June 21, 2007
ADRENALINE MORE NEWS!
BIKES AND GRINDHOUSE PT. 2 (WITH SOME ENTOURAGE & SOPRANOS OFFAL THROWN IN AND NO BIKES)
Firstly, please excuse the fact that I appear to have temporarily turned into another internet critic, a form of life so humble that not even David Attenborough would be curious about it’s filthy rituals. OK, let’s go.
The first episode of Entourage series 4 was bad. In fact it was perhaps the worst episode of the show so far. They’d done it as if it was a documentary about the making of the film they were working on. Unfortunately the badly observed conventions of the genre acted like a giant wall between the audience and all my much-loved Entourage buddies! We were left with a weedy sounding British guy providing a fake voice over that failed to parody any recognisable film show or behind the scenes documentary maker I’ve ever heard of, shots of people having dramatic plot based freak outs that would NEVER be caught on camera (let alone cleared for use in a behind the scenes piece), and unfunny interviews with Entourage protagonists being indiscreet in a way that you simply never, ever see on an interview of this kind.
Now, obviously I’m taking all of this much too seriously and Entourage doesn’t pretend to be surgically accurate with it’s portrayal of Hollywood life, but if you’re going to fuck with such a great formula, at least stick to the flipping rules! I’m sure they’ll be back on track next week. After all, for my money the Sopranos took a bit of a dip at the beginning of their sixth and final season, but the last 8 or 9 episodes were right back on target and the controversial finale was absolutely what you’d hope for from a show that was very seldom didactic or simple minded. OK, so it was no Lenny’s Britain, but the Sopranos was an extraordinary show and I’ll miss it very much. If you’ve never seen it, well, I wish I was you and I still had it all ahead of me is all I can say.
If you’ve never seen Grindhouse, er well, your nerves are possibly a little less shot than mine. Edgar Wright organised a screening at London’s trendy Soho Hotel last week so that he could show both films with fake trailers in between (one of which Edgar directed) the way Tarantino and Rodriguez intended. Indeed, this non stop double bill format was the way American audiences saw Grindhouse but I believe the two films are being split in the UK, which seems a shame as part of the genius of the whole thing is the way you respond to various kinds of tension after spending such an unusually long time in the cinema (or not if you’re one of the millions that stayed away in the US).
First of all the screening itself was fun because half the world of British comedy was there, including various members of League Of Gentlemen, The Mighty Boosh, Garth Merenghi and Little Britain. Also Peter Jackson! When we’d all been reminded not to go to the toilet during the trailers in the middle and risk missing Edgar’s contribution, the lights dimmed and the first film, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, began.
It was pretty good. It reminded me a lot of the kind of films that Joe and I would go and see of a weekend at school, for example Reanimator, The Hidden, Return Of The Living Dead, The Stuff etc. As with those films, I was sort of amused and slightly grossed out a couple of times but it was never really terrifying or really funny, which is the problem with a lot of genre splicing outings for me. The scene in Dusk Til Dawn where it looks as if Tarantino’s character might rape Juliette Lewis’s character has more grimly real tension in it than anything in Planet Terror. Also it’s weird how seeing a girl with a machine gun attached to the amputated stump of her leg is much less exciting than being told about it.
Planet Terror finished and the fake trailers rolled. I’m biased but I thought Edgar’s (‘Don’t') was quite easily the best. As a properly funny spoof of the imagery and tone of those kinds of late 70’s, early 80’s horror trails it was head and shoulders above the others. Eli Roth’s effort was OK, albeit revolting and not that funny.
Roth turns up in the first section of Tarantino’s contribution, Death Proof. As I said before, part of the effectiveness of this film may well have been down to having just sat through Planet Of Terror and being totally immersed in the Grindhouse experience subsequently, but I came out of Death Proof feeling completely shredded in a way that I have only been a few times going to the cinema. E.T. and Schindler’s List spring to mind. And Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies.
