RIPD

1. I remember having seen RIPD this evening and came to a decision that it was almost interesting as an undead version of MIB, there was a lot of visual imagination in thes movie, but then it went where Transformers 3 and again Marvel Avengers had been before.  
2. Only Jeff Bridges brings life to the RIPD, near enough resurrecting from the dead his 19th century lawman character from Coen Brothers' movie True Grit.  
3. Was the Kevin Bacon in RIPD the real one or just another doppleganger from Orange 2-for-1 cinema nights and EE commercials?
4. I  really wish that Kevin Bacon hadn't done those commercials 
5. Oh my, a dozen people will suddenly remember what Transformers 3 and Marvel Avengers have in common and feel that I have totally ruined the very idea of seeing the film. They'll never go to see the movie now!

"The Call" & "Prisoners"

a) Seeing "The Call"

1.  I can recall seeing yesterday The Call. It was almost a great thrill ride but failed to deliver any real intelligent surprise at the end. Besides that it seemed like a better than average thriller with a fairly decent ending reached by way of an idiot plot point or two. I am not interested in any of the explanations and perhaps it was to be nothing but a dream like thing to float around in the mind and fade. There is very little that one can specifically say about The Call without possibly ruining the plot for those who haven't seen it. However The Call might be good to watch again if they show it on TV in a few years time, there is nothing else to watch and one might feel as if one has used well the time
2. The sight of the girl in the back of the car punching the back light out and her hand is sticking out in the trailers, it was quite a haunting image, it was as if the back of the car was now a womb, I expected that corner hole to open up wide and show a foetus floating in amniotic fludi. When the girl comes through the gap in the back seat, it might have been the moment when she is supposed to being birthed.

b)  Seeing "Prisoners"
However today I remember that today I saw Prisoners and felt that The Call and Prisoners were almost the antithesis of one another. I realised that this would be the case before I saw the Prisoners and maybe even before I saw The Call. It was totally wonderful to see people walking out before the end of Prisoners, perhaps they were afraid of how far the story seemed to lead into depths of nowhere at points. If only more people were walking out before the end of Prisoners, it might have been an even greater film experience. Three people in my row along left early and this forced me sitting at the end of the row to get out of my seat twice for these people to stand in the aisle as they left and I wondered "what the hell is going on here?" but I appreciated the extremeness of the situation. Prisoners was the film with the most satisfying thriller storyline this year and a good one to rewatch because of some of its visually abstract revelations. I also very much appreciated the pouring rain  and it's minimalistic ending as well. It also brought me to think about Blade Runner in an inspired way.

c) People and situations from "The Call" transform into those in "Prisoners"

c. i) Halle Berry transforms into Jake Gyllenhaal

1. Initial Transformations. The actors to take note of here are Halle Berry who plays emergency telephone operator Jordan Turner in The Call and Jake Gyllenhaal who plays Detective Loki in Prisoners.
2. Distant sounds. Jordan Turner hears the sound of something metal making a chiming sound in the background of a telephone call and this become the idiot plot point that takes her to discover the metal cover concealing the entrance of a cellar complex beneath the ground where an old house once stood and there was the layer of the serial killer Michael Foster. 
3. Another step forwards by dropping something and retrieving it. In The Call, Halle Berry enters the cellar complex only because she suddenly drops her mobile phone down through the cellar entrance and down below there is not mobile phone signal. In Prisoners. once Detective Loki has decided to smash everything and throw on the floor everything on the desk in his work cubicle, after he has let a suspect who was drawing a map in the form maze shoot himself, the act of dropping something leads to another point in the story as he plays with the toy bus on the floor, moves it around and then discovers in the photo of the corpse from the cellar on the floor the medallion has the pattern of a maze
4. Idiot police didn't make a basic search of the area. The police in The Call had located the abandoned car on the plot of land where the cellar was to be found and the chiming sound was to be heard in the distance which turned out to be a metal object that might have been a padlock hanging by a string, hanging down the side of a flagpole, tied to a flag pole that kept hitting the pole, they didn't bother to notice the sound in the telephone call. They didn't bother to carry out a proper search across the area of ground which might have led to the discovery of a cellar.In Prisoners, there are the police digging up the yard outside the house but find nothing, and they fail to do something such as a proper search around the area and look to see if the parked car is concealing something obvious, but here Jordan has been transformed into Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki who right at the end of the film hears the distant sound of a toy whistle being blown by Keller Dover who is trapped in a pit with a man hole sized entrance hidden beneath a metal cover,

