A mini meh about….. The Lego Batman Movie

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Everyone wants to be Batman, even the Lego version.

Well in the middle of Oscar Bait season, it’s actually nice to be writing about a film which isn’t out for shiny shiny. Well, I say that, it’s really a giant marketing tool for both Lego and Batman. It’s been more than a little slutty in terms of putting itself out there with large tie-ins with advertising Sky Broadband. Generally when you see a lot of something, you expect failure.

After all, when the Lego Movie first arrived on the scene, you wouldn’t expect it to work. In fact you’d be just cynical about it being about it even being remotely entertaining, rather than just brain washing everyone to buy Lego. But you know what? It did. It did it brilliantly. The Lego Movie had a great story with a wonderful twist, fantastic characters with excellent voice acting and just looked so much like the actual products. I’d happily sit down and watch it over and over again. Even if it’s just to sing the insidious “Everything is Awesome.” Don’t judge me….

One of the highlights of the Lego Movie was Batman. Yes, you read that right, Batman. Voiced by Will Arnett, Batman stole the show at times by showing everyone how awesome he is, and that everything in his life is black, or dark grey.

But again, it’s a risk to bring just that chracter to his own film. After all, the Minions went solo away fro Gru (Despicable Me) to their own Minions movie, and the film ended up being so poor, so much of a drop in quality, that we’ll pretty much forget now that it ever existed. Warner Bros, whose own DC Universe project is not exactly having a wonderful time of it so far, need a hit. The best Batman film last year was in fact the animated “Return of the Caped Crusader” with Adam West and Burt Ward. It pretty much destroyed Batman Vs Superman in terms of entertainment with a far smaller budget.

Continue reading →

A mini meh about….. La La Land

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

What America will known as after January 20th…. And Britain after March….. Also, not as colourful….

I’m writing this the night before The Donald is sworn into office, bringing with him potentially the destruction of all humanity and at best, a damned good laugh for the next four years.

Rest assured, the event is being screened around the world and in a way, I am just curious as to how much of a car crash it actually will be. The whole thing has been like a car crash, in that you can’t help but slow down to take a look. I mean, if your pick for Education Secretary Betsy Devos thinks we need guns in schools to protect from bears and Rick Perry didn’t even know what job he was going to do, well…. just pick up some popcorn and play out it’s the end of the world as we know it;

So in a weird way, perhaps this is the most suitable time to bring up another mini meh about a film firmly based in a different universe, where we focus on two people trying to make it in the world as various successes and in essence, providing us with a happy escape. La La Land is another love letter in essence to Hollywood and the struggle to get famous by people who have to do sh*tty jobs before that big break. So already you would start suspecting that this would be a film genetically engineered to win lots of shiny shiny things, as if nothing else, Hollywood loves stuff that’s about itself, Trumbo and Birdman being two recent examples reviewed here of course.

Your mood may also be soured by the introduction where various people are stuck on a freeway / motorway in LA, sweating and bored, where they just start a huge musical number and about what is hard to understand half the time, but hey, at least then we know how our two soon-to-be lovebirds, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling meet, it’s by getting upset with each other when traffic starts moving and Emma decided to read some paper at the wheel instead of driving on. I know I should be referring to their chracter names, but honestly it’s going to be easier to just stick with the actors’ names! Continue reading →

A mini meh about….. Lion

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Hakuna Matata.

Let the bells ring out, everyone dance in the streets and someone steal me another TV from the betting shop down the road because Oscar Bait season is fully upon us now! YEEHAAAAA!

January couldn’t be a better time to get distracted with films which no-one will watch 6 months from now. With everything that’s happening in the world, we may as well rage against the hollywood machine as opposed to the political machine. For one, what’s happening in the real world is now less real than whatever hollywood could be producing. If Charlie Brooker’s 2016 Wipe was anything to go by, where they really struggled to get the show to be within an hour for broadcasting, I suspect they’re already writing 2017 Wipe and will struggle to keep the programme this time to under 4 hours.

