Welcome to The first column from The Peoples Movies new team member Chris who will treat you all to some good old article writing every once and a while. We were stuck in if we should give Chris like Regular coloum name plus we were a little undecided on a suitable image and by accident I found the above image! Its corny but also a good one, so get the reading glasses on boys & Girls its file one of The Last Temptation of Chris!
THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIS
File 01: “Tempted By Bay”
It’s been (not surprisingly) a long, humid and relatively fruitless day. As I bravely come to terms with the passage of yet another twenty-four hours in which I achieve absolutely nothing; I’m feeling tempted, very tempted.
I’m tempted to do something I know is wrong both morally and legally; something which I will regret and probably won’t enjoy.
It’s becoming almost impossible to resist the urge; I’m going to do it. I’m going to watch a pirate copy of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.I know, I know; it’s a disgusting, base, inhuman thing to do, but I just can’t help myself. I find myself compelled to watch movies which I know, am 100 per cent sure, I will loathe.
Recent bouts of celluloid self-abuse have seen me endure Crank 2: High Voltage, the remakes of: Friday the 13th and Last House on the Left, and one of the straight-to-DVD American Pie sequels (does it even matter which one?).
I was under no duress; I watched these films willingly, of my own free will.Obviously I still care about seeing great cinema; I would much rather watch a brilliant film than a terrible one; I just seem to find myself constantly watching slick, but lifeless, horror remakes, or puerile teen-sex comedies.
I have a good/bad feeling that Michael Bay’s latest instalment of his noisy franchise will fit the bill nicely. I hated the first: loud, stupid and terribly dull. The second was even worse: everything I hated about the first film, but with the added misfortune of being crass, infantile and vulgar. Every piece of promotional material I have seen for Dark of the Moon reassures me that everything about this latest film will be just as horrid as the first two.
If this isn’t bad enough there’s also the fact that I’ll be willingly watching a pirate copy; a practice that will leave me (probably) appearing in court having directly funded international terrorism and then possibly even roasting for eternity in the fiery depths of hell.
Let me at this point make something abundantly clear; I don’t like piracy. But I feel myself being drawn towards this film; like a paper boat whirling its way down the street towards an open storm-drain and the waiting, laughing face of Michael Bay. It seems as if nothing is going to stop me from floating headlong, down into this cinematic sewer of: explosions, big-shiny robots, and exploding big-shiny robots.
Unfortunately for Michael Bay, and indeed for the good people at my local multiplex, I just don’t feel like contributing any more of my ill-gotten money to this series of films. So I find myself in the sorry position of trawling through the numerous, dubious-looking websites which boast near-DVD quality recordings of the latest blockbusters and, confusingly, a few that are still weeks away from release.
I’m really plumbing the depths now as I scroll through some of these sites; my cursor has more than once hovered over an image of a typically bemused-looking, now be-penguined Jim Carrey. And is that WWE superstar Dave Batista I spy? Tempting me with a thoughtful-looking film about a down-on-his-luck ex-cop caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, drawn back into the seedy world he hoped he’d left behind That’s sure to be good!
Although, if I were really as masochistic as I like to think I am, I should probably cough-up for the price of a ticket and go and see Transformers properly. I could even pay the extra money and ‘treat’ myself to a headache-inducing, eyeball-destroying 3D screening. Every moment of Shia LaBeouf’s (presumably) nuanced performance gloriously rendered in three, stunning dimensions.
There’s no kidding myself that not paying to see this film is going to help in any way, shape or form. Terrible films, boring films, stupid, ignorant and offensive films will all keep being made, and the sad truth is I will keep watching them. Like a desperate moth, tantalised by the dancing, flickering flame of god-awful cinema.
It’s probably best if I just shelve the Transformers idea altogether and find myself another addiction, one that destroys less brain cells. It’s time I conquered my sick thirst for shoddy movies and settled in with something a little more stimulating; Bergman or Herzog perhaps? Although, I have just noticed The Holiday is on telly tonight; couldn’t hurt, could it?
–Chris Banks
