Ferris Bueller's Day Off/Gonjasufi/World War Z

Hello readers. In all seriousness though, if you read my first blog and went on to this one, you are now a "reader". You can never stop reading. You are mine. Just kidding! (Or am I?) But if you do actually read my blog then I do want to hug you for an inappropriate amount of time. Like, twenty seconds or so. Anyway, let's begin.


FILM:

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

This film has a special place in my heart. Not just for it's absurd, carefree plot or fantastic protagonist (or is he antagonist? Hmmmm) but also for being the film that made me realise storyboarding and editing is REALLY fucking important.


Take, for example, the first scene. I recently downed a cup of coffee and studied the hell out of the first ten minutes or so of it. There had always been something about the way it's put together I loved. I finally figured out what it was. John Hughes used establishing shots (for those of you who don't know, establishing shots are simply brief shots of a building or location so the audience knows where the scene actually is. It would be very confusing if you just skipped from a field to, say, an office building. For all we know, they could be in a swanky barn with desks, not the pentagon) brilliantly. He doesn't just use them to say "this is where things are gonna be happening for a few minutes" he imbues the environment around the character's with a sense of humour and beauty.

Take, for yet another example, the few shots leading up to the introduction of the school's perfectionist principal, Ed Rooney (brought to life fantastically by Jeffrey Jones. "Nine times" is one of my favorite movie lines). There's a kid pulling a "push" door, then a full hallway empties in seconds, leaving one unfortunate soul who dropped his book, then cut to Rooney's secretary, Grace (played brilliantly by Edie McClurg. "Oh yah, he's a righteous dude") pulling pencil after pencil out of her hair. It's all childish, it's all cliche, but that's the appeal of Ferris Bueller, you're meant to relax and forget all your problems and live in his world for a while.


Now I'm a firm believer in "credit where credit's due" so I've got to say that while John Hughes provided the fantastic shots, it was Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto who made it look so good (who went on to work on The Silence of the Lambs, and quite a few of M. Night Shyamalan's films. The Happening is probably the best example of his work being similar to Ferris. It was bright, colourful and sharp, everything the rest of the film wasn't) and Paul Hirsch made it all fit together so beautifully (who had already won an Oscar for editing Star Wars in '77, and after Ferris went on to have a pretty average career. However he did edit a film called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, and if the title is accurate, could be an awesome movie. He's worked on some snazzy films, but then he went and cut together Date Movie. Now I understand even the finest of actors, editors and directors will work on a rap film for a fat wad of cash so they can go back to focusing on their art, but Date Movie? You're an Oscar winner! The first two Scary Movies maybe, but Christ on a bicycle, WHY!?)

The performances in the movie are fantastic. It goes without saying Broderick played Bueller spectacularly well, as did a too-old-for-the-role-but-you-wouldn't-know-unless-someone-told-you Alan Ruck. It really is testament to the late, great John Hughes' ethos of talking to young actors like people, not children who happen to be able to act. Every performance bounces off the other so well you find yourself caring for every one of them.


Speaking of performances, look out for a brilliant cameo by Charlie Sheen back when he used to act, not act like a tool on Two And A Half Men. He plays a drug ridden greaser kid who Ferris' sister (played by none other than Jennifer Grey, Baby in Dirty (old pervert) Dancing). He didn't sleep for two days prior to the shoot, in order to get the appropriate level of paleness and lethargy. It works well, and is a highlight.


Standout scenes are the opening where Ferris rigs up his room while giving us tips on how to fake being sick, any of the scenes in Chicago proper, and "Cameron's breakdown". This is the best feel good film I've ever watched, and I grin like an idiot from start to finish every time I watch it.


As anyone who's met me for more than an hour will tell you, I love Fight Club. So much so I wanted to start one, but I think that's another blog post entirely. I recently read a guy's case for Ferris and Fight Club being similar films. I'd like to give you the rough gist of it because i think it's so damn clever, and he must have watched Ferris so many times to notice this. Now if anyone doesn't want to read the spoiler of the 90's, I suggest you skip down a few paragraph's until it says "MUSIC".

