Things I Never Thought I'd Say

My Bloody Valentine Are Back
Sweet. And this isn't one of those neverending-tour cash-in type reunions, apparently they're actually going to finish that Loveless follow-up they started 14 years ago and abandoned 11 years ago and put it out next year, which means this is already more exciting than the Pixies' promise of a new album and consequent quashing of that promise because notoriously difficult bassist Kim Deal (with it?) decided she "didn't need another Pixies record." Well as long as she's happy.

Michael Bay Made A Good Movie
The first thing on my post-exam to-do list, before having a much needed haircut, was to get around to seeing that most will-it-or-won't-it-suck of movies, Transformers. I used to love the old animated series as a kid (actually I was a fanatic) but when I heard this was being made I thought it sounded like the dumbest idea for a live action film since John Rambo, and with Bay attached I felt pretty confident in that assertion. Then something strange happened: people liked it. And rather than appealing to nobody it made $700m worldwide. At which point I went "hmm" or something and pretended I was a Netflix subscriber adding it to my imaginary queue. I then imagined it'd probably reached the top of that queue around exam time so I resolved to finally watch the damn thing once they were over, and to ensure that I'd at least get to see one enjoyable film that evening I grabbed Danny Boyle's Sunshine in a 2-for-1 deal.

Sunshine opens by ripping off the opening mess hall scenes from Alien and then proceeds to rip-off 2001 and Solaris in equal measure for the rest of its story, occasionally distancing itself from those films by replacing something awesome that they did with something new and crap. The set-up is that the sun's dying and some astronauts have to plant a giant bomb on/in it to reignite it, and that they're the second mission sent to do so after the previous one "mysteriously disappeared" seven years ago. All of which you've already seen before. By the one hour mark it's actually still going along okayish with a fair balance of its aforementioned ripped-off elements creating enough tension and psychological drama for the film to be mildly enjoyable. Then one of the guys from the old mission - seven years ago - inexplicably appears on the new ship and tries to kill them all while ranting and raving about conversations with God and looking like he crashed into the make-up trailer shortly before they called action, which director Danny Boyle seems intent on covering up by shaking the camera and smearing the lense or something so you can't see him. Actually I think these techniques are employed to somehow make him seem scary, woefully copying the whole unseen-creature aspect of Alien. Either way, this plot twist is bizarre and unnecessary in equal measure. At best it could have turned out to be a poorly-conceived low-effort method of setting-up for some great final pay-off, or at least one of those pretentious philosophical-ramble types of pay-offs that these types of movies seem to love, but instead it all goes absolutely nowhere and the character could have been (and should have been) omitted entirely. Oh and then the movie ends all happy. They blow up the bomb somehow and all die but then we see dancing children holding hands and prancing with deer as they look to the bright sun and see that all is well. At some point Boyle and writer Alex Garland forgot what movie they were making.

So my evening looked ruined until Michael Bay delivered the upset of his career. Transformers is (almost) brilliant (for a Hollywood action movie). Just as Batman Begins nailed its grittier tone and more realistic take on things, Transformers finds its own perfect balance because it realises it's about giant talking robots that can change into stuff and doesn't take itself too seriously. It's just so damn well written for 100 minutes, Shia Leboeuf (sp?) nailing his lines and role in general for 100 minutes and Michael Bay proving, for 100 minutes, that he can actually competently bring good material to life. Then after 100 minutes he goes back to blowing shit up, allowing the characters to become faceless pawns designated at random to partake in empty action set-pieces that go on way too long and suck all the life and humour out of the film. Hmm. But for 100 minutes I wasn't just enjoying myself, I was genuinely blown away. By Michael freakin' Bay. How?

I think even Bay himself realises he's turned a bit of a corner with this film; at one point some guy goes "this is a thousand times cooler than armageddon!" for a bit of self-referential back-patting.

Third Sign Of The Apocalypse...
...would if the new MBV record is actually up to par, seeing as reunion albums always come across as forced grabs at past glories (or else see bands attempt to adapt to more "modern" sounds without undergoing a natural progression of their sound over time) and, as a consequence, always suck. At least some of the material will be old stuff, from when they were still together, so that's promising. Less promising is that they didn't see fit to release it at the time...

My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow" (from Loveless, 1991)