It starts inauspiciously with a long scene in a bar featuring some unappealing young women and a couple of unappealing cameos from both Eli Roth and Tarantino. It’s all self indulgent to the point of parody. Then it goes beyond parody and into boredom. Then Kurt Russel turns up as a gnarled stuntman with a scary black car who sits at the bar and eyes the unappealing women. Then he seems fairly nice so any tension there is dissipated. Then, seemingly aware that the audience will be getting quite bored by now, Tarantino pretends to drop a reel (a joke which, along with some deliberately ropey edits, is used a lot for the first part of the film then abandoned) so that the film literally, cuts to the chase. I won’t spoil it by going into too much detail but for about 5 minutes the tone suddenly darkens considerably and I found myself completely gripped and unbelievably tense!
5 minutes later, it was all over and the film seemed to begin again with a new set of slightly more appealing young women. This time there’s no jokes about dodgy edits, scratchy prints or dropped reels, there’s just these women on a road trip. Then they stop off for some lunch at a café and have a lady chat. Ooh! It’s Kurt Russell at the bar again! What’s he going to do!? Well, we’ve got a pretty good idea what he’s going to do but how long are we going to have to wait before he starts doing it this time? The answer is A VERY, VERY LONG TIME INDEED. The scene in the café with the women talking in sassy, super modern, empowered Tarantino-ese about, er, gosh I honestly can’t recall, must have lasted about 20-25 minutes. The sassy chat was again, banal to the point of parody. Then again, it waddled past parody into profound, suffocating torpor. But it’s Tarantino, I thought, he must know what he’s doing, though what can he possibly do to enliven such utter dullociousness? 10 minutes later I found out. The final minutes of Death Proof are as relentlessly exciting as anything I’ve seen for a long time, maybe ever. The question is, would I have felt that way had I not been so fucking bored for so long beforehand? Was it all a masterclass in deconstructive pacing? A brilliant cat and mouse game being played out not only between the characters on screen but between the director and the audience? Or was it a shit film with 2 really fucking good bits? I’ll leave that up to you, and if you can, go for the double!
Right, now back to dealing with frigging Facebook requests. No doubt I’ll telling people how wonderful and fun Facebook is in a few months, but right now I’m still in the very early hate and denial stage.
June 20, 2007
ADRENALINE NEWS!
BIKES & GRINDHOUSE PT. 1
My heart’s really pounding! I’m shaking a little. I’ve got enough nervous energy to power a small nervous factory. I’m converting that energy into blog. This is the second time I’ve felt like this in a few days. The first time was last weekend when I went to a screening of Grindhouse organised by Edgar Wright, more of which later, but right now it’s because I was just on an emergency nappy mission in a lightning storm! The lightning and nappies weren’t the problem though. I returned from the garage and parked the car across the road from our house just as the rain was starting to pelt cartoonishly. I got out with the nappies and ran into the road without properly checking for traffic (it’s a quiet road). Suddenly someone screamed incredibly loudly in my ear, “OI!! YOU FFFUCKING PPPRICKKK!!!” A tall guy on a racing bike, dressed entirely in special cycle gear whizzed past me. I came back with “calm down you stupid twat!” but he kept on going without looking round. A passer by laughed. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at how insane the cycle dick was, how brilliant my comeback was or how much the peddle ponce had freaked me out.
I ran into the house out of the rain but for 5 minutes I had to fight the urge to get back into the car, catch up with the cyclist and mow down the miserable fuckstick. OK maybe not mow him down, because of all the consequences, but give him a slice of my mind at least. ‘I’m sorry I stepped out in front of you’, I would have said, ‘but that does not give you the right to immediately scream at me as if I’d just burgled your house and shat on your girlfriend. What’s wrong with a ‘careful mate!’ or a vigorous tinkle on the bell? Your over the top, knee jerk aggression is helping to tatter the already threadbare fabric of modern existence. And you look like a very low quality Nancy.’ Then he would have cycled the rest of the way thinking carefully about what he’d done. Yes, that’s what would have happened. But I came to my computer instead and now I feel a bit calmer. Fucking cyclists. No wonder everyone hates us. I’m going to watch the new episode of Entourage I got off Bit Torrent. It’s the first of season 4! That should calm me down completely. I’ll tell you about my Grindhouse night tomorrow.