You know how Tyler Durden was everything Norton's character wanted to be? How he embodies the care free spirit and life Norton so desperately wanted, as he was trapped in a sterile, uncaring environment? Well look again at Cameron and Bueller's relationship. See?

You know how Cameron secretly loved Sloan? You know how Norton DEEP DOWN wanted Marla? Remember how Tyler got the girl, leaving Norton (as far as he knew) alone and Ferris is going out with Sloan?


Well the theory is that while Cameron isn't Ferris (in the way Norton was Durden) but the entire "Day Off" was in fact Cameron's feverish delusion from his sick bed, brought on by illness, the large amount of medication he had taken, and the stress and fear of going to college after summer. I'm not sating it's right or wrong, I'm just saying it's a nice theory and I'm bound to like it because it's connected to Fight Club.


MUSIC:


Gonjasufi & Flying Lotus


I first heard of Gonjasufi while absent mindedly flicking through a copy of NME I bought because it had Gorillaz on the cover. I got to the album reviews section and my eye was caught not by the name, but the picture above the review. It was of what appeared to be an LA hobo in expensive yet messed up clothes, with a long beard, holding a baseball bat in a car park at sunset. I thought "well, alright then". I read about half the album review, got bored and went out and bought the damn thing (on CD, I've always bought on CD so this anti-piracy bill doesn't really effect me, but more on that some other time).


The album is called A Sufi And A Killer, and HMV had only stocked one copy (as far as I could see anyway). If you'd like to buy it on CD, look out for the black and white album cover that makes your eyes smile. The cover art on this is minimalist complexity at it's best, just using some black and white lines they (the album sleeve simply says "design by MRR" but I can't seem to find them online. There is a blog on this site called "mrr design" but I don't think it's the same person).


So I put it on and listen to the album, from start to finish. Now, I deliberated putting this particular phrase in the blog, because people who say this tend to pretentious assholes who can't be bothered to draw comparisons and assume us lesser mortals couldn't understand anyway. but I have to say it. I have never heard anything like this before.


The first track doesn't even have a name (the track list on the album sleeve starts at number two) but it's like an African tribal dance fed through one of those old game consoles that worked with tapes.


It then cuts to Kobwebz, which accomplishes everything any psychedelic band has ever wanted. gonjasufi creates a sound scape of airy guitars and warped sound, but it never looses control. This is also where we get to hear Gonjasufi's voice. It's a tormented, crackly thing that's at once barely there and in your face. He sounds like he's just been born and lived for eternity. It has a sort of world-weary wonder in it.


We are then plunged in to Ancestors, the only track on the album Flying Lotus worked on unfortunately. We are played in with what i think is an accordion, then Fly Lo does his classic maneuver of making the track suddenly sound like it's underneath a mattress. I don't study music so i don't know what it's called, but I like it. just put Flying lotus into Youtube, have a listen and you'll know what I mean. We'll be hearing a lot from Fly Lo in the years to come, trust me.


The rest of the album is fantastically atmospheric and emotive, with highlights such as She Gone, the best "good riddance" song I've ever heard. It tempers sadness with anger, with an underlying note of happiness to it. As with all the other tracks, the music creates the landscape of whatever Gonjasufi is trying to communicate, and his voice adds the emotion.


Suzie Q is pure balls-to-the-wall rock & roll, with a furious guitar riff running through it while Gonjasufi wails over it, until it fades out and we get treated to Stardustin'. It only runs for 1:05, but any longer and the effect wouldn't be as strong. It takes you to space then drags you underground for a bitching rave, and it's all over before you know what the hell just happened.



Change is a brief reprieve from the tirade of adrenaline that's accumulated since She Gone. It then mellows out completely in what the album sleeve says is Duet but Windows Media Player tells me is Dust. Whatever, it's not the best track in the world, and if it wasn't for the rest of the album that bookends it, it would fail miserably. We get compensation though, in the form of ultra-cool Candylane, a tune so smooth it has a bit of bass in it that literally goes "aa-woooo" like some sort of pimp. It builds up and never breaks, it's just THERE for a few minutes and it's fantastic.


