Back Issue #2

Magazine: Neon
Issue: No 1 Dec 1996/Jan 1997


Initial Observations
Neon was my favourite movie magazine during its brief existence. It was to Empire magazine what Select magazine was to Q, targeted at a younger, hipper audience. Neon was funny, irreverant and looked at a much broader range of film culture than its sister publication. Plus it had the greatest movie column ever in the form of Graham Linehan's Filmgoer's Companion.
This is issue number one and the first thing that must jump out to contemporary eyes is the cover feature, 'How Hollywood ate Robert Downey Jnr alive', this being written when he was talented but self-destructive and not one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

What's Inside?
Almost too much cool stuff to mention. Regular features included 'it's not what you think' where film-makers picked ten favourite, usually bizarre and random, things. For example, in this issue we have the Coen brothers picking their ten favourite underwear movies. '100 reasons why' would take the piss out of list-making with usually hilarious results. 'Flashback' would look at the (usually chaotic) production of a film from yesteryear.  Plus you would have the usual news, reviews, features etc that you would expect in a movie magazine but with a Neon twist. And the middle pages would have a gallery of movie-related images you could take out and put on your wall.
Features in this issue include: the now legendary making of The Island of Dr Moreau; a look at WW2 movies; the Downey Jnr article; a Jack Nicholson profile by those who know him; a profile on Ian Hart and a look at the films of Tony Scott.

Old News
David Cronenberg's crash may finally be getting a release in the UK.
Robert De Niro trys to hire out the Acropolis in Greece for himself and some pals.
The question of whether Sleepers is based on truth or fiction is discussed ahead of the film's release.
It Happened Here is finally screened uncut in the British isles.
Kevin McClory is attempting to remake Thunderball again.
George Lucas preparing to film the first of the Star Wars prequels.
American Psycho may finally be adapted for the screen.

Commercial Break
'Give me 5 - Britain's new free tv channel is coming in the Spring. In addition to drama, comedy, news, chat and sport - 5 will broadcast more movies than any other terrestrial channel' - shame the majority of films they seemed to screen were DTV fodder.
An advert for a VodaZap! pager features an amateur photo of a dog and the promise that 'you can leave Boot a message on his owners VodaZap! pager'. I really don't understand what they are getting at with this ad.
'The Greatest Action Trilogy Of All Time', 'For The First Time This Christmas...And The Last', 'Buy Them Now While You Can' - The Die Hard trilogy and the attempt to create demand.

Whoops!
'Due for release in 1999, Episode One: Balance of the Force, focuses on the do-gooder Jedi Knights, who are being hunted down and rubbed out by the Empire as it gets its first toe-hold on the ladder of Galactic tyranny'. How much cooler does that sound?
"We're not making any more movies about making movies". Louis Pepe, director of The Hamster Factor, next made Lost in La Mancha about the making of Don Quixote, so I suppose that he is technically correct in that he made a movie about not making a movie.

Spooky!
Back to Louis Pepe from the article on The Hamster Factor: "We wished for disaster, sure. But we were making a film about Terry Gilliam. We knew something would go wrong". They certainly got their wish with Lost in La Mancha.

(Anti)Promoballs
The feature on Tony Scott is ostensibly to promote the release of The Fan, his film with Robert De Niro. Its somewhat refreshing then to hear him deride his own film: "I knew that I hadn't made it work".

Re-review
The main review is for Neil Jordan's Michael Collins written by none other than Graham Linehan. Elsewhere we have positive reviews for Beautiful Girls and The Long Kiss Goodnight, so-so reviews for The Fan and I Shot Andy Warhol and negative reviews for Chain Reaction and The Crow: City of Angels.
The video reviews remind me that I still haven't seen Nadja, that Heavy sucked ass and Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead might be worth a re-watch.

And finally...
Graham Linehan's Filmgoer's Companion closes out the issue with an imagined pitch for Mission:Impossible.

While doing a bit of research online I came across this website dedicated to Neon magazine which contains scans of the magazine. Well worth a look if you get the chance.

