of films and I can only assume the logic is that people will watch the films on Mubi and if they want the extras they will then buy the physical version.

Another rival option in the UK is Lovefilm who currently offer DVD/Blu-Ray/Game packages with the option to watch online, similar to Netflix and with comparable prices. Significantly though their watch online service is not available on devices such as PS3s giving Mubi an advantage. In response to a question I recently asked about a Lovefilm watch instantly style service on my PS3, Lovefilm replied with the following:

We are looking to introduce further devices in the future – Watch this space !

I do think Mubi is a fantastic site but if Lovefilm offer a watch instantly service on the PS3 with the same titles, Mubi’s service will become somewhat redundant. If there is a division where arthouse titles are available on Mubi and everything else on Lovefilm then I think this would be a terrible situation that would either result in customers having to choose one collection of films over another, thereby ‘classifying’ their tastes, or force them to sign up to two services when one should suffice.

Although this is great news that Mubi is launching on the PS3 and think it should be treated with some reservation as the UK are still not getting services equal to US counterparts and we are expected to pay more. There are clearly interesting developments ahead for the way we watch films at home in the UK and I am excited about these prospects but I really hope the companies involved give the customer what they want, an affordable multi-platform service with a large variety of titles.

UPDATE: Check out the launch trailer for MUBI on the PS3 embedded below.

Source: Screen Daily and Thompson on Hollywood

Land of the Lost is the latest movie to be gifted to us by NBC Universal. The movie stars Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride and John Boylan and is directed by Brad Silberling. OK, so where do I start with this one. I guess I begin by telling you that I’m not the biggest Will Ferrell fan in the world so this review may, in part be influenced by that fact. That said, I have found him very funny in The Anchorman and Wedding Crashers.

Land of the Lost is about Dr. Rick Marshall (Ferrell), a ridiculed physicist who, after inventing a device to move between alternate universes, is sucked into a space-time vortex with his assistant (Anna Friel) and a tour guide (Danny McBride). In this alternate universe, the trio make friends with a primate named Chaka (Jorma Taccone), their only ally in a world full of dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures.

As I opened, if Ferrell makes you laugh no matter what he does, this movie will probably one that tickles you pink. If you’re on the fence however, you’ll probably find the movie pretty dull and tiresome. At the cinema, Land of the Lost was in 3d and it could well be that in 3d, it adds a completely different dimension to a movie that is flat at best. Danny McBride is an actor that usually plays cameos in movies like Tropic Thunder, Superbad and Pineapple Express but has been promoted in this movie to a leading character. He plays his usual crude self making sexual jokes throughout which don’t really fit into what I thought was a supposed to be a kids movie, but after reading the rating, it is actually a 15. I think it would have appealed rather more if it had been aimed at the PG audience where jokes could be slightly sillier and less crude. Believe it or not, watching an hour an a half of Anna Friel being treated as a sex object became tiresome by the end of the movie! Sadly also failing completely is the introduction of a primate called Chaka (Jorma Taccone) who tries to be another comedy character, with the costume looking like he was from a Christmas pantomime theatre rather than being from a leading movie studio.

Land of the Lost has similarities with ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ with Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing them wherever they go but with an obvious appeal to kids. ‘Land of the Lost’ was completely that, lost in where it was supposed to be going and who it was supposed to be aimed at.

‘Land of the Lost’ is a movie which is makes you giggle maybe a couple of times but laugh out loud it certainly isn’t. I’m afraid I wont be recommending that you go to buy this one but if you love Will Ferrell and want to own everything he does, you can buy it on DVD here and Blu Ray here. You can also buy it through iTunes here.

All images © 2009 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

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

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

NBC Universal have been kind enough to give us an iPod Nano that one lucky HeyUGuys reader will be able to watch their favourite horror movies on. This Halloween, a whole bunch of them are available at a special price on iTunes! You can watch Shaun of the Dead, Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, Van Helsing and The Skeleton Key with Kate Hudson ““ for only £3.99. These are now all available at iTunes.

To celebrate this freaky film frivolity, we’re running a competition to win a brand new shiny iPod Nano that shoots video – with thanks to NBC Universal. Since this is such a great prize, we’re going to need something from you. We want you to tell us your most terrifying horror film and why (max 100 words).

The prize winning entry will have their entry on a post here on HeyUGuys so make them good!

Send you entries to psycho@heyuguys.co.uk

Make sure you include your home address so that we can send you the Nano should you be the lucky winner.

The Small Print:

• This competition is only open to UK residents and only one entry per person will be counted
• The competition will close Sunday 1st  November at 23.59 GMT

Good luck everyone!!

Please view our full competition terms and conditions here.

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