We then go to Holidays, which has a minimal backing to it while Gonjasufi actually sings for a change. It's about loneliness, as far as I can gather, but the backing is so cheerful it's hard to appreciate it. That's why it's one of my favorite tracks on the album, Gonjasufi and Mainframe (another collaborator, not as good as Fly Lo though) create a brave juxtaposition and it pays off.


Love of Reign begins with a primitive drum beat, again tempered with technology. Not a lot really happens on the track to be honest, and i got bored pretty soon. We then go into Advice, which opens with a crash of cymbals, stops so you think your CD is broken, then carries on with a sweet piano backing over the splashy drums. It begins well but soon gets old.


Klowds is another Psychedelic masterpiece, about clouds. That's it. It's great. Ageing sounds, at it's core, knackered. It's about getting old and has the kind of guitar in it you'd expect to hear if you walked into an old boy's bar in the American South. But then it flips on you and it twists up, hitting higher notes, before going back to what it once was.


DeadNd has without doubt one of the best intros I've ever heard. I can't really describe it. It's a good contender for best track on the album, but at this point it's like trying to choose one of my children.


I've Given starts as one of the saddest songs I've ever heard, then explodes into exuberant anger. Closing track Made is fantastically slow and calm, but the drowsy trombone(?) in the background offers it a sense of continuity. Keep listening for a few minutes afterwards, because there's a brilliant hidden track at the end that really deserves a name. Can we expect another album? I don't know, Gonjasufi seems to be the kind of guy who knows when to call it a day and quit at his peak. There's a lot of speculation as to his real identity, and most of it favours him being a Las Vegas based rapper. So who knows? right now I'm trying to figure out what the hell kind of genre this is. I'm tempted to say "everything". I've done my best to describe this album to you, but at the end of the day the only way you can really get what I'm talking is to listen to it.

BOOKS:


World War Z


This is the follow on book from The Zombie Survival Guide. Anyone who's read it knows that at the very end there's a brief history of zombie attacks that begin in Stone Age times and run right up to the present day, with a few allusions to the Chinese trying to harness the undead as a weapon. This section seems like an extremely well exeuted afterthought, and it wouldn't have taken a huge leap of the imagination to expect a follow up book that was similar.


We don't get a Complete History Of Zombies kind of thing. What we get is a book set exactly 10 years in the future, about the decade long Zombie War that nearly brought humanity to extinction.


If I were to give The Zombie Survival Guide 10/10, I'd have to give this masterpiece a 20. And it is a masterpiece. It features more political and social insight than most award winning, unreadable pretentious pieces of trash, and analyses just how far people will go to survive. The reason it won't get the kind of recognition it deserves is because instead of a bomb threat or a kidnapping or any of the other recycled plot devices used by airport novels and "literature" alike, this novel just so happens to use zombies as the catalyst.

There is no hint of humour, no break in the harsh text to make a joke. When you read this book, you make a subconscious agreement with the author that World War Z HAPPENED. You can't help it, it's too savage, too realistic for the war NOT to have happened.


It's layout is simple. A man was tasked to write an all-encompassing report on World War Z, and he does. He does all the number crunching, all the stats and everything. He even travelled the world and got interviews from people who lived through it, but the people he was writing the report for didn't want to confuse the report by putting in personal details. so this guy went around the world again and got interviews on his own terms because he believes that there was more to World War Z than numbers. He believes that the social and psychological element needs to be explored in order to make a proper evaluation of the war.


Each section is a different interview. It covers how the outbreak first started in China, covers the Great Panic (he interviews someone who was piloting a blimp over a motorway during the great panic. We get given a birds eye view of people pouring out of one infested city into an other, with a tide of the undead following them).

I'm not going to give anything away, but I can tell you The Battle Of Yonkers is the best piece of action fiction I've ever read, as is the way people finally start defeating the swarms. One of my favorite sections is an interview of a man who was on a space station at the time, and how he and his crew got the full global view of the war.