Deep Cult #3

Charly (1968) - dir. Ralph Nelson


Flowers for Algernon is a classic of science-fiction literature. Written originally as a short story by Daniel Keyes, he subsequently expanded it into a novel. The story concerns Charlie Gordon, a man with an IQ of 68, who volunteers for a medical experiment designed to increase intelligence. The experiment has already proved successful on the laboratory mouse, Algernon. The experiment works for Charlie too, who continues the work already done by the scientists, but then he discovers a flaw in the experiment and notices that Algernon is starting to behave erratically...
The novel is a heartbreaking work that I read in one sitting, literally unable to put it down. Presented as a series of personal reports from Charlie, the style of the writing changing as his intelligence changes, a brilliantly effective conceit.
Flowers for Algernon has been adapted in various media, the most famous being the film Charly for which Cliff Robertson won the Best Actor Academy Award. This is a real cult curio, very much of its time, but effective in getting across the themes of the book. The only real issue that I had with the film was the hilarious montage when Charlie rebels in quite possibly the most sixties, flower-power way imaginable. A sequence that sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise engrossing film.

Charly is currently unavailable on Region 2 DVD but can be found on YouTube.

1001 Films I Did See Before I Died #21 - #30

All the films I've seen from the age of 15

21. Arachnaphobia ***
My five year old brother screamed his head off watching this movie and he isn't afraid of spiders.

22. Super Mario Bros. *
The day-glo, primary-coloured world of Super Mario becomes a cross between Blade Runner and Gotham City. WTF?

23. Natural Born Killers *****
Oliver Stone's State of the Union address circa 1994.

24. Mad Max *****
Not quite Hollywood indeed.

25. Dumb and Dumber ****
One of three times I have actually fallen off my cinema seat laughing.

26. Drop Dead Fred **
Good concept, so-so execution.

27. Sleepless in Seattle *
A movie that actually points out to you while you are watching that you could be enjoying a much better film.

28. The Man Without A Face ***
The Man Scarred On One Side Of His Face, while more accurate, doesn't have quite the same ring.


29. What's Love Got To Do With It ***
Tina Turner: The Ike Years

30. Dennis *
Why did John Hughes remake the same film over and over again in the Nineties?

Listomania #2

The Five Worst Summer Movie Seasons of the Last Twenty Years

1) 1994 
If you look at the top grossing films in the US for 1994, you would be forgiven for thinking that this was a rather above average summer blockbuster season. You have Speed, The Lion King, True Lies, The Mask and, ugh, Forrest Gump released during the summer. However, this is a time before day and date releases with the US, and the UK summer season was a very different picture. This is the summer of The Flintstones and Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. And bloody Wet Wet Wet.
Nowadays the UK summer season closely matches that of the US, so we start in April and end in August. In 1994, we start in July with the release of Beverly Hills Cop 3 and end in August with the release of The Mask. So what did we have for those missing months?
Now, I've struggled to find a reliable website for UK box office figures earlier than 2000 so I'm working here from my memory and a rather dubious list from Wikipedia but I've managed to piece together this picture. We start in May with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, a leftover from the US spring season. We then have the big movie of the summer in the UK, Four Weddings and a Funeral, which is also a leftover from the spring. Now Wikipedia doesn't list Four Weddings as a number one movie, which is one of the reasons I doubt its accuracy, so apparently the big movies leading up to July are; Naked Gun 33 1/3; A Business Affair (?); Dangerous Game; The Air Up There; Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and Shopping. Not a single one of those could be considered a summer movie as we understand it.
Anyway, the schools break up and we all go see Beverly Hills Cop 3 until Maverick turns up for a week but, then finally, The Flintstones! From Steven Spielrock! And because I'm a Scot and we return to school in the third week of August, thats it. True Lies is released in that final weekend, The Mask the week after. Speed is released on the 30th September, The Lion King and Forrest Bloody Gump on the 7th October.
1994 feels like a particularly bad summer season largely because the big summer movies were held over until after the summer and the ones that were released close to their US dates were largely rubbish or average. There was one gem of a movie released in July that wouldn't look out of place in todays summer market though. A dark comic book adaptation called The Crow.

Highpoint: The Crow
Lowpoint: Police Academy: Mission to Moscow

2) 1998
Things steadily improved over the next couple of years. We only had to wait a few weeks for the blockbusters now, and the CGI revolution meant that it was actually worth making the trip to the cinema to see them on the big screen. 1996 and 1997 had been bumper years, so expectations were high for 1998. The season kicked off in May with the average Deep Impact, we then had The Wedding Singer (a leftover) and the complete misfire Six Days and Seven Nights. Then finally came the most anticipated movie of 1998, the one that had, unusually for the time, advertised itself a year earlier with the tag-line 'Size Does Matter' - the awful Godzilla. We then had Lost in Space, followed by Armageddon with The X Files sneaking in at the end of August.
Like 1994 however, this doesn't tell the whole story, as there were a few summer movies in the US that didn't reach our shores until the summer was over and would have greatly enhanced the reputation of this season. Saving Private Ryan, The Truman Show and There's Something About Mary where all held back. Even the pretty poor Lethal Weapon 4 didn't come out until September despite it being a perfect summer movie.
My own movie highlight of the summer came one baking hot day in Edinburgh when I finally got to see The Exorcist on the big screen, re-released in Scotland in the summer while the rest of the UK had to wait until Halloween.
UPDATED: I forgot to mention that other big summer release, The Avengers, which says it all really.

