DRIVE

Cars and violence, what's not to love?

Holy shit! I have a review out that’s not 3 weeks after the release date! And now that we’re over that, let’s talk about Drive.

You’d think a film called Drive - which focuses on a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver, on the run from the mob after a heist gone wrong and out for revenge on those responsible - would be full of action, car chases and a pounding soundtrack that sets out to abuse your senses in the same way a drunk hillbilly beats up his wife. But you couldn’t be further from the truth, and thank fuck for that because it shows that you can actually make a standard genre movie compelling, visually complex, and absolutely beautiful without resorting to the plot hole mind fuck stories like Inception.

Yup...I can predict that you needed a plane so I bought an airline for you...

Drive is a simple film, where less is more, and subtlety is king. It’s a very standard Noir Thriller with a simple story, but Nicolas Winding Refn (most known for Bronson) picked up the Best Director award at Cannes this year for this film, and you don’t get that just for making your standard run of the mill genre film otherwise, heaven forbid, Michael Bay would win the Palme D’Or. And if that happened, I would lose my faith in humanity and smear my rancid shit on the walls of a children’s hospital or something.

What Refn has done is to make a film that is rich and textured visually, audibly and most importantly, thematically. It all seems very 80’s but it is clearly set in the present day. There’s all the tacky neon you could want and even the soundtrack beats that 80’s synth pop we all know and love. Even down to the detail of the pink italicised paintbrush type in the credits. It’s got the aesthetic as if they had actually filmed Grand Theft Auto: Vice City without the 80’s campness. But through all of the visual and audible stylisation, it is the themes and character that stand out and the simplicity of the story has allowed Refn to focus thoroughly on it and create this award winning vision.

That’s not to say this film is without it’s flaws though, there are a couple of gaping plot holes and sometimes Carey Mulligan’s Irene seems a little too helpless. There are clichés and the beginning all seems a bit too saccharine sweet for the kind of Jeckyll and Hyde theme that resonates throughout the film. But these flaws are completely overwhelmed by the intricacy with which this film has been crafted.

However, there is a rather colossal flaw, which I don’t really seem to understand, and that’s the UK age certificate. The film’s been given an 18 rating, which is pretty much a commercial death sentence in this country. With the attendance for 18 rated films at an all time low, all the studios are out to trivialise their violent content into cartoonish drivel so that they get certified 15. This is partly to blame for the desensitisation of our youth, but also means films like Drive won’t get to a larger audience in the cinema because the violence here is too ‘real’. But in the US, this film has a RESTRICTED rating. Which means anyone under 17 can go as long as they are with an adult over 18. This rating is MORE SENSIBLE because not only do the studios get the sales of the tickets, the parents can decide if their 15 or 16 year old kids are fit to see the film themselves. But oh no, we wouldn’t want parents to feel responsible for the little shits they spawn would we? We’d rather just park them in front of the TV and let that raise them instead.

After watching Tellietubbies, junior picked up a hammer and bashed is family's skulls in because they wouldn't make him tubbie toast...

Anyway, I digress…

Drive, above all else, is a Jeckyll and Hyde film. The unnamed driver (played magnificently by Ryan Gosling) is a seemingly kind a gentle person, but just under the surface lays a savage beast that really doesn’t take a lot of coaxing to come out to the fore. This is also reflected in the city of LA. It is saturated, colourful, bright and pretty to look at, but just below the surface is a criminal underbelly with gangs and mobs willing to screw each other over for money. Maybe even, we can see a little bit of the unnamed driver in ourselves. We all pretend to be nice, but actually, maybe we all just want to gouge each others eyes out with the nearest piece of cutlery. 

OH NO, THERE IS A FORK IN MY EYE!

This is what Film Noir should be doing. It reflects the darker side of humanity by showing an audience the protagonists relationship with the city in which they dwell, and their natures very frequently fit hand in hand. This is what makes Drive a true Noir film, and what makes it a bloody fantastic one. The violence is visceral, the driving sequences have made driving sequences exciting again (the opening is one of the most intense things I have ever seen), and just about everything in this film is sublime. Go and watch it, thank me later.

And if that didn't persuade you, perhaps a picture of Bill Murray might.

KILL LIST

Wait...what?

Every once in a while I get introduced to something that completely and utterly confuses me as to what the fuck I am actually watching. Like Deal or No Deal style game shows where the contestant wins money without any sort of skill. If it were up to me, to get that £250’000 the contestant would need to have suffered some sort of emotional and psychological trauma that the money would be needed for therapy afterwards.