June 15, 2007
VARIOUS NEWS!
HOT FUZZ OUT ON DVD!
But you know that, right? It’s hard to miss the roar of the Hot Fuzz publicity machine. As usual Edgar and the gang have done a brilliant job providing fans with as much extra material and insight into the production as they could possibly hope for, thanks to a large degree to the skills of their trusted videographer and music whiz Dan Mudford, who created such great behind the scenes pieces for the Spaced (I think) and Shawn Of The Dead DVD’s as well as scoring Shawn Of the Dead of course. There’s a great moment on the Hot Fuzz making of where a tired and irritable Edgar barks at him to ’stop filming Dan, for fucks sake!’ It’s not something I can ever recall seeing on another behind the scenes thing and you’d imagine it happened all the time.
I watched Overnight the other day. In that documentary a couple of friends of director Troy Duffy film as their painfully arrogant buddy (a cross between Tony Soprano, Quentin Tarrantino and Elton John) gets a film deal for his screenplay The Boondock Saints then a record deal for his band The Brood within the space of a few weeks. They continue filming as both deals turn to shite and the once tight gang of friends around the increasingly unpleasant Duffy disintegrates. At one point they continue filming as Duffy’s brother, the heart of the band, dementedly struggles and fails to stop himself weeping as he tries to explain to Troy that his attitude might be ruining things. At this point I should admit that, being a confrontation-phobic middle class Anglo Saxon, I’ve been in that spot a few times myself but if anyone had a frickin’ camera pointed at me, I would ask them to step out BEFORE I started stuttering and bawling! I guess for a while now the mentality of some people has been that any shameful behaviour is legitimised by a camera crew and the promise of being immortalised, even if it’s as an utter fuckwit, is worth any humiliation (see Dig! for more of the same). Of course from the perspective of the documentarian, the maxim is ‘keep filming, whatever’ but if it’s your mates, come on, sort your priorities!
All that said, if Edgar was throwing a David O Russell style fit, you’d have to film it wouldn’t you? Thing is, Edgar would never do that, because he’s too decent so instead he gets slightly annoyed, asks Dan to stop filming, and Dan obliges. That my friends is the difference between how we do things here in Her Majesty’s United Queendom and how those crazy Yankees do it over in the lawless, unprincipled West! Anyway, it’s a great two disc DVD, did I say that already? Here’s a few more pics from my time on Hot Fuzz to celebrate.
I’M DOING A GIG WITH DAVID CROSS ON WEDNESDAY 27th JUNE 2007 @ THE 100 CLUB
David Cross, the super-talented star of Arrested Development and the legendary Mr Show, to name but two of his many amusing achievements, is playing a series of stand up gigs at the 100 Club in London’s crappy Oxford Street. I’ll be providing 15 or so minutes of snivelling, possibly video assisted support on Wednesday 27th. Book tickets here but hurry, it’s a tiny venue and this guy’s a big deal. People will be excited about David Cross too. Ha ha ha! That’s the kind of amazing joke I’ll be doing on the night yo! If you’ve never heard of David Cross, here’s a sketch from Mr Show that is certainly one of the funniest and cleverest bits of comedy I’ve ever seen.