Highpoint: Um, Armageddon?
Lowpoint: Godzilla

3) 2000
By 2000 we were getting pretty much the same summer season as the United States, its just that the films weren't anything to get excited about. Gladiator kicks off the summer in grand style, and while I enjoyed it immensely at the time, it hasn't really stood up on repeated viewings. The rest of the summer was one long wait for the one film I was actually excited about seeing: X-Men. So I waited. The awful Mission: Impossible 2 walked by through a flock of doves, flicking its Timotei hair. The Perfect Storm sailed by for a couple of hours until that impressive wave from the trailer washed it from memory. Gone in Sixty Seconds went by in what felt like 30 seconds. The Patriot was just shit. I actually went to see Titan AE because of the trailer that was attached to The Phantom Menace, and I only just remembered that I did.
When X-Men finally arrived it was obvious that this was something different. The potential that X-Men displayed was obvious - the superheroes had arrived.

Highpoint: X-Men
Lowpoint: Mission: Impossible 2

4) 2001
Part of the fun of the summer movie season is anticipation. Its about getting excited about forthcoming movies, letting yourself be teased by the studios until the day you find out whether they were being sincere or a sack of shit. There was almost nothing to get excited about in 2001. At a push, I was incredibly curious to see Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, because he hadn't really put a foot wrong up to this point. Otherwise, there was nothing I was excited to see but they still somehow managed to massively disappoint.
The season kicks off with The Mummy Returns and its awful, incomplete CGI effects. This is followed by Pearl Harbour which my girlfriend still hasn't forgiven me for taking her to. Evolution tries to do comedy/sci-fi but satisfies as neither. Shrek is probably the one film that didn't disappoint but that is because it was saving its kick in the balls for further down the line. Tomb Raider was completely forgettable, the only thing I remember is that it had Geordie from Our Friends in the North in it (better known these days as Daniel Craig). Jurassic Park 3 was better than The Lost World but I was never enamoured of that franchise anyway. And finally, the one hope for the summer, the bizarro Planet of the Apes which satisfies neither as a Tim Burton film or as a reboot of the simian franchise.

Highpoint: Shrek
Lowpoint: Pearl Harbour

5) 2006
2006 is another year where the quality of all the major offerings fell way short of the land marked 'quality'. Mission: Impossible 3 was another entry in that interminable franchise. X Men: The Last Stand managed to match the quality levels of Batman & Robin. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest emphasised the weaknesses of the first film and negated its strengths. Superman Returns made the bizarre choice of trying to be an alternative Superman 3 (the single best thing about the movie was the opening credits sequence). My brain kept struggling to find the conceptual gear required to watch Cars comfortably. I haven't seen The Da Vinci Code and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, as I have begun to exert a degree of quality control in what I watch (my version of growing up).

Highpoint: Superman Returns 
Lowpoint: X-Men The Last Stand

1001 Films I Did See Before I Died #11-#20

Every film I have seen from the age of fifteen

11. Serial Mom: 9/10
John Waters can do no wrong in my eyes.

12. True Romance: 8/10
An excellent Tarantino script becomes a very good Tony Scott movie.

13. Cool Runnings: 6/10
Disneyfied telling of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics.

14. Monty Python and the Holy Grail: 10/10
"Ni" etc

15. Sliver: 1/10
Utter shite.

16. Innocent Blood: 4/10
AKA A French Vampire in America.

17. Made in America: 3/10
Sperm banks will never cease to be a source of amusement for Hollywood executives.

18. The Fugitive: 6/10
Academy Award nominee for Best Picture

19. John Carpenter's The Thing: 10/10
Not to be confused with John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars etc

20. When Harry Met Sally: 6/10
Responsible for hundreds of mediocre rom-coms.

Deep Cult #2

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) dir. Roy Rowland


We are now very used to seeing adaptations of the works of Dr Seuss, but the only feature film that he wrote while he was alive was the beguiling 5,000 Fingers of Dr T. It is currently unavailable on Region 2 DVD and, every time we get an adaptation of one of his works, I pray it will get a long overdue release so a new generation can discover this wonderful film. With the forthcoming release of The Lorax, my hopes have once again been dashed, although if you subscribe to the Sky Movies packages it does occasionally screen on one of those channels. Seek it out if you get a chance.

