Kevin Smith in Blighty Watch

Kevin Smith is gonna be on Newsnight Review tonight with Kirsty Wark. Kirsty Wark is a celebrity Killie fan of sorts. Think they are going to discuss the rise of cult fiction to mainstream or some other such stuff. if your in Britain you can watch it on TV realtime tonight or online on the iplayer for a week after or if your not in the UK you can do whatever your (illegal?) thing is to watch it.

Me, i am getting it taped, i will see it in 3 weeks!

that is all.

Kevin Smith Hockey Movie

Hockey, North American speak for Ice Hockey is a really good game actually. Football (soccer, sic) is also a very good game. I am probably wrong but hockey is almost (but not quite) as neglected in the movie world as football but it will soon have a new film in its canon and this one is by a respected and good director (in my opinion at least) and that is reason to rejoice.

As i have given this blog the title of "Kevin Smith Hockey Movie" it shouldnt be too hard to decipher as to which director is taking a pop at an actual sports movie so i suppose i should just get going with some info if you want it and highlight how excited i am about the prospect even at this early stage.

My interest was piqued by a few things, having liked Smiths films a lot over the years i have recently finished his book My Boring Ass Life and thought it was great and kinda developed a wee crush on him when i spot his name in anything i am instantly drawn so while hunting out the hockey scores on Tuesday night, mooching around the nhl website i chanced upon a piece about him and read with interest
that following A Couple of Dicks which is due out soonish, his next project will be a film about hockey!

The link i have put on explains it all in detail but to surmise, its a film based on a song (when at uni my scriptwriting lecturer oftens said that songs could form the basis of decent scripts and i long held the belief that that was bullshit but not no now) by a guy called Warren Zevon and is called Hit Somebody and so now on the imdb page for the expected film that is the title it is going under. Other links on this page have Will Wheaton as the lead, but i Think this was taken from some throwaway remark on twitter. Where else? Though i in no way have any opinion on Wheaton playing a role when i dont know what that role is, god, even if i did know the role i probably wouldnt have much of an opinion!

So, well, a thouroughly thought out blog would have some insight into the song from listening to it but there will be none of that here. I may seek out the song in the future but right now i am just happy that the film is being mooted. I have read its about an enforcer type player who would dearly love to score a goal but is sent out onto the ice simply to beat the crap out the opositions good players. Sounds good, it may even be a period piece which would be sweet.

So there we have it, 2011 is the estimated date of arrival which is kinda vague, but a date of arrival none the less, you could check back here regular to get updates on this project but i recommend Smiths own twitter account or his excellent websites.

Oh and Smith is in Britain right now and is visiting Scotland to talk, and Im in Canada.

Bollocks.

Ruud at TIFF 09 Part 1

okay lets kick this off way back at the beginning, the 10th of September, almost a month ago now but still, we wont let my ineptitude to get something like this up while its still relevent get in the way of a decent opportunity to have a slew of posts about a cracking time in my life!

Sept 10th; its the first day of the festival and I wake up on this Thursday morning with a jolt at 5am, I then snoozed the alarm a few times (why is a snooze 9 minutes?) and dragged myself out of bed and into the shower for about twenty past. Left soon after as I really had no idea where I was going or how long it would take. A forward thinking version of me would have possibly done a dry run at some point in the days leading up but no, guess work at how long it would take on early morning public transport and vague ideas of how to get there would need to see me alright.

Having no idea what i would be doing in my volunteer role at the festival i spent the day before doing a little study on the internet, basically i picked out the films I recognised from the first few days, it wasnt indepth or anything but it did mean that i was secure enough in my post to completely zombie it the whole journey in on the street car (tram service to non Torontonians) till i had to shake it to take my first trip on the citys underground, on the whole its not bad, more akin to Glasgows Clockwork Orange than Londons underground service, but hey this isnt a travelogue, its supposed to be an account of an (almost) insider view of a major film festival, the second biggest behind Cannes, and so i will continue.

So i got to Sutton Place pretty early, this was the idea actually as the Wednesday was an induction day of sorts and I didnt attend (watching Scotlands World Cup dreams die with Splices co-author Big Red was more important) so in am email i received it was advised i arrived early to get myself accustomed to the library. But then i was the first person i think to arrive so no press office no library, no nothing was open. Finally, (it was actually dead on time, if not a bit early) staffers arrived and to the library i went, shift started at 7.30am and were in!

This is what my role was in the communications department. At the hub of the Festival is Sutton Place, in this hotel (Sutton Place is an old hotel in the city, its very nice actaully) a room is set aside and acts as a library and is called the press and industry screening library. In this library some of the films featured in the Festival are available as screeners and in a adjacent room there is a bunch of TV's and DVD players set up for them to be watched on. I worked in this room. Basically, arranging time slots for viewings, handing over the discs, and trouble shooting any such problems with TV's or DVD players that arise. I was not alone though i had another two fellow volunteers doing the same job with me.

