Tuesday 29 January 2013

ITFA AWARDS ARE WRONG ON MANY LEVELS!

That time of year again when Ireland shows off its talent on the world stage. But enough about the Rugby Six Nations next week sees our latest IFTA awards ceremony take place. So (same as last year) here are ten reasons why this is just wrong!

1. We're in recession.
Do we need need to see these smug and overrated people dress up and win stupid awards?

2. The films are crap.
No other country would give these average films awards.

3. It's a fix.
Same faces, same directors, and same films. Any good Irish movie that comes out without making much fuss gets ignored.

4. It's too long.
Because it is such a prestiguous awards ceremony it must go on for 3 hours or more. Zzzzzz...

5. The presenters are rubbish.
Simon 'chubby' Delaney might be likeable in our 'industry' but having to watch his chubby cheeks on screen is just wrong. Dave McSavage should be the presenter!

6. They ALWAYS get it wrong.
That Irish short film that won last week in Sundance. Has it been nominated at the IFTAs? Of course not!

7. The same faces win.
Gleeson, Ronan, Sheridan, yawn.

8. Zero impact.
When a movie wins an Oscar it always does well at the box office. When a movie wins an IFTA no-one goes out to see it because no-one care about the IFTAs.

9. The audience is full of smug people.
Oh look there's Angeline Ball's husband looking pleased with himself. These people are all part of the system, teamplayers who do everything right but have little talent. Smug gits with nothing to say but still receive funding.

10. Getting banned from Irish film websites.
If you say any of this stuff on other Irish film websites you will get banned. Even the wannabees defend this rubbish and are just as bad as the established players.

Wednesday 23 January 2013

THE TEN WORST IRISH MOVIES THIS DECADE!

So far! Only three years in and there's no shortage of bad Irish films released this decade to choose from. Despite the buzz and hype lots of terrible stuff has been made but unlike in previous decades they usually don't have a major star.

One hundred mornings
Updating of an old Corman movie this is the biggest piece of crap in years. Loved the review on RTE's The View where the presenter and two trendies hailed it as a great movie but one honest guy said it was terrible. Lifeless, stylish, and laughably unoriginal this film has already been forgotten.

Pier
The kind of movie that gets shown in the CineMobile in Clare this is another terrible picture. It's just shi-t and terribly made. Another recent movie that will be soon lost.

Stella Days
Like going back to 1995 in a time machine this is the kind of crap the Film Board was set up to fund. Exactly the bland and dull movie Ireland does so well. Set in the 1950s it's exactly as expected. Hyped during production XtraVision are now selling the DVD for €6.

Stitches
The only thing worse than most Irish films is an Irish horror movie. Made by a director who works in the horror genre this is dire. The kind of movie that gets made on pre-sales and they phone in the production process.

Kiss for Jed
A creepy tale of tensions between a teenage girl and a middle-aged man in New York. This is wrong on so many levels. It looks like it was filmed on a phone. Any time something interesting happens e.g. a mob attack it happens off screen. Another debut feature from someone I hope never makes another.

Parked
Like 100 mornings this one has zero originality, lots of establishing shots, lifeless direction, contrived story, and uses too much style. It's laughably bad but in a boring way!

Runway
Another crap movie featuring cute kids, locals as extras, a magical story, overcoming the odds, and nice scenery. Irish cinema should be making the OPPOSITE to this stuff! This is as bad as it gets. No doubt sounded great on paper and probably would have been if made in Australia!

Shine of rainbows
Picture-postcard Irish cinema aimed at the American market. The latest version Flight of the doves. Kept expecting to see Dana appear in a scene!

Sensation
Of course it's only a coincidence that the lead actor is named Gleeson. Who says nepotism is alive and well in Irish cinema? Silly and dull movie about a farmer who sets up a brothel. Did this crap win a pitching award at the Galway Film Flead a few years back? Is that how it got made? Like a lot of these movies it probably sounded good on paper and no doubt could have been a great film if filmed in a really bleak environment like industrial Poland?