c. ii) Mike Foster transforms into Keller Dover and then Holly Jones' husband

1. More Transformations. The actors to point out here are Michael Eklund plays the abductor/serial killer Michael Foster in The Call and also  Hugh Jackman who plays Keller Dover in Prisoners.  
2. Cellar transforms into abandoned former home. Once the enraged Keller Dover had abducted the imbecile Alex Jones believing him to be guilty of abducting his daughter, although the person turned out to be someone who was an imbecile who knew the actual abductor and was a victim himself, he held him prisoner in his former now abandoned home and grievously tortured him. He was almost no better than the Michael Foster character who had kidnapped blonde woman, taking them to his hideaway to kill them for his own perverse needs. Michael Foster's almost maze like cellar had become Keller Dover's abandoned how with its many upstairs twists and turns that led to the bathroom. 
3. Forced down the hole While Michael Foster had been shoved back down back into the cellar by Jordan Turner and her the girl abductee, Keller Dover had been forced down into the pit by the elderly woman killer who has shot him in the knee cap and so he is stuck down there. However Michael Foster is knocked unconscious by his fall into the cellar and Jordan Turner takes the opportunity to bind the man to a chair in his chamber and to leave him there to die. 
4. Serial Killers left to die bound to chairs in cellars. Michael Foster is left bound to his chair in the cellar in The Call and  then transforms into n dead body of a man bound to his seat in the cellar beneath the priest's house in Prisoners. That dead man was also a serial killer who had died some years ago, had killed many children and was the husband of the elderly woman Holly Jones, the villain of the film and aunt of the imbecile Alex Jones.

d) Alex Jones in Prisoners as an echo of Alex Jones of Prison Planet?
Meanwhile is there a connection between Alex Jones in Prisoners and radio presenter Alex Jones who runs the Prison Planet conspiracy website? Possibly not.

Rush

1) I very much appreciated the movie Rush which was about the Formula One racing drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Quite a thrill ride and I suppose that the actor who played Niki Lauda stole the show, James Hunt was never the sort of person one would expect to be played by someone who might play the Mighty Thor in another movie, but Chris Hernsworth did a reasonable job, who else out there should one choose? His was a big enough name to put on the poster and his performance served the film well. However James Hunt's character didn't seem to aim to portray him as the most intelligent person because that was the Niki Lauda role and James Hunt was the amiable person who would do the right thing to show what his friendship meant with a difficult person such as Niki Lauda. So this was a very appreciable male bonding movie without going in any extreme directions.

2) Usually it's a case of Ron Howard making a movie about something based on real life one might be cursing away about the fact that he is most likely to have taken liberties to the most horrid extremes,  although his film "Frost/Nixon" and what that highlighted about Nixon seemed quite incredible and maybe was a turn for the best for Ron in his film making in my perspective. For me, Rush was best movie of the year for me, probably the most refreshing film since "Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy" since any film that reliably goes back four decades showing a world when things in England seem less digital and still looking forwards to the future rather rather than wishing we had not actually got there and that it hadn't turned out the way it had, seems to make an optimistic movie me. We probably were cursing away back in the 70s about what was happening in England, but now the imagined future has disappeared and the 70s in comparison seemed like a happier time.

3) Rush left some interestingly severe impressions. Scenes involving Niki Lauda's stay in hospital might lead one to want to close ones eyes at times even because it seemed unbearable though it would have been the scene where he was having his lungs vacuumed, and the scene where James Hunt has holes drilled through his visor to let out condensation was almost terrifying too. It might have been some sort of weird reflection on the fact that they were travelling around in these high speed coffins ready for death and some would have been taken to the extremes of being embalmed before they even encountered their final breath. Maybe right at this moment someone is out there trying to rewrite the story as a weird techno-horror movie. Another great scene was where James Hunt beats the shit out of a reporter who had been rude to Niki Lauda.

The real Niki Lauder ( but after injury) and James Hunt

4) During the time of watching the movie, I of course had to ask myself as the film came on who was still alive from that era. I had my internet on the mobile phone to answer those questions. Niki Lauda was very much alive and with a kidney transplant with a second but much young wife and with children by her in recent years. Unfortunately James Hunt had died from a heart attack a twenty years ago in 1993 aged only forty five and the other sports personality from that era Barry Sheene the top racing motorcyclist had died from cancer ten years ago in 2003. But these were the big television personalities that were on television for the English audience during the seventies, a time of three different TV channels, no internet and indeed quite a different population in England. Going back in time to the seventies with such a mobile phone in my hand with all the information at hand and greater ease with global communication would have been an extraordinary thing but we have almost got used to it.

5) Thankyou Ron Howard for making this movie! It certainly cheered me up.

Wmm enraged by Intu's corporate renaming of The Chimes, The Harlequin and other shopping malls.

Dream Like Confusion Wmm

The Chimes name has now been replaced by 'intu Uxbridge"!

Posted on "intu Uxbridge" shopping centre's Facebook Page as soon as Wmm visited the Uxbridge shopping area.

https://www.facebook.com/intuUxbridge/posts/10151656067145143?