Can I just say it was pretty cool, lots of interesting people mill around this area, guys and girls in acquisitions for big production companys, representatives of other film festivals around the world and members of the world press all using this library to catch films that their schedules (their heaving schedules no doubt) couldnt. It was a pretty decent first shift, the folks i worked with seemed like good folks even though their seeming knowledge of films and in particualr the films at the festival seem to be way way way above me, i did kind of keep myslef to myslef however, lack of sleep usually means my words are pretty basic and long sentences can sometimes be beyond me in these situations so i decided to just to sit back and soak in everything and hope that in next few days i could catch some zeds and perk up.. Ho hum, day one and shift one over and I eased myself through it.

After the shift finished at half two i moseyed down to yonge and Dundas Sq to experience my first film of the festival. I kicked off with Steamboat Bill Jr and it was pretty good, i had never seen it before, actually the reason I went to see it is becuase Red told me it was good and he would meet me there to watch it, he didnt mind you he saw the last ten minutes or so after staying at the baseball till the final out. It was still a decent shout by him though Buster Keaton though is the man, some of the stunts are amazing. I did however have a bit of the "am i sleeping with my eyes open here?" moments though as the early rise began to get the better of me. I met up with Red afterwards and he took me and my good lady for dinner, what a gent. I suppose with all the films kicking off the first day of the fest it was an inauspicious beginning for me but hey, thats how it goes sometimes.

I suppose i should give some context to what i did with what else went on in the city in places i wasnt. The Festival officially kicked off with a film called Creation starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly who is his wife in real life, now i am not a Ok! or Hello fiend but i was surprised i didnt actually know that. Anyway, i am led to believe that it is the first time ever (if not ever then definitely in a while) that a Canadian film hasnt opened the festival. The photos of Connelly at the premiere are smoking i have to say, the film I hear is ok, Bettanny is Oscar material by all accounts, however one chap who say it said the monkey was was the best thing in it! scathing! I should note to those who have no idea what Creation is, its a film about Charles Darwin with Mr Jennifer Connelly as Darwin. Also having its premeire was Jennifers Body which is Diablo Cody's (Juno) new thing she wrote, its a horror or something. Anyways, Megan Fox was there and this caused all sorts of media attention, and why not. Antichrist and the new Almodovar film also got opeing night screenings but for this guy the day was all about Steamboat Bill Jr and being tired.

Mostly about being tired.

Corman to Receive Oscar

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. You senile, old fool you. For a while now you've been doing these things that suggest that you're past it, ignoring every Pixar film for best picture and then giving them the derogatory best animated film award, say. Or how about giving Scorsese an award for a film that wasn't that great purely because you forgot to give him one for any of his great works. That one had you hanging by a thread.

But now you're giving Roger Corman an honourary Oscar. Really? Well it's time for the home Oscar.

Old time readers will know that I've got a bit of a problem with Corman and his Wonderful World of Budget Constraints, in fact the second ever Splice post was about him.

Frankly some of the true greats have never won an Oscar, or had to take the Scorsese-like one, so it's frankly galling that one will rest on the mantelpiece of the man who made these:







Now I love cheesy B-movies as much as the next weirdo but Corman's aren't even as fun as the trailers make them look! Basically this is a man who can take the idea of a mutant pickle invading Earth with his army of bats and make it boring!

So why is he getting this award? The argument about the talent he has fostered doesn't ring true. It's an impressive list of genuinely brilliant talent, Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppolla, James Cameron to name a few. But the stuff they made under him was almost entirely garbage, mainly thanks to him. He may have given them a break but that's it. I doubt that the Oscar is being given to him because of association with others who were worthy winners. If that really were the case then an honourary gold chap is surely in the offing for, say, the Weinsteins.

No this smacks of of the industry honouring a great business man, which it must be said Corman is. In these troubled financial times Hollywood is feeling it, look at the way the entire industry appears to have pinned its hopes on Avatar being the biggest thing ever. As such Corman's business model, spend so little on the film that it actually isn't possible for it to fail to make the money back, is very appealing to the suits.

In fact, it's pretty much the model that the industry works on, just on a far larger scale. Hollywood doesn't fail to turn a profit thanks to all the ancillary markets, it's really all about how big that profit actually is when the scare stories about the industry in decline start spreading. Awarding Corman points to the fact that his way of doing things is the ideal for the industry so look out for more story-less trash designed to smash your senses into submission instead of films with any sort of substance.