...and for the cuddly toy, you have to fight a REAL LIVE PANDA!

Anyway, Kill List is one of those things, but that actually works in its favour. I think…

The film follows Jay, an ex-soldier turned hit man with a middle class family life that is slowly unravelling due to him being out of work for the last 8 months. His previous assignment had gone horribly wrong and it’s still dogging him. However, home pressures and a visit from his friend and partner, Gal, lead him to take on another job - an easy job with plenty of money. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems.

So far, sounds like your fairly average film. After hearing a bit about the hype and not reading too much, I was very unsure of what to actually expect, but figured it was going to be one of those usual British crime films about angry men who go around killing people and being all cheeky-like á la Guy Ritchie. In most instances I’d be right, but I was actually wrong on this one, and when I say wrong, I mean REALLY wrong. I mean wrong in the sense of someone eating dog shit and thinking “now why did I think that would taste like chocolate?” Just because it’s the same colour as chocolate doesn’t mean it actually is.

Chocolate, or shit? What do you think?

OK, so maybe there was SOME chocolate mixed in with the shit, because some of the dialogue actually was a bit cheeky-chappy ‘ave a laugh like (my favourite line being “we’re going to do this properly, not just mow him down like some Hackney crackhead”), but the interaction between the characters feels a boatload more natural than that of the typical British crime film. With an absolutely fantastic script, and additional dialogue contributed by the actors themselves, conversation flows a lot more naturally and it feels more real.

But the greatness in the script comes not just from the dialogue, but the structure as well. It takes the standard 3 act story structure and still adheres to it, but as well as your standard turning points in the story it also shifts genres. Which serves to disorientate you and build up your expectations so the final act completely throws you off balance before the closing moments of the film that really deliver that finishing blow.

Yeah...pretty much that really.

Which leads me to my final point and a possible reasoning as to why I’m really unsure about what I think of this film. It does have quite a few flaws, but it’s an absolutely wonderful piece of filmmaking, with dread, menace and tension submersed under the skin of every character and permeates out through their interactions as well as the films construct. It has a great script that offers a very daring and different kind of film and deserves the praise it gets. But above all else, it’s an examination of our relation to violence. There are some scenes that are quite brutal, and they only get more brutal as the film progresses. But they payoff they lead to is more of a punishment for our want (and by the end of the film, Jay’s want) of this cathartic release. It’s somewhat unsatisfying, but it is clearly the film that Ben Wheatley, the director, wanted to make. It’s almost like he wanted the ending to completely throw you out of the door like a violent drunk at a bar. You want to start trouble? Well you can fuck off out of here then.

And after that, you just stumble home, confused and unsure of what the hell is going on.

I'm pretty sure he just drunkenly stumbled into the Whitehouse after hitting the real George Bush with his car...

THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Sensual, Sumptuous, Sexual, Spanish.

One of the most irritating things in the world are people that don’t watch foreign language films because they “can’t be bothered with the subtitles”. It literally makes me want to go all Reservoir Dogs on their ears just so they have to watch everything with subtitles for the rest of their lives for being so bloody ignorant.

"What's that? You can't hear me? Would you like some subtitles now?"

Anyway, now that my rant is over I can move onto the film.

The Skin I Live In is the hotly anticipated new film from Oscar winning Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar (though saying that, the anticipation has mostly been on my part as I’m the weird film geek of my friendship group), and it is an Almodóvar film all over. Yet here we have a director who is an Auteur in every sense of the word, but somehow manages to stay fresher than the Fresh Prince himself.

You get filmmakers like Tim Burton, who, lets face it, are BORING. Oooo a new Tim Burton film, I wonder how much gothic inspiration is going to be swirling around Johnny Depp’s strange character who doesn’t fit into society for whatever reason. He is the Iron Maiden of the film industry, releasing the same thing again and again and again in a never ending spiral that even M.C. Escher couldn’t comprehend (high brow art joke fnar fnar fnar).

If Escher gets confused, you know we're in trouble.

So with this film, you have all the general Almodóvar traits: strong female characters, pushing the boundaries of gender stereotypes, bright colours, obsession and the connections between people. Yet these are all just part of a much grander plot that becomes an incredible feat of genre mashing that keeps you on your toes. Jumping between thriller, mystery, family drama, body horror, suspense, revenge and psychosexual drama with an episodic, almost choppy narrative is definitely an experiment that could have gone horribly wrong, but we are safely in the hands of a master as he navigates us through this utterly batshit insane plot.