At the moment Intu don't seem to be concerned about genuine names, but instead prefer to cattle brand their shopping malls with a logo that has about as much charm as pregnancy test kit box


Wmm: I loved the name "The Chimes" very much over the years and it was something that actually attracted me to the shopping centre in Uxbridge, but today I saw the words 'intu Uxbridge" over the entrance for the first time, and it looked like some spelling mistake, I had no idea what it was supposed to mean. I wondered if it was supposed to be some sort of Orwellian Newspeak term. It looks daft and stupid to me, and didn't look cheerful at all and I really want "The Chimes" brought back as a name for the shopping centre. I will never buy into this soulless "intu Uxbridge" name whatever you have to say about it being the company name and the new free family services, new wi-fi being rolled out, customer lounges, new and exciting stores. You might have great plans for the development of the shopping centre but you can start by restoring "The Chimes" name as "intu Uxbridge" is just abstract , pointless looking, not very appealing at all even if "intu" is the name of the company. and the old the shopping centre's name gave the place an appealing sense of individuality rather than just another shopping mall owned by "intu' whatever name is supposed to be. I'm glad that CSC never tried to turn the place into "CSC Uxbridge" because that would have looked completely pointless as well. So please inform the heads of "intu" now, bring back "The Chimes"!

Wmm: Now I've just found out what your company has done to the Harlequin Centre in Watford and called it "intu Watford". This is just utterly dreadful! I can't understand why you can't leave these nice names in their rightful places and instead give them these names that seem like some sort of a coded language

Wmm: Is there a town called Rmoil with a shopping mall that Intu could suddenly take over and rename?

Intu Uxbridge: Dear Sir, it is excellent to hear that one of our shoppers is so passionate about the shopping centre and all customer feedback is very important to us. With regards to the name, you mentioned some of the reasons why the company has changed our name along with the 15 other shopping centres in our group and it really is so much more than a name. It is a change in how our head office does business- putting the customer experience at the forefront of everything that we do. The name is just one way of uniting all of the centres under one structure with customer experience at the heart of it. CSC changed its name to intu only a few months ago therefore we are still part of a very young brand and we hope that with time, as a valued customer, you will see much more than a name.

If you wish to discuss this further then please do contact us on uxbridge.information@intu.co.uk and we will call you or email you, whichever you prefer.

Many thanks,
The intu team.

Wmm: well, thanks for the response, and I have nothing more to say but please may intu be very concerned about the effects of replacing various shopping mall's glorious names with ones that are completely pointless and abstract.

We're The Millers

 

 

1. I found "We're The Millers" to be much better than a typical Gnatspew comedy (a gnatspew comedy is usually a comedy movie so bad that you might prefer to drink gnat's spew if such a thing existed) and was almost dry and witty in some places considering what it was. Glad to have seen it. There were some interesting elements in it, I almost found myself on the verge of chuckling through some of the scenes which is very rare with American movies these days. I  usually avois these comedies like the plague but this one pulled me in by various methods 
2. Jennifer Aniston looked very fit in the film, maybe she has improved with age or someone made her jaw corners less pointy using a hacksaw or a hammer and chisel., It's hard to know usually a Jennifer Aniston movie is a movie for me to avoid  
3. The cast probably looked as if they were having fun making the film. I enjoyed enough of it while I was watching it and that is fair, it seemed like an honest film, some of the scenes made me squirm, I can't usually bare to watch movies where people are hell bent on getting themselves in trouble but the after effects of this movie were fine. It seemed to be a film where the characters generally encounter odd sexually amorphous situations in a flowing mainstream context .
4. Memory of the title is slowly fading and completely transforming into something else "Meet the..." Can't remember the name without cheating, almost thought for a while it was "Meet The Howies" or is it "Here's the Maddies". What? And the name of the lead male comedy actor in this fails to leave an imprint on the mind but he was able to hold the central point of focus throughout the movie.  
5. Whether or not I could tolerate bothering to sit through that film is another question. And perhaps there are better things to do than to ask such questions.

Group of owls synchronicity

A synchronicity for today. I posted a picture by Bernard Villemot of eight owls side on the Facebook page devoted to that artist, which was a very unusual picture to find by the artist indeed and then later in the underground train,  I read on a poster for the London School of Economics that mentions that a group of owls is called a Parliament of owls and that piece of information is not something that I've read or heard in the last twenty five years or so

Owls by Bernard Villemot (1975)
Source (letitiamorris.com)

White Hard or Die House Down?

Memories remain of having seen White House Fall or was it White House Down or White Hard or Die House Down or something like that. Helicopters were falling out of the sky worse than Black Hawk Down. Don't ask me to remember the actual film title, there is no reason to, it was just a title designed to be fused and confused with many others.

Lead actor whose name I don't remember indeed performed Bruce Willis in Die Hard type activities, there's no doubt about that. Were the people of the USA supposed to be overcome with emotion when the girl waved the flag on the White House Lawn? 

The presence of the final villain somewhere became pretty obvious but the question of who it was pointless until the revelation came. An enjoyable Emmerich movie for what is was, plenty of action and over the top, watch it once and once only. 

Black White Dead Man House Olympus Hawk Fall Down and the stream of words continue to be placed upon the door of your fridge in magnet form

The white house garden flowers were pretty, perfect place for a shootout.

See also: White House Olympus Has Fallen Down