An award such as this should be about honouring artistry, but in this case it's purely a business thing. Giving an Oscar to Corman for his work makes a mockery of an award's ceremony that should mean something but has instead become a mass marketing tool. It dilutes anything already given out under the name to others for their "outstanding achievements" and "artistry".

At this rate it'll soon be preferable to have an MTV Movie Award on your mantelpiece. Do you hear that Oscar? I said AN MTV MOV..., aw forget it you deaf, old bastard.

Toronto International Film Festival 2009 aka TIFF 2009

Two weeks ago today (1oth Sept) the Toronto International Film Festival 2009 kicked off and on Saturday past (19th Sept) it came to a close.

Since I am living in the city at the moment, I put myself forward to volunteer at this years festival and was duly accepted. After coming through the rigourous induction day (ha ha) and learned to accept my fate to be simply doing a couple of shifts over the ten days outside (or inside) a cinema in the city where the festivals films were being shown I recieved a phone call asking if I could promise myself for the whole ten days to work in the communications department (which I had originally hoped for) at Sutton Place Hotel. I duly obliged and signed myslef up for all ten shifts. It turns out this Sutton Place place was the hub of the TIFF (its acronym and what people actually call it, probably because they have no connection to Grants wife from Eastenders but hey) and so over the next week or so I will relay my time at the festival. What I did, what I saw, who I saw, hell even maybe some reviews could be posted in the coming days!

Of course this would have made an excellent day today diary type deal as and when the festival was going on but thats not how we roll at Splice, late or not at all is more our style.

So with this serving somewhat as a introduction I will bid you adieu. But please check in over the coming days to find out all about how my festival experience really was.

Thanks

Ruud Kerouac

The (Non)Blockbuster (but look a bit like Blockbusters) Season Is Upon Us!

Here's another in the occasional series of movie trailer roundups. Think of it as a service that allows you to turn up for a film twenty minutes later than the start time and still be clued in on upcoming movies (unless you're in North America where you're now clued up on movies that were out about a month ago but didn't bother to see).

We're now in the sort of post-Blockbuster season, the big summer movies are done and it's still too early for the fantasy epics that appear around Xmas. Usually that means a lot of quirky, interesting pictures but as these trailers show that might not be quite the case this year:

2012



The hugest of summer movies, and yet it's been held until after the summer. Roland Emmerich may be the greatest example of the auteur theory in action, as he keeps returning to that "world getting the shit kicked out of it" theme again and again. Plus they all feature pretty good casts who don't need to actually act, just perform the role of "plot delivery" between the repeated money shot SFX. Queue this being every 14 year old boy's "Greatest Film Ever" relegating Transformers 2 to the number two slot.

Surrogates



Not a bad idea and it's got Bruce Willis in it which is usually a good thing. The suspicion is that it'll end up just being a bog-standard action flick though. There's also the suspicion that it'll start resembling The Matrix, I, Robot and Minority Report. On other words it'll look a bit like Ghost In The Shell (am I right cool kids?).

Pandorum



Ah, some fun family viewing about a group of happy people's first trip into space and all the colourful, joyous things they encounter. I'm guessing, I tend not to bother paying attention to these.

Looks a bit like Alien = good thing
It comes from the same producers as the Resident Evil films = very bad thing indeed!

One for the possibly decent pile.

Whiteout



Or the incredible story of how one of The Monkees' parents invented Tippex.

Again there's a nice idea here, murder in the frozen tundra. Shamefully it looks like the plot goes a bit mental. Plus Kate Beckinsale in a role that should be going to someone like Tommy Lee Jones doesn't quite wash.*

*I'm cheating slightly with this one as I read some reviews of this whilst in Toronto. It's meant to be utter baws.

Fame



If you needed proof that our pathetic 80's obsession has hit saturation point it's this pointless remake of what was already shite. Blame it on X-Factor and American Idol and Swaziland's Got Talent. It's thanks to shows like that that the public supposedly want tales of the route to stardom, missing the irony that since Fame is set in a talent school you actually do need some to get in and graduate, whereas little is required to succeed in those shows.

Sorry, rant over, but fuck you Susan Boyle with your face and bludgeoning voice. Sorry, it really is over.

The most alarming thing about this trailer; they've somehow made the theme song worse. How is that possible?

Oh, and another irony? Nobody remembers the names of any of the original's cast. Take heed cast of the 2009 version!

Fantastic Mr. Fox



Now this looks like it could be fun. Stop motion animation's cool, the original book's one of the best things the mighty Roald Dahl wrote and it's being directed by every indie kid's favourite indie kid director. Looks like much has been changed but the voice cast's good and if Anderson can re-capture the spirit and tone of the book this could be a winner.