I read World War Z in 2 sittings. It's only 2 because i began getting tired around 2 AM and wanted to get some sleep so I could fully appreciate the novel. Even if you don't read books, you should enjoy this one. In fact, if you can't read you an still enjoy it because it's now an audio book with quite well known actors doing the voices. I haven't listened to it myself, but I've heard nothing but good things about it.


And yes, as with all good books it's being turned into a film. It's currently tied up in pre-production while Paramount sorts the script out. I'm not sure how to feel about that, because how hard can it be? You pretty much have the script in front of you anyway, things are described well enough to be a screenplay and location scouting should be a piece of piss because nearly all the locations are either real places or non-specific locations like offices and deserts. I'm worried they're trying to make a horror movie where there isn't one. Sure, the book is terrifying, but not like Dawn Of The Dead. It deals with something much larger than a simple zombie war. it comments on the fragility of the human condition, and how easily we take out continued existence for granted. The zombies can be taken to represent many things, and the biggest threat to the films integrity is is trying to make it into some blockbusting epic like LOTR.

One thing i hope they don't rush is the casting. Now a lot of people have been saying this film could be the first zombie movie to win an Oscar, or at least come close. Now to me, the Oscars don't really judge most categories on their merit (but that's another blog entirely). But this is a great chance for a great actor to play a great character. If I had to pick anyone for narrator, it would have to be Leonardo DiCaprio. He's at his peak right now, and can pull off the bookish-yet-pretty-cool-guy thing quite well.

Anyway, all I'm saying is read this book before it gets into the movie news, so you can act all smug about it later.

And so it begins.

I've never been very good at starting things. Whether it be a book, piece of coursework or a sandwich, I just can't figure out which bit to do first (When I say "do", it applies to the book and coursework sort of stuff. I don't "do" sandwiches. I do warm bagels).

So I guess I'll just start with a random topic. It would make sense for me to write about what made me want to write a blog in the first place, so people could know what I thought about it without me annoying the hell out of every single one of my friends on Facebook with endless status updates. So I'll write about Kick Ass.

It has everything. Violence, sex, swearing (more on that in a bit) and a decent soundtrack. It revels in it's own absurdity, and doesn't pull ANY punches. In my blogs I've got a strict no spoiler policy, so what I'll do is give you a scene or something to look out for using an innocuous word or phrase, so you'll know when you see it. The scene that really caught me off guard was the "web cast" scene. I was just sat in the theatre, chilling, enjoying the film then BOOM! The kind of violence that instantly answers why the director took the production out of the studio system. There is no way in hell the pussies at Paramount or Universal would have allowed this film to happen.

That's what I really love about this film. The director, Matthew Vaughn (who also directed Stardust and Layer Cake) actually cared enough about the source material enough to finance the film himself so he could do whatever the hell he wanted without a bunch of suits trying to shift Happy Meals breathing down his neck. You won't be seeing a Hit Girl action figure breaking within minutes at Maccie D's, I assure you.

Ah yes, Hit Girl. Arguably the films most controversial aspect, so she's my favourite. I had the pleasure of sitting right at the back when I went to see Kick Ass, so I had the added entertainment of seeing every ones shoulders bunch up when she said "cunt", or blew a kiss to Kick Ass. It's almost as good as the film, and I'd recommend it to anybody. Kick Ass is the culmination of every Daily Mail reader's worst nightmares (which, as far as I know, boil down to violence, swearing, fun and immigrants. She's not an immigrant though) and that's exactly why she's destined to be a cult character. She sums up one of the things the movie, whether intentionally or not, really gets across: IT'S JUST A MOVIE, RELAX. If you don't find an 11 year old girl killing a room full of criminals with a giant sword, set to a rock and roll version of "that Banarama song" awesome, then don't go see the movie. And stop reading this blog, because I love that shit.

Don't get me wrong though, Kick Ass isn't just ultra-violence and shock-mongering. It's got it's fair sure of humour, "Oh daddy, it looks even cooler than it did in the picture" "that's because it didn't have Gatling guns on it sweetie".

