We wind up our unofficial podcasts with some actual discussion of some films we've seen. After a weekend of debauchery, and getting covered in excrement, the chat is somewhat bizarre - probably best if you don't listen to this one...
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Recharging back at nofear HQ we rush through descriptions of 5 or 6 films that we've seen, before racing off into the centre of Cambridge to catch some more erotic cinema. Hamgray wibbles about the word 'comedy' being used in any sort of film description regardless of the actual content of the film. Doug rants about Pixar's subversive message to young children, in their latest film 'Cars', glorifying automobiles, but the poet disagrees with him!
Download it directly from here, or (as usual) on ITunes.
Finally removed from the cinema venue we climbed onto the roof for today's podcast, where Doug and Hamgray discuss why it is people should walk out of films such as Erotic: Totally Uncensored and H6: Diary of a Serial Killer. Hamgray complains about the use of mobile phones in cinemas even when switched to 'silent'.
Download it directly from here, or play "find the monkey" on ITunes...
This was the first official screening of the 2006 Cambridge Film Festival, and a good choice for getting a sell-out performance, so what was the film like?
Disney studios hoist the spinnaker once more for Captain Jack Sparrow’s second adventure. Has it really been three years since the first one? Fans of the first film will not be disappointed and there is no requirement to have seen the first instalment beforehand as the few ‘in-jokes’ are quite easy to spot and the continuation of the plot is easy to pick up.
Once again Johnny Depp swaggers onto his newly acquired pirate ship and sounding more like a shipwrecked Withnail than ever before. This time the main problem that Sparrow has is that he discovers that he owes a debt to the fearsome Davy Jones, played in this case by the excellent Bill Nighy – who is initially difficult to spot since he has an octopus for a face!
In the meantime the clean-cut Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is also searching for Sparrow, Turner is beholden to the evil Cutler Beckett (of the East India Company) as he has managed to prevent Turner from marrying Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and has her incarcerated his dungeons.
When you consider the various other sub plots, cameo characters, and side-gimmicks, you have a film that is comparable to an instalment of Lord of the Rings. In fact “Pirates 2” does seem to borrow some of the essence of the film version of the Tolkien story, there are many more dark scenes and there is much more in the way of a gothic influence about the whole setting. Of course the film is also hilarious, there are many goofs and gags, the “Sparrow kebab” (I won’t spoil it) being one my particular favourites.
Is it really a suitable family film? This is one of the main questions in my mind. There is a large amount of horror for a 12A and there were certainly some much younger children in the audience (accompanied by adults). Should an 8-year-old really see an eye being pecked out by a crow? Even if the clever editing takes away most of the graphic realisation of the action? Fortunately these are questions that need only be answered by society and the film censors board, certainly the film pushes the bounds of a family film to the limit.
We were privileged at the Picturehouse to witness this film being projected on the flashy 2K projector, having read up a little about this it appears that this is a Christie 2K projector, which uses 3 DMD chips (digital micro-mirror device), one chip for each of the primary colours. Certainly from the back of the theatre I could not see any pixels and the clarity of the picture was amazing.
All credit to Gore Verbinski, director of this soon-to-be trilogy that combines an amazing cast and crew with incredible CGI effects and some really inventive sequences. I was pleased to discover that Verbinski was the creator of the ‘Budweiser Frog’ commercials, mighty oaks from acorns once again…
***** (out of 5)