But enough of that pesky reality talk, let’s get to looking at the current season of shiny shiny chasers in the form of Lion, a film due for release this Friday 20th Jan in the UK. Of course tis the season for true stories and we kick with a true story about a cheeky chap named Saroo (played by Sunny Pawar and later, the manly lion adult known as Dev Patel) , who lives a crap life in India but he’s happy. I think, I’m not really sure. He has a family, with a single mother a brother and a sister. One day, Saroo wanders off with his brother Guddu (Abhisek Bharate) to help him work, and in turn leaves his young sister alone in the house as their mum has gone to work. Why? Err……. let’s just bring that up later….

Saroo and Guddu get separated because Saroo falls asleep on a bench at the station and Guddu wanders off and is perfectly happy to leave his small brother alone in a train station.

What the f**k is wrong with everyone? Continue reading →

A mini meh about… xXx: The return of… wtf?

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Who asked for this?!?!?!?!

Wait, this doesn’t look like Oscar Bait! What’s going on here? Have people dared to release something which was just for entertainment and money making’s sake? We will even go more strange as with an added twist, this mini meh features a YouTube video;

Basically the background to this (in the interests of disclosure etc.) is that I attended the European Premiere of xXx: The return of Xander Cage, starring various people I’ve never heard of along with Vin Diesel who is probably been very happy to be riding high again in films since the resurgence of the Fast and Furious series. It was a freebie basically and given my experience of one other premiere before (Horns with Daniel Radcliffe, the little Harry Horse-Botherer who has done some excellent work since), I figured it would be just as good if not better.

Oh boy, would I be wrong.

Basically after arriving at around 5pm to stand outside in the cold London air, along with someone else who I suspect afterwards would have much preferred staying in bed (And so would I), we were left to our own devices with the organisers from Paramount and the PR companies, not really knowing what they were doing. This of course would only serve to make you annoyed, especially if you are needing toilet facilities after the twelfth mocha you’ve guzzled trying to keep warm.

Add to the fact that the stars were late and only after about 3 hours of waiting, do you get literally about ten seconds walking down the carpet before you’re pushed on to get out of the way of the people who are paid way more than you will ever be, you can imagine that my mood was not exactly the type of jumping up and down with glee.

Why am I writing more about the wait and the meh than the actual film? Because it’s still 89% more interesting than what actually happens in the bloody thing! Continue reading →

A mini meh about…. Moulin Rogue One

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Are we too late for the dance number about Stormtroopers in love?

Finally after all this time, we come to the sci-fi event of the past month or so, and the second mini meh of 2017: Moulin Rogue One, where with some terrific dancing and songs, really brought the world of Star Wars to life. It was really sad how Nicole Kidman had…. wait…. you’re saying I’m talking about the wrong stuff? You’re saying that Lady Gaga didn’t sing Lady Marmalade while the rebels fought against the empire? You’re saying that this was a tenuous joke at best and really I should just focus on talking about the film Rogue One?

Sigh, fine….. spoilsports…..

So yes, the first true standalone new material in the Star Wars Universe effectively revolves around the opening paragraph of the very first Star Wars Film back in the 70s. In essence what we come to is a very hi-tech heist movie where we have a lot of new faces trying to steal the plans to the big ball of doom which is known as the Death Star.

Cue an opening scene which establishes the main bad guy from the Empire, an angry Project Manager by the name of Orson Krennic (played in true panto fashion by Ben Mendelsohn). He’s after Mads Mikkelsen (playing a high tech engineer fella called Galen Erso), who apparently left the empire behind to have a quiet life and a family.

Orson’s a bit annoyed at this and needs Mads to finish the lovely new shiny weapon thingy. At the cost of killing Mads’ family. The little girl hides and gets rescued by Forest Whitaker and turns into Jyn Erso, a happy go lucky scamp who got imprisoned in a camp by the Empire. She’s rescued to go find her father by the rebels and to talk with Forrest Whitaker about where her old man is. Unknown to her, a rebel chap with an exoitic accent (Diego Luna) has orders to kill Jyn’s father.

So the story comes into its own, with the introduction of various characters like the blind Priest dude (Donnie Yen) and his friend (Jiang Wen) who likes guns. And I suppose we should leave more of the story there as despite knowing the outcome with the very first Star Wars film. trust me, you would know why once you watch it. Continue reading →

A mini meh about…. Asshat’s Creed

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Everything is permitted….including taking the p*ss.