Happy ever afters
One reason Irish movies are so bad is because the people who make these are not film buffs. They don't understand the genre they're working in. The screwball comedy was alive and well in the 1930s. Even the ones in the 1950s were not as good. But did that stop the Irish Film Board from funding this travesty? Did they really think some contrived effort using classless actors from Fair City and bad weather would stand up against the greats in this genre. Think about it: how many screwball comedies have been made in the last 30 years? Very few. This is a very difficult genre to get right, timing is everything. Terrible, terrible movie.

Monday 21 January 2013

Trojan Eddie


Rea plays a street trader who works for Harris who marries a younger woman who runs off with Townsend and a lots of money. Set among the traveller community this is a terrible picture. Rea gets caught up in the mayhem of fights, violence, brawls, animal cruelty, nasty characters, cheats, and people told to leave the area. The dialogue gets drowned by too much music and the direction is awful. Lots of wide shots with the actors standing in the middle of the frame talking. The direction doesn't get involved with the story and leaves the audience observing and getting confused. The script is by famous playwright Roche (who makes a cameo appearance). Really bland stuff. One of dozens of 'lost' Film Board features from the 1990s. This is the kind of crap the IFB threw money at back then. No wonder Lenny Abrahamson waited so long to make a feature film!

Title: Trojan Eddie
Genre: Family feud
New/old: Old
Cinema/DVD: DVD

Saturday 19 January 2013

INTERESTING IRISH TIMES ARTICLE

On Film Board chairman James Morris in yesterday's newspaper. Gives away a lot of IFB thinking too. He said 'films need money and lots of it'. That's the nonsense that is responsible for dozens of bad Irish films. A sign of a great director is that he (or she) didn't need a lot of money to make a good movie. Most world class directors have made at least one great film on a low budget. Some has spent their careers making films this way. The article notes how little Irish films make at the box office. The reason is simple: making films that are neither fully commercial or arty will always fail at the box office. They have no audience. Then Morris says Irish films seem to do better on TV than in the cinema. Wonder why that is? Maybe because most Irish films are better suited to the small screen? Then he goes on about the success in Denmark and Lars Von Trier. The only Irish film director that has any similarity to Von Trier is Terry McMahon and look how he got treated by the Irish media and film establishment last year! One thing that he got spot on is that if an Irish film fails (as in a bad movie) it's the director's fault. Not the script the director. We just don't have enough talented directors. Too many Irish directors reply on the script, financial support, crew, casting to make a good movie. It's never their own fault that their films are dire.

MANAGED TO TRACK DOWN A RARE DVD!

Of Trojan Eddie, a long-forgotten Irish Film Board feature from the 1990s. Only EIGHTY THREE EURO on Amazon but got it for a lot cheaper. Review to follow.

Wednesday 16 January 2013

HMV JOKERS!

Now their website has gone. Was in there last night to buy a few punk CDs but didn't bother as these 30-year old albums were too expensive! They have an Irish DVD section but have a larger volume of Irish titles on the other shelves. This blog predicts a small disaster for Irish movies if HMV close down as they were the only place to buy a lot of these DVDs.

THE DIFFERENT IRISH FILMS!

Might as well clarify what gets reviewed and discussed on this fine blog. It's all narrative feature films so no animation, documentaries, TV series (unless available in a feature edit), shorts, or any of that stuff. So what of the features?

1. Films made in Ireland (including the North) that deal with Ireland. So that includes Film Bored stuff but also the privately-funded ones.

2. Foreign-made films made in Ireland about Ireland. Either from Britain, Hollywood, or elsewhere.

3. Films made in other countries about Irish people who have emigrated there.

4. American/British/Australian movies set there but with a stong Irish identity that refer to Ireland.

5. Films made abroad but partly set in Ireland.

That should cover it!


Tuesday 15 January 2013

JIM SHERIDAN SAYS MODERN HOLLYWOOD MOVIES ARE 'CRAP'!