Antonio Banderas is our protagonist, a brilliant plastic surgeon who has holed himself away in his country home working on a single project for the last 6 years. He has created a skin that you can graft onto a human that is tougher than skin is supposed to be. His test subject has remained imprisoned in captivity and is the key to his past. That’s all I’m going to say because you really have to see it to believe it.

The cast is amazing, Banderas is suitably intense and brooding, Elena Anaya is the brilliantly fragile, yet menacing Vera and Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes plays a brilliant matriarch. There is very little I can fault with this film, apart from maybe the pacing is a little slow through the middle. But that doesn’t really matter considering that every frame of film is full to bursting of visual imagery that will make your eyes bleed in ecstasy.

EVEN STATUES OF LIONS EYES' WILL BLEEEEEEEED

This film is an absolute must watch not only for its fantastic direction, or the great performances, or the insane plot, or the beautiful visuals, but because it’s fresh, new. I have never quite seen anything like it and leaving the cinema the only word I could really think of to describe it was AWESOME. What is so great about it is that it has more ideas rammed into it than the karma sutra. A film that is so very much the way I like my men….RICH.*

Would you have sex with a cartoon character if they were rich? I'm considering it...

*Author is aware that this is a terrible joke that you would expect from Sex and the City, or the back of a penguin wrapper.

SHIT

OH SHIT

IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I'VE ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING

MY BLOG FAILS

BUT NOT FOR MUCH LONGER
(hopefully)

You see, the problem with keeping a blog is that it has to be a habit. And I don't have an addictive personality, and therefore take a long time to pick up habits...the ones that I do have took me years and years to cultivate, such as my habit of eating chocolate...or that massive rock of crack I keep under my bed.

BUT FEAR NOT. I shall hopefully post something soon, maybe, once my life gets a little more sorted. THERE HAS BEEN SOME BUSY BUSY SHIT GOING ON.

I don't even know why I'm writing this, it's not like anyone is actually going to read this right? I should probably become popular before I write stupid ramblings and get on to writing something pointful and meaningful.

Or maybe I should just get really drunk and write a post...

13 ASSASSINS

Yes, well done it has the word ASS in the title...twice!

Rumour has it that if Takashi Miike’s production output falls below 4 feature length films a year the world will end and the gates of hell will open up, unleashing a deluge of demons so great that not even Jean Claude Van Damme will be able to stop them. This may have something to do with why in the last 20 years he has directed more than 80 films. And he doesn’t make just terrible film after terrible film either, he has been responsible for some of the classics of Japanese cinema, notably Ichi The Killer and Audition, which became cult classics in the western hemisphere. 13 Assassins definitely doesn’t show that the movie-making machine is slowing up either, remaining as intense and intelligent as the large part of his back catalogue.

The film follows the story of a Samurai, hired to kill an evil overlord looking to spread chaos and bring Japan back to an age of war. This of course is no easy task, and so he must recruit a band of loyal warriors prepared to give their lives in honourable combat to assassinate this crazy bad man.

If only it was real life...and the evil bad man was Jordan. Life would be good then.

So it’s very much a film that “does what it says on the tin.” At just over 2 hours long it is clearly split into 2 halves, the build up and the combat. And when I say halves, I literally mean it - the combat scene is the entire second half of the film. Now some would say that a whole hour of nothing but combat would begin to loose the intensity after a while, but it really doesn’t let up, it just keeps getting better and better.

Very much like an orgasm then...except with more violence. Well...depends on what kind of orgasm...

So where does the intelligence come in? Well apart from feeling very reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Seven Samurai, it actually turns the genre on its head by playing out very much like many Hollywood films. A build up to a great stand off battle at the end, followed swiftly by a one on one show down between each gang’s leaders. It certainly feels like a film influenced by Hollywood and this could have been a let down, there are certainly some clichéd moments in it. But Miike has managed to keep enough Eastern energy in it for it to set itself apart from the usual generic crap. It is this delicate balance that keeps this film on your toes throughout where you think you know what will happen, but it never quite plays out that way.