It’s the first mini meh of 2017 and it’s still not about Rogue One! This is coming soon…. just as soon as I’m able to drag some others along to a showing against their will!

Instead of Star Wars or indeed the beginnings of Oscar Bait season 2017, we bring you a new meh about the film adaptation of the game everyone got really tired of, which is why Ubisoft made it finally take a year off, Assassin’s Creed. The games centered around Desmond Miles (voiced by the one and only Nolan North), who came from a long line of assassins, and some bad guys made him relive memories locked within his DNA from his ancestors. Of course over the series of games, we found it was based around alien ball things where the earth could be saved or not, along with various adventures into the past and present. So surely a decent enough premise for a half decent film?

Well, it is based on a video game, so the answer it seems is automatically no. Want evidence? Well let’s dive into this one and then you will see very quickly what I mean.

The film opens with a rather crap explanation of the parties involved with the plot and then in Spanish, we see lots of hooded people saw a lot of stuff about what they will do as Assassins. Instead of Desmond, we instead get to hang out with convicted criminal Callum Lynch (played by Michael Fassbender, who also has several other credits with this film so I guess we can blame him for something here). He is rescued from his own execution by Abstergo Industries (The bad guys, just stick with that for now) and they basically stick him into a giant robot arm thingy and then make him become a Spanish assassin dude who was the last chap ever recorded to find the piece of eden which can be used to control all of mankind. Continue reading →

So long 2016, you were beyond s**t!

Lord of Leisure Posted on by

Well if nothing else, the New Year’s message for 2017 as what I usually do on Ooh Sometimes will for sure be different.

For the past few years, I’d been writing some general platitudes about how it’s been a year since last I wrote anything like before and how people up and down the world will be celebrating the end of a year and with it, the beginning of a fresh new year, where, well as it stood, not much will have changed.

Well, this one isn’t going to be that way.

Nope, instead we’re just going to state what for many will be the obvious. 2016 was just a complete pile of rotten sh*t with a sprinkling of good bits here and there for many in the first world, and then even worse in other countries. Major events in the world, have come to overshadow everything we currently are doing, with the consequences of that set to play out in 2017.

Brexit, which is due to start in March, and of course on the 20th of January, We get President Trump coming in and with it, the sense of any progress mankind has made, begins to fade. Various wars continued to rage on, we lost just far too many good and talented people and really, everyone else for the most part have been suffering in one form or another trying to make it through it all. Worse than that, I never got to use that last bottle of pancake mix in the cupboard! BASTARD!

For my own selfish part (may as well, seeing as I own this damned blog!) it’s not been much fun. In the height of the summer, I basically lost it and had to resort to somewhat excessive measures to get back to some semblance of sanity. This caused a lot of meh by itself, and for the most part, I’ve succeeded. Now I’m just the lazy geeky asshole you all hate and despise again! Hooray!

So in many ways, 2017 already has a lot of horrible things in store for all of us, and a lot of it, now really is out of our hands. It would be too easy to get swept up in all of it, and lose our minds, if we hadn’t already lost them. The only conclusions we can draw from 2016 is that life is hilariously cruel with occasional good bits sprinkled throughout. Humans are f*cking stupid too, come to think of it.

So I’m going to be making a list of things to do for 2017, not resolutions, just stuff to try and do. In a way it will be getting off the merry-go-round that we’re all stuck on right now and just concentrate on the stuff like matters. Like Marvel films, ladies and doing whatever feels like fun. F*ck it, I’m only living once and if I can help it, I want to continue what the year has ended on, in a much better personal state than before. Whatever form that takes and wherever it takes me, I hope it’s got some sex sprinkled in somewhere too! What, even the Lord of Leisure needs naughty you know!

I only wish you all that you personally have a grand 2017, because collectively, we’re in for a rough ride of it all and we’re just going to have to keep fighting the good fight against the forces of meh. Oh, and completely take the p*ss out of Donald Trump all the time, while he attempts to lie, cheat and blame everyone else for problems while he also makes money on the side from it all.

Take it easy where you can campers!