Not happy with alienating himself from Hollywood by making Dreamhouse Sheridan has now said most of modern Hollywood's output is crap! This is from a man whose career went downhill years ago! As for those tools in Ireland who were 'inspired' by Sheridan to make films where are they now? Working mostly in television that's where. This blog is no fan of today's Hollywood movies but most successful directors working there have more talent than Sheridan. Most great Hollywood movies were made years ago before the 1970s. Everyone knows that. Saying modern Hollywood movies are crap is just daft. Most get made to make money. How many Irish features have made a profit. Less than 5% is the answer. Even better, Sheridan said this at a SDGI function. Most of those tools would get nowhere in Hollywood as they have no genuine talent for making feature films. However, the real problem with what Sheridan said is that most film fans either like Hollywood 'crap' or arthouse films. Neither of these types get made much in Ireland. Real film fans don't like the rubbish Sheridan directs which in one sentence are 'technically impressive film-of-the-week TV drama'!

Traveller


Not to be confused with the previously reviewed Travellers this is an American movie from the 1990s. It has a good cast and is about mainly Irish travellers in the States who con and trick people out of money. Like an early-'70s movie it's offbeat, character driven, and observes people living outside of the system. Wahlberg is the new arrival who watches and learns from Paxton. There's a silly shootout at the end and the movie gets too violent. Various references to Ireland including dialogue and music. Nothing special but it's interesting the contrast between how American and British movies portray Irish travellers living in these countries. Not well known but it's out on DVD.

Title: Traveller
Genre: Family drama
New/old: Old
Cinema/DVD: DVD

Friday 11 January 2013

IRISH MEDIA SCRAPING THE OSCAR BARREL!

Not much luck this year for the Irish at the Academy Awards. So it's time to scrape the barrel and put a photograph of an Irish woman who produced a British animated short on the front page of today's newspapers! The current Film Board was set up after the success of My left foot/Crying game neither of which were Irish films. Twenty years later we still have zero impact at the Oscars. It's this obsession of winning awards that has ruined Irish cinema. It won't change either as it's now too late.

Wednesday 9 January 2013

NEW IRISH BOX SET!

XtraVision are currently selling a 6-Irish movie DVD boxset for only €10. That in one word is a bargain!

IFTA NOMINATIONS!

That time of year again where the esteemed Academy releases its nominations for the best Irish film of 2012. So what's on the list? Death of a Superhero (every Ian Fitzgibbon film receives an IFTA nomination for some bizarre reason e.g. it's a fix!), Good Vibrations (the obligatory nominated film that hasn't been released yet), Grabbers (the Irish movie that Roger Corman was making 60 years ago), Shadow Dancer (latest join-the-dots IRA 'thriller'), and (surprise, surprise!) What Richard Did. Wonder which film will win? Hmmm...

Pier


Recent Film Board feature which went under the radar. Poorly-made and dull it's about a returned emigrant who rows with his father and collects money owed by neighbours in a Cork village. Flatly photographed, obligatory awful soundtrack music (clarinets, Erik Satie-piano), and an establishing shot of the local pub every twenty minutes this is a dire effort. The kind of film that draws attention to the green muntins on the local telephone box! Shame, because the story is well intentioned but gets ruined by the big deal over scenery and comical foul dialogue. The entire movie shows how attractive the area is but then a kid says he can't wait to move to Australia! Also, there's something pathetic about a man older than myself wearing an earring.

Title: The pier
Genre: Family drama
New/old: New
Cinema/DVD: DVD

Wednesday 2 January 2013

TEN 2013 PREDICTIONS?

It's a new year so what will 2013 bring? Here are some projected facts for the next twelve months:

What Richard did to clean up at the IFTAs. Can see the director receiving a standing ovation at those awards for this crummy movie.

Charlie Casanova director will never make another movie. After all the chaos from last year no-one will work with this tool.

Graham Cantwell's new film will not get released. Because it looks sh-t and he's a sh-t director.

The IFB backlog will get worse. There are lots of recent films that no-one's see (e.g. Love and savagery). They went wild a few years back funding everything and these titles are now forgotten.

Once again the Film Board will get its budget cut.

More film 'talent' will leave the country. Yes, more of our budding actresses and directors will try their luck elsewhere. Don't come back!

More film folk will move into television. That's where all the money and audience is anyway. Irish TV is leading the way these days and our cinema is falling behind.

There will be yet another Irish horror film released.

A new Irish feature film to get released and a big fuss made because the director is female.

This blog to get one more follower.

Master of the world

Dated movie from the 1960s with Vincent Price trying to stop wars around the world. He uses an airship to attack from the sky. A group of ...