ADAM & JOE’S BIG JABBA
Finally here’s an old Adam & Joe dingleberry from the 4th series of The Adam & Joe Show. This was one of the Star Wars toy parodies we did that was not included on our DVD but a couple of people have asked me to post it, so here you go! It went out in 2001 after the first series of Big Brother aired on Channel 4 in the UK the previous year (we were always a bit slow to react) and it was one of Joe’s babies, with me coming in after he’d shot the toys to add voices. I forgot that we had the line in there about reality TV feeling passé, even in 2000! How deeply depressing that the miserable wagon is still trundling on 7 years later with no sign of being consigned to the crusher just yet, overblown race scandals sadly notwithstanding. Still, if you have fond memories of Caroline (AKA ‘Caggy’) and her hideous cackle, Nasty Nick or Craig saying ‘your shelf’ instead of ‘yourself’ you may enjoy this. To Joe’s credit, it kind of still works as a parody of any series really. The faces may change, but it’s always more or less the same pointless poop, no matter what the year.
Oh yes, and it’s not Wicket…it’s Logray. Thanks for the heads up friendly nerds!
June 7, 2007
LIVE NEWS!
BETHNAL GREEN WORKING MEN’S CLUB, SUNDAY 10th JUNE 2007
I’ll be doing a short live bit at The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club this coming Sunday night. I’ll probably do my Famous Guy character as I haven’t done it in a while. In fact the last time I did it was at Up The Creek a few months back and it was a little bit rubs, so maybe I should do something else…Oh God, I don’t know. I’ve really sold all the heck out of it haven’t I? Venue details here. It’s a good bill so it’d be nice to see you.
June 5, 2007
MORE LOAD OF NEWS!
YO, YO, YO, CHECK THIS OUT!
I finished shooting on Modern Men last week. It’s going out later this year as part of a kind of comedy playhouse that Channel 4 are doing, a little like a bigger budget Comedy Lab. The show (which will not be called Modern Men when it goes out because there’s an American show with the same name) was immensely good fun to do and more than ever I hope it gets picked up for a series but it’ll be a while before we find out. I’d love to tell you more about it and show you some pics, but I’m going to have to wait a bit to avoid stepping on any toes.
Someone told me they saw me in another one-off comedy thing on BBC3 the other night. I think they must have been talking about a show I did earlier this year called The Scum Also Rises about shenanigans in an advertising agency. This was also a hoot to be part of and was produced by Iain Morris’s company Bwark. Iain used to host a show on Xfm with Jimmy Carr of course and during his time as a commissioning editor at Channel 4 looked after Bo Selecta and Peep Show among others I believe. Apart form anything else he was always a very loyal supporter of Joe and myself and it was good fun to get to work with him.
Before I continue with other news I want to say thanks very much to everyone who’s been indulging my non-line communication stance and writing actual paper letters to me recently. It’s really amazing to get post that isn’t grim and it also makes me feel a bit like a pop star, which is of course the whole point. Sorry if it’s taken a while to get back to you, but I swear I will eventually as long as you don’t forget those SAE’s! For a reminder of why I tend to duck out of on-line communication, check out the ongoing fartstorm of hilariously semi literate lunacy under the Help Tha Police clip on You Tube. Thanks if you’re one of the people that occasionally leaves intelligent and constructive comments under these clips, but as far as talking sense into some of the other nutbuckets goes, you should probably take up grass straightening if you want to see quicker results.
ADDENUDUM – JULY 2007
The original HelpTha Police clip has now been removed along with all the insane comments, which is a shame but I wouldn’t be surprised if this copy eventually yields more of the same…
A&J COKE PODCAST 8 OUT NOW
The 8th Adam & Joe Coke New Music podcast is now available for free download on -tunes (type in ‘coke new music’) or visit The Coke website here. If you’ve already heard Podcast 8 then the pic below is proof of my story (note the hair). If you haven’t heard it yet then all will be explained when you do! This is the first of our new shorter, more regular Coke podcasts (they’ll be every two weeks now). Hope you think it’s an improvement. If you don’t, we guarantee a full refund of your no money!
ADAM & JOE RELATED IFFLE
We did an interview recently for an excellent website called Cut Out And Keep. Read it here. Joe has answered a lot of questions put to him by his My Space chums here (although he incorrectly suggests I’m not that keen on live radio; I loved the fact that our Xfm podcasts were more dense than our live show, but I still liked being live). Also our friend Zac, who was largely responsible for the best songs in The Adam & Joe Show, has put together this beautifully designed website for his proper band Astroman that you might like to peruse. I don’t think they do The Robert De Niro Calypso at gigs unfortunately.
