The Blog of Tom

I’ve just watched an unintentionally hilarious episode of Stephen King’s Nightmares & Dreamscapes on Five US. The episode in question was titled “Crouch End” and tries to paint the leafy London suburb as the gateway to a Lovecraftian netherworld. An American take on London life is usually rather amusing, but this had me laughing out loud as various gor-blimey stereotypes shuddered in fear at the mention of this infernal district of Hornsey.

“Crouch End? Don’t go there! It’s no place for strangers, missus!”
or
“They say it was built on a Towen. That’s where the druids made human sacrifices!”

(SK has used the Native American burial ground as a plot device in many of his novels, but even his fecund imagination couldn’t imagine one in N8, so instead turns to the druids to supply the unholy land.)

Even though I know none of the later episodes will focus on London suburbs, I’m hoping that the terrible dialogue, ropey acting and god-awful special effects will be of a similar standard.

[In a not-at-all-spooky coincidence, one of the contestants on tonight’s Mastermind chose HP Lovecraft as their specialist subject. I’ve often wondered what my specialist subject would be if I were to ever sit in the big black chair. After due consideration, I think I’d choose “Shit Stephen King Adaptations”.]

The French noir film I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed is released in UK cinemas on October 20th. You can read my review of the film and an interview with the director at filmexposed.com

Direct links:
Review: http://www.filmexposed.com/?file=review&id=385
Interview: http://www.filmexposed.com/?file=feature&id=68

Lifehacker has a good tip for searching for MP3s online. Simply copy and paste the following code into Google’s search box and replace the artist name in quotes (in this case Nirvana) with whoever it is you’re looking for.

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Nirvana”

Google then searches the web for MP3s and Windows Media files on web servers around the world - all available for you to download. For nish.

Just a small note to recommend Paul Auster’s latest novel The Brooklyn Follies. My previous knowledge of Auster’s work is limited to The New York Trilogy and his screenplay for Smoke, both of which I thought were OK, but not outstanding. The Brooklyn Follies comes highly recommended, however, as it’s one of the finest books I’ve read all year. It’s available at amazon.co.uk for only £3.99

Review of “New Police Story”, directed by Benny Chan and starring Jackie Chan.

www.filmexposed.com/?file=review&id=381

I picked up this anthology of short pieces from 3AM as part of Waterstones “Try me for 99p” range. Unfortunately, I felt that even at this low price I’d been swindled, as the bulk of the material in here was utterly tedious - far too many junkie stories and uninteresting tales of fat go-go dancers, not to mention painfully bad poetry.

The only good thing in it was Daren King’s short “Jim Giraffe Stories”, which you can read here, saving yourself 99p in the process.

The Observer publishes an interview and profile of Sofia Coppola in its review section today. While it does a reasonable job of outlining the director’s career, it notably fails to mention one of Sofia’s earliest forays into film. I’m not talking about her disasterous performance in The Godfather Part III, but rather her shameful contribution to he 1989 portmanteau film New York Stories.

For those that haven’t seen the film, it’s three shorts by a heavyweight clutch of directors - Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. Needless to say, being the firm believer in nepotism that he is, Francis ropes in his family to help out in his contribution Life Without Zoe. It’s the story of a hideously rich girl in uptown New York and her friendship with some little prince and is without a doubt one of the worst things ever committed to celluloid. Every single article or opinion I’ve read about New York Stories never fails to mention how utterly, utterly horrible Coppola’s section of the film is.

And rightly so, because it is bad enough to make you wish that the medium of cinema had never been created. It’s that dreadful. And strangely, the aforementioned Observer article fails to mention that Sofia co-wrote this dreadful piece of crap with her father. While I’m not the sort of person who thinks youthful mistakes should be held against a person for the rest of their lives, I’ll make an exception in this case, as Life Wihout Zoe is a crime against cinema, one of those utterly dreadful works that makes you wonder who on earth thought it would ever be a good idea.

For the record, I really liked Lost In Translation and not just because it featured Scarlett Johansson in a pair of translucent pink knickers, but even this doesn’t undo the damage done to my mind by Life Without Zoe. Sofia’s got a lot more work to do before audiences can forgive her. In her defence, she was young and didn’t know what she was doing. Her old man, however, really should have known better.

Adapted from the Alan Moore graphic novel and subsequently disowned by him, the movie version of V For Vendetta was the latest disc to arrive from my online DVD rental service. In all, I thought it was a pretty good adaptation - faithful enough to the original, while cutting out some of the meandering that made the original comic a little trying. To be honest, it’s a hell of a lot better than any of the previous adaptations of Alan Moore’s work to the screen (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and the whole dystopian future thing is kind of my bag anyway.

But there was something I found odd about the film and gave it an unexpectedly surreal slant. Despite knowing that the titular V was played by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix), the British accent he used reminded me of someone else - a familiar voice that I couldn’t quite place. It was only about an hour into the film that I realised who he sounded like - Rowan Atkinson. Given that V remains masked throughout the entire film, it became all too easy to believe that the rubber-faced funnyman was the man behind the mask and plotting to blow up parliament. Despite all the serious political points being made and the bombastic fight scenes, I kept expecting V to say that the tyrannical government was “madder than Mad Jack McMad, winnier of last year’s Mr Mad competition” or that the nationwide insurgency was nothing more than one of Baldrick’s ‘cunning plans’.

It didn’t ruin the film exactly, but perhaps gave it an edge that the film-makers didn’t anticipate. It made me wonder about the casting for the long-anticipated (or feared, depending on your viewpoint) movie adaptation of Moore’s Watchmen. Who are they going to get to play psychopathic vigilante Rorschach - Griff Rhys Jones?

My mate Marcus has decided to launch himself into the world as a foreign correspondent by heading over to Nigeria and reporting on the situation there. You can read about his progress here: Marcus Bensasson in Africa