I would like to take this opportunity to direct your attention to a few other bits and bobs of Dr Seuss related media. Firstly, there is this fantastic book of war cartoons that Dr Seuss produced before and during WW2.

He was also a writer for a series of instructional cartoon shorts produced for the American military featuring the character Private Snafu.

And finally, this amazing adaptation of HP Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu done in the style of Dr Seuss.

Retronomicon #2

I got quite excited earlier this week when I found out about this forthcoming book from the guys behind the TV Cream Toys book. I love the nostalgic hit of trawling the web for images of old food packaging, especially sweets and cereals. I get distracted by movies that feature old style food packaging. When Gary Oldman started eating a pack of Trebor mints in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I let out a squeal of delight. I cannot wait for this book, out 27th September 2012, available from amazon here.

Here are a few I'd quite like to see featured.

1001 Films I Did See Before I Died #1-#10

Every film I have seen from the age of 15

1. The Doors: C
Shoulda been called 'The Lizard King'

2. The Hunt for Red October: B
The third film in John McTiernan's Good Film Trilogy

3. Groundhog Day: B+
The third best Bill Murray film of the Nineties

4. The Lion King: B-
The point where me and Disney parted ways.

5. The Assassin: D
Nikita without the style

6. Rocky III: C-
We're gonna have a montage!

7. Passenger 57: D
Die Hard on a plane, for a bit.

8. Army of Darkness: A-
AKA Evil Dead 3 AKA The Medieval Dead AKA The one with the Harryhausen homage

9. The Nightmare Before Christmas: A
The film that launched a thousand goth accessories.

10. Robin Hood: Men in Tights: C
Not as funny as the film it spoofs.

Back Issue #1

Magazine: Empire

Issue: No 73 July 1995

Initial Observations

This issue of Empire came out in June and features their ultimate summer preview. Back then day and date releases were uncommon and, barring a few exceptions, the summer season followed the school holidays in the UK. Hence the summer preview appears in what today would be the half-way point of the summer season. Empire was also less about previewing forthcoming movies back in the nineties. The cover would normally feature a movie that was actually released in the month covered by that issue. The feature pages would discuss movies released that month, and the movies covered were generally reviewed in that issue. How times have changed.

What's Inside?

Apart from the usual bits and bobs we have features on: The Brady Bunch Movie; Quentin Tarantino acting in Destiny Turns On The Radio; cricket in Hollywood; Jaws 20th anniversary retrospective, Greta Scacchi profile; Bill Forsyth's Being Human and DTV releases; Tank Girl; and the ultimate summer preview.

Old News

The big news story concerns the rising budgets of Hollywood tent-pole pictures. This is the summer of Waterworld which was at the time the most expensive movie ever (unadjusted for inflation). The article mentions that the average cost of a flagship movie had risen to $50.4m the previous year. The budgets of Hollywood movies don't seem to get the same sort of press anymore, except in the case of films like John Carter that fail spectacularly. 

Also in the news, the launch of The  National Lottery is partly blamed for poor cinema attendance due to people being 'glued to their tellies on a Saturday night'. The novelty of that rubbed off pretty quickly didn't it?

Re-reviews

Tank Girl gets a three star review and shares the main review page with the Brady Bunch which gets four stars, both fair in my eyes. Elsewhere its Nicholas Cage month with Kiss of Death and Guarding Tess both released (plus he is the star How Much Is A Pint of Milk?), Michael Bay makes his debut with Bad Boys and Will Smith also features in Six Degrees of Separation. A rather fallow month for good movies with only the superb Crumb standing out.

Commercial Break

The biggest difference between then and now is the appearance of adverts for cigarettes. It comes as a shock to come across these things. 

An advert for Cinemania 95 promises an interactive movie guide with over 20,000 film reviews, 900 movie stills and theme songs from 100 movies. This is what we had before IMDB. 

The Goldstar 3DO System promises that 'you can be sure that nothing will come out in a couple of years time to render your investment obsolete'. The PlayStation is only a couple of months away from release.

Ooh Spooky! 

A feature on possible contenders too sing the theme song to GoldenEye proposes Madonna and notes that she would probably want to be in it. Which is exactly what happens with Die Another Day.

