Blockbusters you won't be seeing this season...

… for alas, they exist only in my head.

Pinokeanu

Once upon a time there was a humble toymaker called Gus Van Sant who dreamt of being a big movie director. So he picks up his tools and makes a little boy who can star in a series of lightweight comedies. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the toy boy grows into a man, and begins to take on serious dramatic roles. Sadly though, he never becomes a real actor, and remains forever made of wood.

Cast:
Keanu Reeves..…The little wooden feller
Tom Hanks…….…The humble toymaker
Joaquin Phoenix............Jiminy Cricket
Rowan Atkinson….......…Honest John


Lazarus of the Dead

Judea AD33: A man called Jesus is going around doing magic tricks, turning water into wine, feeding a multitude with loaves and fishes, and so forth. Then one day he is asked to bring a man called Lazarus back from the dead. Jesus lays his hands upon the corpse. Lazarus sits up and croaks “Brains… brains…” Lazarus then goes around eating people’s brains and turning them into zombies. Luckily Judas, the hero of the story, has suddenly acquired thirty pieces of silver (for reasons which will be revealed in a subplot), and uses them to fashion silver crossbow bolts, which (in a slight mismatch of horror mythologies) can be used to defeat the undead horde.

Cast:
Johnny Depp……………………….Judas Iscariot
Vin Diesel…………………………..Lazarus
Rowan Atkinson……………………A bungling English zombie
David Blaine.………………………Jesus of Nazareth
Abi Titmuss………………………...Mary Magdalene


Seven Drunken Knights

Obviously, this is a remake of Seven Samurai, set in medieval Europe, in which the protagonists are alcoholics.

Starring: The Pogues as the eponymous heroes, The Dubliners as the villagers, and Christie Moore as the bandit leader.


[That's enough - Ed].

Japanese Film Snobs

Some people get all uptight if you dabble in foreign films. “Ooh, get you,” they might say “with your Kurosawa and your Bergman and Tarkovsky, well la-di-dah.” They might have a point, were it not for the fact that a) It isn’t 1974. Today’s posers are more likely to be into Kiarostami or Lars von Trier; and b) Kurosawa was not the arty ponce his poser fans make him look like.

You see, what these people don’t realise is that there is a whole higher strata of snobs who denounce Kurosawa’s western followers as lazy trend-hoppers. They dismiss Kurosawa as the commercial, “easy-access” option for westerners wanting a taste of oriental cinema. Some of them, such as Jean-Luc Godard, even criticise Kurosawa for not being typically Japanese in style. Instead they regard Mizoguchi and Ozu as the truly great Japanese directors; men whose films are dizzyingly highbrow and bewilderingly foreign enough to qualify as “art”.

Akira Kurosawa: Respected his audience.

Of course, these uber-snobs are quite right in their assessment of Kurosawa. He was commercial – many of his pictures broke box office records in Japan. He’s not just easy-access for the west; he was easy-access back home too. While his screenplays often had some political agenda, he always aimed to entertain, exciting us with action or moving us to tears. You might call him Japan’s Steven Spielberg. It would certainly piss some people off if you did. And even Godard was partly correct. Kurosawa famously adapted a number of Shakespeare plays, as well as novels by Ed McBain and Dostoevsky. But more than that he took his formalist cues from Hollywood – in style and technique his pictures are reminiscent of those of John Huston and Fred Zinnemann.


If anyone thinks any of the above is a good reason to dislike someone’s pictures, well they might as well just go off and live in a cave with only a copy of Gadsby and some shit free jazz CDs to keep them company. There is no intellectual justification for dismissing something simply because it is popular. As for his not being Japanese enough - what patronising rubbish! He’s not a takeaway meal – he doesn’t have to be culturally authentic. And thinking that Mizoguchi and Ozu are more representative of the Japanese populace is a bit like inviting a load of working class people to your house and saying “I know, let’s watch Kes”.

Jean-Luc Godard: The yardstick of pretentiousness.

Fortunately, the majority of Japanese people are like you and me. They go to the cinema to be entertained. To prove it, here are some non-pretentious Japanese film recommendations.

Gojira (1954): The original Godzilla, and a passable impersonation of Hollywood’s sci-fi B-movies of the era, right down to the nuclear war allegory. The director Ishiro Honda also did a few of the later (somewhat trashier, but great fun) sequels including the gloriously titled Godzilla: Destroy ALL Monsters (caps mine).

Samurai Trilogy (1954-56): If you can ignore the tiresome emphasis on Buddhist philosophy, these are almost as good as Kurosawa’s action pictures. It’s shot in some Japanese rip-off of Technicolor, which looks like it’s been coloured in with felt-tips then dipped in tea.

Laputa, Castle in the Sky (1988) and Porco Rosso (1993): Remember five years ago, when everyone was going on about how great Spirited Away was? These earlier Miyazaki pictures are better. They’re coherent, for a start.

Right, that’s enough listing for now. Ta-ra.