Not only that, but there is an absolutely insane screwball character thrown into the mix. A wandering man who had been thrown out of his gang, looking to join in the fight for what appears to be a bit of a laugh and eventually leads to an incredible “wait….what the fuck?” kind of moment towards the films conclusion. He isn’t a samurai, but he’s quite keen to mock them and show them up whenever he can (he takes the phrase “bringing a knife to a gun fight” back to the Feudal Japanese era, using a sling and rocks against an army of swords and bows), even uttering the line “you samurai, you’re quite boring aren’t you?”.

 I don't think he'll be on the Christmas card list then?

So the film, being a bit of a mash up between East and West, manages to turn a rather generic and average samurai story into a film that is epic from start to finish. You can feel the burning sensation throughout the whole of the build up, which culminates in the explosive ambush (literally) and the intense, relentless battle that pushes your senses to a new place, with just enough comic humour to ease up the tension so you don’t feel like your bowels are about to explode after being squeezed too tight by muscular tension.

Let’s hope the next 80 films continue to be as fresh and original as their predecessors. And for God’s sake someone try to find a way to make someone live forever, because if Takashi Miike dies, the natural order of the world will fuck up in a way that makes 2012 look like your little sister’s tea party.

Or something as adorable as this.

THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF ADÉLE BLANC-SEC

Indianna Jones' really hot French grandma comes to town...

The problem with this age of information we live in is that before you actually go and see a film, you know more about it than the actual filmmakers (but then again, most big budget films have been assembled by a team of mentally challenged monkeys in a terrible bid to save money so the studios can computer enhance the size of Kiera Knightly’s tits). You’ve seen about 30 trailers, read interviews, seen the stars appear on chat shows, read reviews etc. etc. and the general publicity drive is something akin to the way Britney Spears is still trying to convince the world she’s a pop star.

"And after I release my new record, my new range of tampons will be hitting shelves!"

This is why I was glad to see this film without knowing a single thing about it, apart from the fact it was directed by Luc Besson - a man who gave us such fine action films as Léon and Nikita, as well as the hilariously terrible but completely unmissable The Fifth Element. So I figured I didn’t have much to lose as even if it was terrible, it was bound to get a good laugh along the way.

What I got was actually something completely unexpected. With a story that’s quite possibly the most batshit insane story for an adventure film, it makes Indianna Jones look like he was just raiding through that wardrobe in your parent’s bedroom you aren’t allowed to go near at Christmas time. It’s 1912 in France, and a renowned telepathic scientist has found a way to bring to life and control ancient beings, hatching a 130 million year old pterodactyl egg and flying it around the city. Adéle seeks the help of this scientist to bring to life an Egyptian pharaoh’s physician in order to revive her sister, who due to a freak accident has been turned into a breathing vegetable.

So this film seems like a bit of a mash up between Indianna Jones, The Mummy, but of course, this is French cinema, not some cheap Hollywood knock off piece of monkey faeces. It actually has a great sense of humour and will get you laughing at the sheer absurdity of the way it plays out whilst howling through the excitement of a great action film. Of course, being a French production there is nowhere near the sort of budget the Yanks get, but the average CGI only serves to add to the charm of the picture.

No Wolverine, bad CGI isn't THAT bad unless it's meant to distract you from a terrible story...

Charm: this film has it in buckets. It’s as though Luc Besson is sitting next to you, whispering sweet nothings in your ear to distract you from the fact that he’s about to slip a giant dose of LSD into your drink because the film certainly felt like one massive trip, constantly pulling some sort of ‘what the fuck?’ face whilst giggling like a psychotic child at the bizarre capers of bungling cops and the dark one liners Adéle constantly blasts whoever happens to be near her.

So what this film actually is, is FUN! Which seems to be a bit of a rarity nowadays. Not fun in the sense that you go and enjoy a film, but fun in the same way that your 8^th birthday was, except there isn’t any cake involved.

I'm sorry, but you literally cannot mention cake on the internet now without this cropping up...

And this is what seems to be missing from the cinematic landscape as of late. We are in one of the worst economic situations in a long time, and all of the latest releases seem to be deadly serious and grounded in reality. Even the comedies are saccharine sweet with the big emotional kick. Very few films actually just take the plunge and go for an all out adventure that can just really lighten your mood. Besson has really done a fantastic job with this, making an unpredictable, charming, and all round bizarre film in what is set to be a series (the set up for the next potential film is fantastic). I really hope they make another one because it’s indispensable adventures like these that truly showcase the power of cinema in it’s ability to make you temporarily feel like you’re 8 years old again, which to be honest, us depressed and stressed out adults need every now and again.

This kid may be angry, but he really isn't giving a shit about it...

