To bring you some yuletide cheer, enjoy the subtle crooning of yours truly singing:
The 12 Days of Xmas – Big Angry Trev style!
Related Articles:
TF Fan Interview – Santa Claus
Monthly Archives: December 2016
Movie Review – Trolls
A bunch of tiny multi-coloured misfits living and singing in the forest, happy as Larry with only the worry that some big baddy will come along and snatch them to eat. No I’m not talking about the gay version of the Smurfs (or am I?), I’m talking about the latest kids movie to hit the cinema – TROLLS.
First off, let me clarify that I did not see this movie by choice. Rather I got roped into it via work. While I usually enjoy animated movies just as much (and usually more if I’m honest) as the next adult I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this movie. And lo I was right!
If you have a daughter aged between 5 and 13 then this is probably a brilliant movie for them. If not in that gender or age group than this movie is a definite miss. There is very little to recommend it to male proclivities and there are none of the subtle adult-aimed jokes that usually permeate animated movies in order to give the grown-ups a chuckle on the sly. This is very much a movie for little girls, with scrapbooking, hugs and glitter abounding.
PLOT
The movie follows a very Smurf’esque plot. Happy little fraggers living in the forest singing away until a big bugger comes along and grabs a bunch for dinner (yes Gargamel in the movies was after their essence but I think in the cartoon he was gonna eat them or something. I don’t know if Gargamel himself knew, senile old coot living alone with his cat that he was). So Princess Poppy, who caused the mess by throwing a huge party teams up with the one grumpy misfit didn’t attend (Branch) to go rescue their friends before they become snacks. That’s it for plot. I wont bother going into it further as there is bugger all to say, there really isn’t. It is so formulaic – Branch learns to be happy, the Trolls get away and the bad guys learn to be good. Yawn.
VISUALS
The graphics of the movie are quite good. The trolls are all ultra-colourful, can change shade seemingly at will and there are even a few glitter-based ones that seem to fart sparkles (the one crude joke in the movie, used too early and too many times to be funny). The bad guys – the Bergens, are all green with crooked teeth and look like the atypical ogres out of a fairy tale. Personally my favourite of the visual effects were when Princess Poppy first takes off to rescue her friends and various parts of the landscape come alive to try and eat her. This was done in a clever fashion and was subtly reminiscent in some ways of the old Yoshi’s Island game on the SNES.
Also something I found clever visually was the way the Troll characters used their hair, which of course is what the toys have been known for for decades. They use their hair to grapple, change its colour for camouflage and even turn it into stairs. It was used in quite a different number of ways and full credit to the writers for how they did so.
MUSIC
The music is, like the whole movie, aimed at young girls with it being a relentless teeny-bopper fest. I did like them using a Gorillaz track when we first encounter Bergen city. For young girls the music is great – for the rest of us not so much. But then this movie starts Justin Timberlake so what do you expect – it’s his target demographic.
VOICE ACTING
The voice acting is fairly standard and uninspired. I was shocked to see John Cleese come up in the credits, I’m guessing he must have been the old King or something. Gwen Stefani, Russel Brand – none of them really do a stellar job with what is a very simple script. The only decent voice actor in the whole thing is Christine Baranski, immediately recognisable to anyone who watches The Big Bang Theory or was a fan of Cybil many, many years ago. She does a great job as the main antagonist and her expressiveness leaves the rest of the cast in the dust.
WORTH WATCHING?
So is this movie worth your hard earned bucks? If you are the type of grown up that still has a pink, fluffy diary that you write all your secret hopes and wishes in and dreams of one day meeting a nice boy who would rather hold your hand then get your knickers off then I guess maybe. But otherwise, unless you have a daughter who really wants to see it, stay well clear.
So have you seen Trolls yet? Will you see it after reading this review? Would love to hear your thoughts below!
Movie Review – Bad Santa 2
A foul mouthed, alcoholic, sex-obsessed criminal in a Santa suit freaking out kids and shagging everything in sight. 13 years ago we got introduced to Willy – better known to the world as Bad Santa. A movie that to this day remains my favorite ever Xmas movie and in my top 10 movies of all time (along with Sling Blade – Billy Bob Thornton rocks my world!). And now in 2016 Willy and his crew are back for the long awaited sequel – Bad Santa 2.
