Single to Mingle

Title: A single man

Directed by: Tom Ford

Written by: Christopher Isherwood and Tom Ford

Cast: Julianne Moore, Colin Firth, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult

The 1960’s were great. There were no black people, fat people, hardly any women, everyone bought their clothes straight out of Vogue and Bazaar Catalogues, College professors lived in some of the most stunning homes ever created, all the boys were so cute! And most importantly everything was absolutely stunning! Okay maybe the 1960’s weren’t like that, but Tom Ford likes to think they were.

In his aesthetically perfect Cinema Debut the King of the Runway takes on the camera and creates what can only be described as the most ambitious Gucci Advert to date. This film is stunning, Ford manages to create the most phenomenal mis-en-scene throughout the film from the naked Colin Firth in the harrowing blues of a swimming pool water to Firth’s perfect house, and I mean perfect down to the crisp white shirts he wears every morning which I can swear were bought on Rodeo drive every morning before shooting started.

There’s not much to the film, it’s about loneliness more than anything else and the terror “” experiences in the aftermath of the death of his lover, the narrative follows “” through the grieving process and all the idiosyncratic and minimalistic aspects of his existence. I’d love to say more but not much more than that happens, its simply just one hell of an amazing runway show with a simple story. Ford’s a design genius and we see this in most of the frames of the film, especially in the way he frames “” in his loneliness. But outside of that its pretty much just eye-candy, there a lot of half naked men, poster-boys for the 40 year old gay man’s fantasy who don’t really say much as much as waffle in their own beauty like Ford does in this film.

More than anything it’s extremely self indulgent. Ford does everything in his power to show us just how good a director her really is, most notably in the flashbacks in the film where he sets one in the most jagged masculine location on earth, where Firth and ‘’” discuss their homosexuality.

All in all it’s not terrible, as it is aesthetically stunning, but without cause or explanation and at times it felt as though the film was just dubbed and the dialogue was added to make it a film.

But then again we’re all self-indulgent and we all want the world to know how good we are, Ford knows this and so do I.

I give it 4 Hoers

Clash of the titans!

Title: Clash of the Titans
Written by: Travis Beacham, Phil Hay
Director: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Sam Worthington, Ralph Fiennes, Jason Flemying

Ever wondered what it might be like to be the biggest bad-ass, ridiculously good-looking and yet the most humble guy in town? Sam Worthington gets to find this out when he steps into the role of Perseus in Clash of the Titans.
The film is set in Ancient Greece, where Gods bang your wife if they don't particularly like you, and wipe out your city if you prefer mankind to Zeus and his crew. Basically, the Gods have become fed up with Man's insolence and lack of respect, and so Zeus allows Hades to whip them back into order. Perseus and his family have a front row seat to Hades' show, and like a drunk gay man in a club, they get to close. Perseus' family is killed, sending him on a quest to destroy Hades (seriously). The narrative is solid, but you'll see the ending from the moment Sam screams to the heavens in insincere torment at his families fate. Worthington has a simple character to play (Perseus is pretty much perfect) and so isn't given much room for a stellar performance, but what he does produce felt far too much like a classics professor living out his wet dream of battling mythical beasts, bedding women, and colluding with weird freaky desert people. The story has it's predictable array of gimmicky supporting characters, as well as the standard tragedy and smattering of general boo-hoo-ness that accompanies every epic, and very little was done from a filmmaking point of view to achieve anything that could wow anyone. That being said, I had to briefly leave the cinema at a point to change my pants, because I quite literally wet myself at the films aesthetic qualities. The special effects, along with the general scenery are breathtaking, and you will probably flinch every time a giant something or the other breaks down a building in slow motion. Clearly built for 3D viewing, Clash of the Titans builds upon Avatar's success with special effects, and just as seamlessly blends actual scenery with green room work. This film isn't what I would call “good”, but it can definitely be termed “epic”. It is for this reason that it gets...

7 Hoers!

Jame "and the" Van Der Riet goes on!

Violence, It's Nice!