SOURCE CODE

Tasty…but not quite orgasmic.

Science Fiction as a genre regularly calls into question various thoughts and philosophies on mankind and our existence/place in the universe. 2001: A Space Odyssey called into question the relationship between violence and evolution, Blade Runner looks at the essence of life and identity itself and Alien is a superb allegory about the fears of sex and STIs (the constant imagery of penetration and egg laying resulting in death).

"It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?"

-as in that popular song by The Killers

So where does Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones - who directed the wonderful and stupidly low budget British sci-fi flick Moon - fit into the delicious space pie that is Science Fiction? The answer is, it doesn’t. The reason: it is an action thriller with a sci-fi backdrop, very much in line with films like Battle: Los Angeles (I swear to God they must have thought that making it really loud all the time would distract from the fact it’s just a 2 hour advert for the US Marines). What I mean is that the film adheres to the rules of the action thriller, but has various sci-fi elements to it, lacking that real interrogation of human nature. Example: Battle: Los Angeles is an action/war film, except with aliens instead of people.

Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a soldier trapped in another man’s body (a man by the name of Steven Fentress), forced to re-live the last 8 minutes of that man’s life leading up to a bomb exploding on a train. This is made possible by what is called the Source Code - a secret military program. He does this because the bomber of the train has threatened another attack on the city of Chicago and the authorities need to identify him before he can carry out this plan. Each time Colter fails to identify the bomber and the bomb goes off, he is thrown back into reality before being thrown back to the beginning of the 8 minutes again.

A sort of Groundhog Day scenario.

I'm sorry Bill, magic rodents just don't cut it anymore...

This kind of premise is definitely the sort of direction you would expect Duncan Jones to go in, and he has done very well with the script he has been given. You can definitely see the flair of intrigue and examination that made Moon such a great film. The only problem with it is that the action thriller part of it drives the story too fast to truly explore the implications of alternate realities and the effect of death on the human psyche (Colter dies at least 7 times).

So when he begins his investigation, every time interrogating a different person, everyone is a suspect. Very much a standard find the bomb and piece the clues together to find the terrorist and stop the bomb setup that is screaming for Jack Bauer to jump in and torture everyone before fucking everything up and killing everyone whilst somehow managing to save the day. But there’s one more piece of Hollywood tripe that drags down these interesting, high concept ideas. A woman.

Megan Fox is essentially a plot device in every film...she's just terrible.

Ah yes, the woman. The female of the species. The plot device for writers who need to stretch an action film to fill the average 90 minute running time for a film. Again, however, this could have been an interesting idea to toy with, as she essentially falls for Colter’s personality even though he is not in his own body. A serious WTF!? kind of situation. But no, ignore that, instead he has to save a woman he falls in love with after knowing her for a total of about 45 minutes…

No internet blog is complete without a picture of a cat...

This film has Hollywood’s greasy, fat, money grabbing hands all over it and is throwing in all of the usual action thriller tropes to take concepts down to the lowest common denominator in order to sell it to people who read The Sun and watch The X Factor. They are still assuming the audience are a bunch of idiots.

There is however, a glimmer of hope in all of this. Duncan Jones has done superbly well with the script he has been given to make a thoroughly enjoyable action thriller that raises enough questions from the sci-fi side of things to get the old brainbox thinking. Adding to the slowly growing trend of action films that actually make you think (do I really have to mention Inception?). Audiences are getting tired of the same old shit and want something with a bit of a brain to it.

So, 2 films in and Duncan Jones has a pretty impressive track record. The outstandingly observant and interesting Moon followed by the pulse pounding action thriller Source Code…all we need now is for him to mix the two together with his next film and he very well could be making the next Blade Runner - a great action film with a great big juicy philosophical sci-fi brain behind it.

Mmm...tasty philosophy...

SUBMARINE

As a teenager, we all secretly wish we were French.

The relationship between Britain and France is largely based on stereotypes. The French - wearing berets and onion/garlic necklaces whilst smoking and looking like a pretentious dick, and the British - drunken football fanatics who like to glass you in the face or charming Hugh Grant types who like to get glassed in the face. Either way, there has always been an underlying PLAYFUL (not racist) hatred.

Much like these guys really.

However, there are qualities from each nationality that are endearing. The French provide that certain ‘je ne c’est quoi’ that makes the films they make impossibly chic and stylish and the British are masters of awkward comedy and social drama, where you end up giggling like a school girl whilst writhing in your seat in embarrassment - as though your parents have just walked in on you masturbating - followed by a brief cry at the social injustices that befall the characters. It’s these two qualities that are merged together by Submarine that make it very different from the average British film.