First off, let me say that deep down I always knew this movie would not be as good as the original. There was almost no way it could be. Even Billy Bob was quoted in an interview during production that he thought the movie would be good but not as good as the first. But the trailers had me hooked from the get-go, to the point that when I found out my local cinema would not be playing the flick I drove 180km to Echuca just so I could see Willy on the big screen. That’s the kinda obsessed fan I can be.
This movie picks up 13 years after the original and that is fully demonstrated by the reappearance of Thurman Murman, the fat, curly-headed, slow witted kid from the first flick. Thurman is all grown up now and turning 21, Willy’s birthday present for him being a session with Opal the prostitute (who was also in the first movie) which he makes Thurman pay for himself, though he runs off rather than going through with the act. Listening to Willy instruct Thurman on how to have sex is one of the filthier and funnier moments between the two in the movie and quite the laugh.
Willy and Thurman’s relationship was the main focus of the first movie, showing how Thurman’s naïve trust and affection for Willy as Santa slowly teased out a glimmer of humanity from the drunken crook. In this movie their relationship hasn’t changed. Willy still talks to Thurman like he is an irritant, but feels some need to keep the grown up Thurman under his crooked wing. While Willy never puts Thurman ahead of himself, he finds himself never able to completely abandon him when he is in need either. While there are some short funny scenes between the two, their relationship never really grows in this film like it did the first, and Thurman is very much a secondary character, more of a hassle for Willy to take care of, even if that means dumping him in a hobo hostel where men are actively either vomiting or masturbating. A very touching scene near the end of the movie shows Thurman singing in a choir and Willy, despite running late to rob a safe, can’t pull himself away. Willy stands there almost in tears watching him sing, while Thurman’s face lights up with pure joy when he see’s Willy in the audience.
We also see the return of Marcus, the angry dwarf from the first movie. Marcus, having been arrested after events of the first movie (which included trying to kill Willy at the end) has gotten out of prison after ten years and is going straight back to his old tricks. He recruits Willy for a job where a safe-cracker is needed and takes him to Boston. Once again, there is no real development of the relationship between the two from the first movie, their tit-for-tat mean-spirited bickering being a highlight of the original flick. While we get some similar scenes here, every time they seem to be able to kick off properly they are interrupted by Willy’s Mother (whom we shall come to) laughing at or repeating one of their insults. I found this to be a bit irritating, interrupting the flow of a dialogue which proved such a highlight in the first movie. But like Thurman Marcus has been relegated to a secondary character.
The new character we are introduced to is Willy’s mother (played by Kathy Bates) who has been in contact with Marcus since he got out of jail and arranged for him to bring Willy in on the job, knowing full well that Willy would say no immediately if she approached him directly. This is the new focus of this movie, watching the relationship between Willy and his mother rekindle. Willy’s mother proves every bit as foul as Willy, having fallen pregnant with Willy when she was 13 (according to her the only time Willy’s father didn’t give it to her in the ass) and giving birth to him in a state correctional facility, not realizing she had actually given birth until she tripped over him lying on the floor. Throughout the movie it is portrayed that while she is an immoral, foul-spoken, dirty-minded, career criminal (explaining a lot about why Willy is the way he is in the process, she even framed him when he was 11 for a crime that she committed) she is also is trying to reconnect with Willy, due to her age and failing health, stating the reason she brought him in on the job because she thought it would be fun for them to work together. Willy hates her with a vengeance, and quite rightly so, but over the movie softens that tiny bit, stealing a bottle of cough medicine for her and even smiling (albeit once) at one of her jokes. She also presents him with the first gift she has ever given him in his life, a gun in case Marcus tries to kill him again.
Willy in the movie is, well, Willy. The character has not changed since the first movie in any significant way except for at the start being so depressed he tries to commit suicide twice. You still see that glimpse of softness you saw in the first movie when dealing with Thurman, though in usual Willy style this softness is portrayed as trying to abandon Thurman at a Laundromat and stealing his money, only to come back a minute later swearing at himself for being so weak to do so. Willy’s sex-obsession is well in play, be it getting a handjob from a former shotput champion, having sex with the lady who runs the charity (played by Christina Hendricks who Willy quite accurately describes when trying to sweet talk her as having ‘humongous f*cken titties’) behind her husbands back and revisiting his predilection of having anal-sex with overweight women. It’s shown that Willy has never truly gotten over his love affair from the first movie (stating at the start of the movie that there is only so many times you can throw up in someones lap before it kills the romance) when he keeps asking Hendricks character to wail ‘F*ck me Santa!‘ like his old girlfriend used to during sex. Willy doesn’t have as many great lines in this movie as the last, a lot of which spouted from his drunken rages at having to be Santa again. In the first movie he was bitter and very angry, whereas in this one he is bitter and comes across as just tired of it all. He even see’s having to seduce and sodomize the hefty, slutty security guard as a chore.