It's got a great scene near the start when Kick Ass gets properly stuck into crime fighting, saving a guy from 3 muscled thugs. As he's stood over the man, defending him and obviously rapping his pants, you can see a building full of people behind him who are just filming the whole thing on their camera phones. Not helping. Just spectating. It sums up the whole ethos of being a costumed hero, while everyone else is running in terror or just watching shit go down, the real hero does something.

Vaughn doesn't disappoint in the style department either, giving us some of the best looking shots I've seen recently. There's one in particular that had me totally dumbstruck. I'm not gonna spoiler it, I'll just say "strobe". It's the bit that earns the film it epilepsy warning, but to be honest, if I was epileptic I'd take my chances, it's that good. Just jam a bit of wood between your teeth before you go in so you don't bite your tongue off. You'll need it later to tell all your mates to go see the movie.

There are however some small criticisms I have to make. The big fight at the end (I don't think that's a spoiler to be honest, it's an action film after all) isn't as big as the other scenes in the movie. It is hilarious though. I'll just say "rocket launcher". The grand finale is equally as good, and is the kind of distilled awesomeness I'd like to see more in movies. It's the kind of thing that puts a stupid grin on your face and a cold sweat on your back.
The movie does feel like it's lost direction at a few points, but soon picks up and makes up for lost time. With interest.

Moving on to music:

Mumford & Sons. I'm gonna be honest: I find folk music a painfully dull thing, and Mumford & Sons are, without a doubt, folk artists. They can make all the effort in the world to try and make folk "cool", but at the end of the day, folk is beige, folk is tweed, folk is bales of hay. Folk is, at it's very core, dull. It's all acoustic and gentle and rough around the edges and DULL.

But this is where Mumford & Sons finds it's redeeming feature. It IS folk, but not as we know it. It's Radio 1 friendly, yet it retains all the things folk is. There is no Auto tune to the unpolished vocals, there is no studio trickery. It's old school baby. Folk can never be cool. If Lady Gaga and Kanye made an acoustic album about ducks, hats and rivers in various combinations tomorrow, folk would still not be cool. But Mumford & Sons try their goddamn best, and even though it doesn't succeed, they've dragged folk into the 21st century. And that's a hell of an achievement. And that's why I like them.

This is the bit at the end where I'll talk about a book I've read, so in other words it'll be the bit where most people stop reading (actually, most people would have stopped reading halfway through the Kick Ass review, so well done for making it this far):

I read a book about a year ago called The Zombie Survival Guide. It's by this guy called Max Brooks, and he's also written a book called World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War (I'll review it in the next blog).

Now you'd expect a book with that sort of title to be about an inch thick, have nice colourful pictures of zombies getting dicked on by a cartoon rabbit and for it to be sold at the checkout at Waterstones, to be bought as a nice bit of tat to bang on your coffee table and maybe have a flip through when your bored. You know, like that book of bunnies topping themselves and that one about the stupid shit stupid children ask sometimes. It really isn't.

It is written as if you are mere seconds away from getting molested by your dead grandma. It recommends weaponry, tells you not to be a moron and use a machine gun and in one especially decent chapter that you should keep a generator in your house to keep your electricity going during a Level 3 Outbreak. But it can't make a lot of noise so it should be powered by an exercise bike or something of the sort. This book has everything covered basically. It is not "shoot it in the fucking head you dummy" repeated in different ways over 300 pages. I can guarantee it will tell you something you hadn't though of. I now keep a pool cue by my bed at night, just in case there's a Level 1 Outbreak in the middle of the night and I have to jab some fucker in the eye. It's the sort of book that will make you do something "just in case". There will always be something in the back of your mind telling you that you should really go to Homebase sometime and buy a machete, because lets face it, this books a bestseller now, and your gonna look a bit of a tool with your frying pan when the zombies do get here.

Thanks to anyone who read this, please feel free to tell me what you liked, what sucked balls, what should be cut out and what you want more of.