Oliver Tate is coming of age and trying to find out who he is. Yet more importantly, he’s trying to get his leg over. Enter Jordana, a girl who is completely alien and yet so familiar. Throw into the mix the fact that he’s trying to save his parents marriage as well and you’ve got a pretty standard set up for a very British film.

But here is where the film cracks out the snails and dons the beret. The film itself is very French in the way it has been constructed. The playfulness of the French New Wave is infused in every sequence, yet the films director, Richard Ayoade (better known as Moss from TV’s The IT Crowd), owns the style in a more controlled manner as to avoid the anti-narrative tangents that the 60s film movement often divulged into. Montages of romance are interspliced with awkward family conversations and ridiculous slapstick, teenage humour with some rather disjointed interactions that can so easily cause a film to become thinly spread and schizophrenic - thankfully, this is not the case.

This is what could have happened...

This technique of filming is intrinsically linked to the fact the story is entirely told from Oliver’s point of view. Based on a novel that speaks entirely in the first person, the films construct becomes the visual representation of the internal thoughts he has. A line of voiceover (a regular occurrence in the film) sums it all up - “I often wish there was a film crew following my every move. Someone making a documentary about a prominent thinker who struggled with unspeakable loss.” The visual style of the film is how he imagines this documentary would be, and this calls into question just how British Oliver really is. If he is British, why does the film as told from his perspective remind me so much of the French New Wave?

This brings me back to the opening statement about teenagers wanting to be French. The most relatable part of the film, what makes it so charming, is the sheer pretentious arrogance that possesses Oliver. It is an arrogance that we have all embraced at some point in our lives around his tender age of 15. We’ve gone through phases, we’ve tried to be like our role models, we’ve tried to get laid, ALL of us have at one point, been like Oliver in our own way.

Of course I am now implying that the French are pretentious and arrogant. Of course I don’t mean that. For one thing, it helps them have a certain look like this...

"Ooh la la"

...and the image we Brits get across is something like this...

"Hang on Dave, I'll take you to hospital in a minute. I FOUND FLOOR CHIPS!"

So is this film’s rich blend of French and British (what I like to call Fritish) a mere mark of the stereotypical view we have of the French? Or is it just a heavily influenced film that has given a breath of Fresh air to the usual British film? Who cares? It’s a real gem of a film and not to be missed.

Which leads me to another point. Recently, we are seeing British directors coming into their own to make new and innovative films that better the latest Hollywood bank breaking projects. Duncan Jones with Moon, Edgar Wright with Shaun of the Dead, Gareth Edwards with Monsters and one I’m particularly excited about seeing, Joe Cornish with Attack The Block (Released May 13^th). All of which have a hand in making some of the newer Hollywood films. We are seeing an uprising of British directors looking to take Hollywood by storm, to turn their tired and formulaic paint by numbers filmmaking into something new and great, to breathe life into a lagging film industry struggling with recession and piracy. I for one, am very excited for what could come around in the next few years.

As the French might say - “Vive la Révolution!”

OK...

OK then, so now that I'm on here I suppose any passers by will be looking for some form of entertainment.

Well I can always forward you to my youtube channel in here. This is where you'll find a few films and music videos that I have made, and you can tell me if you hate them or like them. The amount of films on there is going to grow as by the end of this year, I aim to have taken part in the making of no fewer than 5 films.

Now there's a new years resolution that doesn't mean cutting down on the amount of fun I have! Fuck giving anything up, I'M MAKING FILMS!

Just you wait, I'll be the next Roger Deakins, and if you don't know who he is, have a little education. He's a director of photography and has shot many films including....





No Country for Old Men

Jarhead

The Shawshank Redemption

A Serious Man








So, now that you all know my dreams, feel free to help me achieve them yeah!? If you help me, when I win the best cinematography Oscar, I pledge I will pay £20 to every single person that helped me get there! IT'S OFFICIAL IN WRITING NOW!

An Old Photo

Here is an old photo I took on London's South Bank. Personally, I think it's lovely. I really need to get back into photography again....

HELLO!

So, here we are, the mysterious blogosphere. Well God knows what's going to happen on here, but hopefully it should be building up a nice collection of thoughts and things that I think are cool. Might even give an opinion or two.

ENJOY IT!