Cindy Crawford speaking about her movie debut Fair Game: "But what's the worst thing that could happen to me? That the movie could be a big flop and I could be terrible?" 

Discussing the prospects for The Usual Suspects: "word-of-mouth should generate enough interest to land it in the file marked 'cult'..."

A feature on the future of home entertainment talks about high definition TVs, video on demand, recordable CDs, HDCDs (i.e DVDs) and on-screen video guides. The future is now.

Promoballs

Producer Beau Marks on Jusge Dredd: "Blade Runner took itself very very seriously and what we have is a film that is a whole of a lot neater and more fun and doesn't take itself so dead-on serious".

Joel Schumacher on Batman Forever: "As Batman, Val is heroic and sexy, he has a tremendous amount of depth, sensitivity and mystery...all qualities tailor-made for the role." He certainly changed his tune on the Val Kilmer front two years later.

Home Re-review

The home reviews are split between films to buy and rent and also include films on tv through the month. The big film to rent is Reservoir Dogs, finally given a home video release three years on from its cinema release. A favourite cult film of mine, Freaked, is also given a prominent review: "any film prepared to sink Brooke Shields in a vat of chemical waste is definitely worth an evening's attendance". 

Quote of the month

"Booga had a ten-inch prosthetic cock. A $5,000 cock. It looked brilliant and the whole scene was very romantic. But MGM took it out. Too bestial. We were going, 'It's innocent, like seeing your mum and dad in bed together...'" - Jamie Hewlett on Tank Girl

The Yoshi Awards #1

So that is us half-way through 2012 and the past week has seen a number of half-year polls popping up in the press and online. We sure do love to categorise our culture/prove how clever we are/fill space with meaningless polls, don't we? So now it's my turn (maniacal laugh). Disclaimer: there will be a distinct lack of 2012 releases mentioned below, these are a selection of my own personal cultural highlights.

The Why Didn't I Watch This Before Award
Community
The best US sitcom since Arrested Development and similarly under-appreciated.

The Hoop Dreams Award for Best Documentary
We Were Here
An exceptionally tough category to choose from, honourable mentions have to go to The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, Into the Abyss and Benda Bilili!, but the award has to go to We Were Here, a documentary that recounts the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco by those who were there. This was shown on BBC4 during January, so keep an eye out for a repeat.

The Pearl & Dean Award for best cinema visit
The Artist
I don't get to the cinema as often as I would like these days and it was a toss up between this and The Muppets. It's been a few years since I watched a silent film on the big screen and while The Artist may be a faux silent (and not as good as the OSS 117 films from the same team) it was still a joy to see something a bit different at a multiplex.

Best DVD release of 2012 (so far)
The Devils
While it is not the definitive release that we would want to see (the restored version, including the rape of Christ scene, is still sitting in a Warner Bros vault somewhere), the fact that the original X certificate release is now available is a cause for celebration. We miss you Ken.

The Deep Cult Award
Branded to Kill
Criterion recently released this and Tokyo Drifter as part of their collection series and I happened to come across a few of Seijun Suzuki's films in a second hand shop around the same time. I love synchronicity, and I love Branded to Kill even more than the delirious Tokyo Drifter which was my only exposure to his films before this. Highly recommended.

The Sarah Lund Award for best Scandinavian film
Haxan
I only included this award so I could rave about finally seeing Lukas Moodyson's Together but then I remembered that Haxan is a Swedish film, and therefore wins the award. A silent 'documentary' about witchcraft through the ages, Haxan is a film that defys easy categorisation.

Best Album of 2012 (so far)
Django Django - Django Django
Beta Band meets Battles in a superb debut album that will be soundtracking lifestyle programmes and sports highlights packages for the rest of the year.

The WTF? Award for craziest film
The Last Circus
The films of Alex de la Iglesia are normally pretty crazy but The Last Circus is batshit insane. The story of two clowns fighting for the affections of a trapeze artist, this film still hasn't been released in the UK continuing the under-appreciation of de la Iglesia in this country.

Best film of 2012 (so far)
Avengers Assemble
Not much to choose from for this category, so the award goes to Avengers Assemble by default. Far surpassing the quality of previous Marvel movies, this was the most purely enjoyable popcorn tent-pole since Inception.

The Prometheus Award for best sci-fi film about a scientific expedition gone wrong
Planet of the Vampires
See what I did there?

Best TV show of 2012 not called Community (so far)
Game of Thrones
Nuff said.