Title: Hurt Locker
Dir: Kathryn Bigelow
Written By: Mark Boal
Cast: Jeremy Renner; Anthony Mackie; Brian Geraghty; Christian Camargo

I think Violence is as natural as 12-year old boy’s crush on his lunch lady or Matron, it’s strange, disturbing, but frighteningly familiar. With all the repression chucked at us through the wonderful people at Liberal Media and Dickheads and Co. It makes sense that every once in a while you just want to, you know, kill something.
Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal fully understand this and deliver this stream of thinking in the orgasmic “Hurt Locker”. The narrative follows the lives of three marines’ station in Iraq part of a EOD (United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. The film travels with them along the harsh, dry, violent caking Iraq War and their attempts to try diffuse as many bombs, tempers and insurgents as possible. There’s not much to ruin in this film as the story is simplistic but fucking Horrifically familiar.
The best thing about “Hurt Locker” is the fact that it doesn’t contextualise the external war but rather the internal war instead. Fighting against the rising tide of insecurity, danger and all out lust for violence the team of Sanborn, James and Eldridge venture into the most vicious terrain on earth to fight an invisible enemy hell-bent on destroying them and everything around them.
Bigelow and Co. Go to town in this flick, shot primarily on Super 16mm cameras the celluloid gives you that same feeling of dryness, despair and fear that only someone with super-parched lips or living in Iraq could experience. By using an intricate series of tight close ups, wobbling like the teams chance of survival, Bigelow and Ackroyd get to the heart of violence which like the desert tornadoes furiously sculpt the Jordanian terrain like the men as inherently violent. It’s not pretty, but it’s as gritty as F*** and to top that there’s very little porn.
Porn in the sense that Bigelow rarely indulges in her creative talents by showing us just how good she is as a director, it’s film how it should be, simple, beautiful and outright provocative.
I give it 8 HOERS!
So Young.

Study Snaxx Music Video

Title: Study Snaxx

Artist: D.I. and Bad Murray

Written by: Daniel Issacson and Mike Charles

Okay people!

Want to know what the most notorious society at UCT has been up to lately?
Well we have been up and about shooting the up and coming Study Snaxx music video. Here are snippets of what you would expect to see in the music video, so stay tuned to see the final product...

The video is of a parody song in the vein as the “Lonely Island” it celebrates excessive wealth, misogyny and other forms of gluttony associated with Commercial Hip hop. One must note that it is self-reflexive and that this is a parody. That being said Study Snaxx are just so yummy and anyone who disputes this must be mad.

So with that being said stay anticipated...

Signing out
Zinny "The bomb"

3 KICKS FOR YOU

Title: Men who stare at goats

Dir: Grant Heslov

Written By: Peter Straughan and Jon Ronson

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Ewan MacGregor and George Clooney.

It sounds like shit. US ARMY investing vast amounts of stacks into a psychic unit? But like that Ping Pong show in Thailand you don’t actually believe it until it happens and then you get the “WTF mate” look on your face. It leaves you chuckling and playing with your neck like you just survived going down on Helen Zille.

Bob Wilton [Ewan MacGregor] is a prodigious, under-valued journalist working a dead end job in podunk USA –Ann Arbor Michigan- He spends his days interviewing Coffin dodgers with more cats than brain cells and kooks who claim to have been psychic spy’s in the US Army.

Shit fucks out. Good ol’ Wife his old lady proves that yeah she’s a slapper and fucks his boss, causing Wilton to reach the end of his tether. He then throws caution and a series of pregnancy tests against the wind and heads out to Iraq to find his unicorn story. Iraq’s spectacular and war-torn, Kuwait on the other hand is hot and humid and docile, and where Wilton finds himself, until he meets the infamous Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney) who happens to be the greatest Pyschic warrior in the history of the New-Earth Army. A Section of the US Army dedicated to enhancing the potential of the human mind and body through psychic powers. “WTF MATE?”

I shit you not –this is based on a true story by the way- Clooney goes to town in this one and pulls out a showstopper which will have you in stitches and stroking your upper lip in sheer jealously.

Wilton and Cassidy set out on a mission into the heart of Iraq to try and establish as to whether or not Cassidy’s full of crap and find that breakthrough story Wilton’s been craving for so long. It’s hilarious and somehow manages to capture the monotonous Middle Eastern desert as mystical and not just fuckin hot.

The film’s a knockout comedy, but kind of goes thin on narrative and muddles a bit too much in the theory of, but then again anything to do with Pyschic warriors has to kick all kinds of ass.

Suspiciously funny and at times unforgettable, “Men who stare at goats” is definitely one to see and preferably during the day so you can go outside once it’s done and try explode clouds.

I give it 7 Hoers

So young.