And overall maybe that is the problem with this movie. Willy comes across as tired because he’s done it all before and this movie as a whole suffers from that same issue. While they have tried to introduce a new element with Willy’s mother, it just isn’t enough. It’s the same jokes, the same antics, the same everything. 13 years ago a lot of these jokes packed a punch, these days folk are more desensitized. The crux of the first movie was Willy’s degenerate behaviour and how others reacted to it. In this movie Willy is actually that bit more moral than both Marcus and his mother which removes a lot of the humor. There is no real character development or growth for Willy, except for the aforementioned very slight softening towards his mother. Marcus is the same backstabber, Thurman comes across as a slightly more confident grown up version of himself but essentially the same, and Willy’s mother, who is now the new most detestable character, just isn’t as funny in this position due to the other characters and the public not really reacting to her wicked ways.
That isn’t to say this is an awful movie. There were a few times I laughed damn hard, but it could be that my affection for the first movie made me more amenable to those gags than most. But Bad Santa 2 movie is definitely a ‘Ghostbusters 2’ of a movie. By this I mean it’s great to see the characters you love back on the big screen, but the magic and fun of the first movie just isn’t there. I’m glad I saw this movie, but I wont be rewatching it 13 years later like I still do the first.
So have you seen Bad Santa 2? Will you see it after reading this review? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments section below.
Meat Recipe #3 – the perfect Pork Crackling!
Pork Crackling. I’m an atheist by trade but dear Primus if there is a foodstuff that indicates that there may be a higher power at work then it is that! Bacon, Ham, Pork – bless the humble pig for growing such tasty flesh upon its bones! Of course it’s not the pigs flesh we are talking about here but the fat.
I’m not a big fat fan as a rule. I always leave it on when cooking so it helps hold in all those lovely meat juices, but I tend to cut it off more often than not when it comes to eating the meat in question. But pork crackling is different – it should be its own food group! Was it not the great Winston Churchil that said ‘All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope, crackling’ (Historians tend to leave that last word out but many of them are vegetarians – too much time in damp book depositories and not enough exercise so I wouldn’t put it past’em to have cut it on purpose). And today I am going to share with you the simple yet effective way of getting yourself a good a tasty hunk of this salty pig elixir!
Step 1: Select a nice piece of pork for roasting, one with a decent carapace of fat on the top. I usually go for lion roast myself – great for crackling!
Step 2: Score the fat. Using a serrated knife cut thin gashes through the fat to just the edge of the meat beneath. How many gashes you cut is up to you.
Step 3: Rub a mixture of sea salt and oil into the fat, making sure you get plenty in the cuts you have scored.
Step 4: Roast the pork for the appropriate time, depending on the cut of meat and size. Half an hour before the pork is due to be fully cooked remove it from the oven.
Step 5: Use a knife to cut between the pork and the meat and remove the fat in one big piece. Flip the fat over and on the underside sprinkle some table salt and throw on a small dash of lemon juice. Return both the roast and the fat to the oven, making sure the fat is underside up.
Step 6: Remove the pork from oven at the appropriate time and check the fat. It should be solidifying by now and a reddy-brown colour. You should be able to bend the piece of crackling a little bit but not too much. Too dry and it will shatter, too moist and you will be eating a piece of salty rubber. If the crackling appears too moist pop it back in the oven for another 20 minutes, giving it a little spray of oil.
Step 7: Give the crackling a short amount of time to cool – then eat the lot! If someone tries to take it from you – well you are at the dinner table with all those big knives handy – defend your pork!
And that’s it! – oil, salt and a bit of lemon juice is all you need! Oh there are plenty of recipes out there that call for garlic or rosemary (much better on lamb than on pork in my opinion) but for crackling where you want to still taste that delicious pork, then keep it simple and don’t overpower it with competing flavors. Happy eating!