LOST FINALE
None of my visible friends watch Lost so I’m afraid I’m going to have to share my thoughts about the Season 3 flash forward finale with you imaginary chaps. Maybe it caught me at a bad moment but I was left feeling quite depressed when it finished. After a few episodes which made me think the writers really did have some sort of ingenious overview already worked out, the sudden jump to a miserable future seemed to suggest they were back to throwing any old shite at the wall and seeing which drips were the most engaging. Perhaps I’m just bitter because I WANT THEM TO TELL ME WHAT THE JIMMYLOVING BLACK SMOKE IS ALL ABOUT!!! How the fricking heckfire can they possibly come up with a half decent explanation for a malevolent black wraith that makes machine like clicking sounds? Of course, they may be saving that one for some future revelation-fest, but as it was set up in the very first episodes, I think we deserve a few clues by now! All that said, I enjoyed seeing pop eyed Ben getting at least some of the shit kicked out of him by Jack and I was delighted when Charlie finally died after weeks of frustratingly close calls. I jumped around the room singing You All Everybody at the top of my lungs (if Oasis covered this I would worship them like genius twats). Also, good to see my old friend Penny back for a second season finale turn! Come on Penny, get in touch! Let’s re-live those fun photobooth times!
If you’re a Lost fan (and if you’re not you must have been very bored and confused for the last couple of minutes) you’ll enjoy this enthusiastic review of finale 3. There’s a string of comments and entertaining speculation beneath the review that’s remarkable for being neither stupefyingly dull nor peppered with lame brained abuse, surely a first for a discussion about pop culture on the net! Or maybe it had just been mediated. Anyway, worth a look if you care at all about Lost. Now with 24 gone too, what the shitting hell am I going to watch until January 2008? Wait a second, I’ve just realised that there’s 8 episodes of Entourage Season 3 I haven’t seen yet on Bit Torrent!. Hey heeeey!!! I guess if I had comments on this blog, someone would have told me, but that’s the price you pay for peace I guess.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD THINGS OFF BIT TORRENT
I know that the vast majority of you will be familiar with Bit Torrent and the notion of file sharing but for those of you who still wait until THE MAN says it’s OK to watch your favourite TV shows on your vidilamp (or ‘TV set’ as they used to call them) here’s an idiot’s guide to watching what you want when you want for nuffin’, the way TV-Jesus intended! I’m using a Mac so if this method doesn’t work for you try following the instructions here. Also apologies in advance if this is badly explained or technically inaccurate!
STEP 1. DOWNLOAD ‘CLIENT’
The software that enables you to download the actual movie files is known as a Bit Torrent ‘client’. There’s a lot to chose from but I use a simple, basic application called Transmission, which you can download free here. Chose the version that says it will work with your computer and once you’ve downloaded it to your desktop (which takes only a few minutes) double click on the icon to open and install it on your hard disc.
STEP 2. CHOOSE YOUR ‘TORRENT’!
Before you use your client to start downloading the movie files, you need to download the ‘torrent’. This is a very small file that your client uses to access the movie. Think of it as the invite that gets you in to the party! No invite, no entry, so to download the torrent you need to go to one of the many file sharing sites on the net. I use Isohunt, which you can find here. Once you’re at the site, you type in the name of the show you’re looking for and you’re shown all the various episodes that kindly folk have uploaded!
Now, this is the only slightly tricky part. On the right hand side of the screen you should see a couple of columns with an ‘S’ and an ‘L’ above them. This refers to the number of people who have the whole file on their computer (Seeders) and the number of people who are in the process of downloading parts of the file (Leechers). In order for your file to download quickly (a fast torrent may still take an hour or several to deliver a 30 minute show) you need to find a torrent that has the highest amount of both. The fewer people there are seeding, the longer it will take to get your file. Click on the ‘S’ and the files will be arranged for you in order of ‘most seeded’. Now the only other thing to look out for is the format of the file you’re about to download.