Great Swayze Lines From The Movies

Here's a bumper Great Lines special dedicated to Splice Hero of Cheese Patrick Swayze:

"Well, when you grow up... then you'll know these things, Danny. Now get up here and piss in the radiator" - Jed shows how age gives you new perspectives on how to fix a car, Red Dawn

"You just put your pickle on everybody's plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me" - Johnny talking about sex, or dancing, or whatever, it's a bloody chick flick and, no, I'm not including that line about an infant on the periphery of the room or something, Dirty Dancing

"I'm gonna do my kind of dancin' with a great partner, who's not only a terrific dancer; somebody who's taught me that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them; somebody who's taught me about the kind of person I wanna be" - Film's message, you are clear to land via Swayze's mouth, Dirty Dancing

"Ditto" - Sam Wheat proves that with the ladies all you need is one word that means "right back at ya" to make them melt, oh and some killer abs, Ghost

"You are a fear prisoner. Yes, you are a product of fear" - Jim Cunningham, who is an actual prisoner, a product of liking little kids a tad too much, Donnie Darko

And now a drum role for the two best roles Mr. Swayze ever had, both are endlessly quotable and so here's a shitload of quotes:

First the Steven Pressley lookalike Bodhi from Point Break (you can follow each one of these quotes with the phrase "like dude"):

"Little hand says it's time to rock and roll"

"100% pure adrenaline!"

"Life sure has a sick sense of humor, doesn't it?"

"Back off Warchild, seriously"

"They only live to get radical"

"Goddamn! You are one radical son of a bitch!"

"Six seconds. We're going to be meat waffles"

"Yo, Johnny! I see you in the next life!"

And now for the Swayziest of all the Swayze roles, Dalton from Roadhouse (insert "FUUUUUCK YAAAAAAAAS!!!!!" after each of these quotes)

"Pain don't hurt"

"All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice"

"I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice"

"If you're gonna have a pet, keep it on a leash"

"My way... or the highway"

I think that we should go back to Point Break's Bodhi for our final quote:

"If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love"

Back From Holiday

Aye so the Toronto Film Fest is on and I'm back hame from my holiday, but Ruud's been cutting about it and says it's right good!

I did get to catch one film, a fantastic little new thing called Steamboat Bill Jr. from an exciting new talent called Buster Keaton, who I think might be related to Michael, which was screened for free in Yonge Dundas Square:



Best stunt you'll see all year that!

As for getting to catch up on some films I missed if the weather was bad, this happened:
I just cannae win sometimes can I?

Anyway attempts to to get District 9, Hurt Locker and some other stuff will be made, just to be up to date.

I did watch some other films while I was away though. On the plane going out I watched Anvil: The Story Of Anvil:



Basically it would be a shameless Spinal Tap rip-off if it wasn't for the fact that Anvil are a real band and the film is a documentary. Turns out the seminal "rockumentary" may have been very, very, accurate. It's a film worth seeing, and their music ain't too shabby either.

Another music documentary where the music wasn't so good but the story was most definitely interesting was Shut Up And Sing about The Dixie Chicks during the fallout of comments made about George W. Bush that meant that they as a country group were at logger heads with the opinions of a large chunk of their fan base:



It was another freebie in the square and is worth a watch.

The other two films I watched ended up being tributes to two fallen idols of the 80's. No not Louis and Auguste Lumiere, I meant the 1980's!

On the plane back I finally re-watched Ferris Bueller's hard fought attempt to have a day off school, and it must be said it is not only John Hughes' finest hour and forty minutes, it's up there with the finest of the decade.

The other turned out to be a retro-active tribute to the finest actor to ever grace our screens without a shirt, Patrick Swayze. One night when we got home pished Road House was on Canadian TV. It really is the greatest dumb movie ever made, a movie that verges on being absolute genius because of how stupid it is. I can't think of a better way to spend a drunken night.

Swayze Hits The Highway

Sadly Patrick Swayze has lost his battle with cancer. At the time of the news of his diagnoses Splice made him the first "Splice Hero Of Cheese" and the sentiments expressed there still hold true.

The fact that he continued to work after the diagnosis and didn't turn what was left of his life into a media circus is testament to the guy.

Let's remember him the way he should be, shirtless and kicking ass:



R.I.P. Dalton

Holiday!

See how Toronto has a pure brilliant film festival?

Aye?

Well guess where I'm going...a week too early.


Yup it's holiday time and sadly I never clicked about the film fest. As such not only will I not be seeing the newest films I'll also be missing the ones that have just come out here. As such Hurt Locker, Funny People and District 9 will have to wait until I get back.

Unless any are still showing over there and it's raining (I'm going, it'll be raining).