Have a different Pork Crackling recipe? Share it below for everyone to enjoy!
Toy Review – Masterpiece Inferno
Ah Inferno. So cool yet so overlooked. A gung-ho character that was either fighting fires or fighting Cons or dealing with his psychotic superior. Inferno is not considered a fan favourite by many, but I always loved the guy! The original toy was great with lots of features and was a good size for its era and he was a fun character on screen during Season 2 of the G1 cartoon (my personal favourite TF ep’s ever!) Now to appease the likes of me, Tak/Tom have brought us Masterpiece Inferno!
Vehicle Mode
As mentioned, the G1 Inferno toy was one of my very favourite toys from that era. The fact that the Fire Engine mode had a telescoping ladder with its two little nozzles on the end, along with the foam cannon at its base meant it had moving parts as well as looking like Inferno could actually shoot stuff in vehicle mode. This vehicle mode here is very faithful to the cartoon but of course it suffers in the modern era by looking too simplistic. The Leader-Class Sentinel Prime from DOTM was a fantastic looking Fire Engine as well as pretty damn big. To compare the two, Inferno looks smaller (though pretty chunky for the current MP line all the same) and a lot plainer.
This said, he looks pretty damn good, the grill work on the front of the truck is pretty nice and the hoses on the side are present (both sides now rather than just the one – I would have preferred just the one myself) as well as other little details. The telescoping ladder now has three sections instead of two although it looks a lot more boxy to my mind. Being able to flip out a little hose at the end of the ladder and attach the spraying water facsimile is a great touch and makes it really look like a fire engine in action!
Robot Mode
Everything you have come to expect from the MP line, including tilting ankles, opening hands, manoeuvrable head, knees, elbows etc. Inferno is very poseable and his dimensions are spot on. He is able to retract his hands to have big laser cannons come out, though no missile launcher like the G1 toy. You can have him shoot faux water in this mode as well and he has his rifle so you can set him up to look like he is either fighting fires or Cons – whatever floats ya boat. His head wings and foam launcher are present up top and while it is not something I bother with much myself you can change his face with the four different plates provided. An issue I have with the MP line in general with some of these larger characters are how plain the legs look. Inferno’s are better than MP Ratchet (see review HERE) and MP Shockwave’s (see review HERE) legs due to the hoses etc on the side but they all look a bit plain to my mind. But that’s what fans have to remember – Tak/Tom is giving you a toy that looks like the cartoon as much as possible, which means you often lose lots of the nice details you got in the toy that they never bothered to replicate on screen. Of course the flipside of that is you get little details such as his wrist communicator that the toy lacked.
Red Alert Lifter
When I saw all the images online of Inferno carrying MP Red Alert, replicating that classic episode where Inferno saves a crazed Red from a burning building, I just assumed it was something fans were doing for fun. However when looking at the different chest plates for Inferno (there are 3) I realised one is specifically to set up this pose! This shows great interactivity between the MP toys which is sometimes missing (besides putting the cars in MP Optimus’ trailer) in the line and hammers home that these toys really are made for the G1 enthusiast and that if you are shelling out this much money for the toy, then you should know the scene between Red and Inferno by heart already.
Transformation
The headaches that earlier MP toys provided – particularly Megatron and Rodimus Prime – are truly behind us. Inferno will take you a few minutes the first few times and using the instructions until you get a feel for the toy is recommended. I’m very much a fan of how they made the ladder fold up so compactly and fit into his back. This is a definite improvement over the original toy and makes him look very much improved from the back!
Worth Buying?
If you are not a G1 nut, then for the exorbitant price tag (especially after currency conversion and postal fees if purchasing from overseas) I’d have to say a no. There are cheaper and better looking Transformer Fire Trucks out there for you to buy on the secondary market like the aforementioned DOTM Sentinel Prime. Even currently you have the Combiner Wars Hot Spot, Pyra Magna and upcoming Megaempress (think Megatron with a sex change) who aren’t the most brilliant Fire Engines but have the combining feature and their own teammates. But if, like yours truly, you are a G1 nut and MP fan, then this Inferno is definitely a worthy addition to your collection.
So what do you think of Masterpiece Inferno? I’d love to hear in the comments section below!