Once you’ve found the episode you’re looking for click on the title and a window will open beneath it. It says ‘DOWNLOAD TORRENT’ followed by a load of info about where the torrent came from etc. Scroll to the bottom of the window and you’ll see a list of the actual files contained in the torrent. I tend to go for anything that has ‘.avi’ at the end of it as this suggests I’ll be getting a single file that I can open and play easily with an application like VLC (which you can find here). The TIPS PLAYING CLIPS section of this site above has more info for Windows users about playing movies.
STEP 3: DOWNLOAD TORRENT
Once you’ve selected the file you want click on DOWNLOAD TORRENT and after a few seconds a file will appear on your desktop. This is your torrent. Now open Transmission or whatever client you’re using and import the torrent by clicking OPEN and locating the file on your desktop. Once the torrent has been opened by the client, your movie file will start downloading to your desktop (or wherever you have directed it). A progress bar will tell you how long you have to go, although this tends to fluctuate wildly depending on how many people are logged on and sharing at the same time. Sometimes, it’s a question of leaving your computer on overnight and letting it download at its leisure.
THINGS THAT USED TO WORRY ME ABOUT BIT TORRENT
- IF I SHUT MY COMPUTER DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF A DOWNLOAD DO I HAVE TO START AGAIN?
No. Once you turn your computer back on and re-open the client, it picks up from where you left off.
- CAN I DOWNLOAD SEVERAL FILES AT ONCE?
You betcha! The more the merrier, especially if you want to get hold of a whole series. Downloading multiple files doesn’t affect the speed.
- CAN PEOPLE HACK INTO MY COMPUTER WHILE I’M DOWNLOADING?
If you have a router (which nearly all broadband services come with) then no. If you’re worried about security take a read of this.
- DO I DUMP THE TORRENT AS SOON AS IT’S FINISHED DOWNLOADING?
Well, that’s up to you, but this whole system is made more efficient when people share as many files as they can for as long as they can, in other words it’s good Bit Torrent etiquette to leave the torrent active in the client for as long as possible to enable other people to share it too. Obviously this becomes impractical once you’ve got loads of files or you want to shut down your computer, but it’s worth bearing in mind.
- WHAT HAPPENS IF THE TORRENT JUST STOPS FOR AGES?
It could mean either that none of the seeders are on line and you just need to wait til they come back, or that the file is incomplete. The pain and frustration of an incomplete file is something you just have to get used to with Bit Torrent. I’m still receiving counselling after thinking I had located Eat The Document, the rare Bob Dylan doc, only to watch it stall at 65%. Thinking at least I had two thirds of the film, I tried to open it but found only scrambled pixels of Zimmerman. A very sad day.
- CAN I GO TO JAIL FOR DOING THIS?
You’re just as likely to go to jail for posting a copyrighted clip of The Adam & Joe Show on you Tube, ie. not. Personally I wouldn’t want to encourage twats who upload shitty pirates of new film releases by downloading them, but I have to admit that I’ve checked out the odd film once it’s out on DVD and someone sticks it up there. If it’s any good, I buy the DVD for the added quality and all the extras, but if it’s some piece of lazy shite (The Holiday for staggeringly rotten example) then I feel very happy not to have forked out for it. Anyway, the best application for Bit Torrent as far as I’m concerned is catching up on TV stuff, which should be free anyway. Why anyone would have a problem with more people wanting to see your show is beyond me. Well, OK the advertisers have a problem with it, but it’s easy to screen out ads on most recording digi boxes anyway, so it’s up to them to concoct new ways of insinuating their stinky messages for an on-line audience. I recommend they try using my voice to do it. It’s proven to get results!!! Good luck and if you haven’t already, check out Entourage! It’s the shiznit biatch!