You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat!

Stewart's sum up of 2003.
End of year 2003. Here are some lists, being the end of the year and all. Every other bugger does ‘em, so why can’t we. I love a good list, me… STEWART’S TOP FIVE FILMS OF 2003 (I will be referring to myself at times in the third person for the sake of clarity, not because I’m a Batman villain or schizophrenic. Bear with me. On with the list…) 1) ‘Finding Nemo’ I’ve reviewed this already. It’s just great. Anyone who says otherwise can fuck off. How’s that for constructive criticism? 2) ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ This could have potentially been a bit shite if Johnny Depp’s performance hadn’t created such Positive Waves Of Energy that everybody seemed like they were hamming it up knowingly with tongue firmly in cheek, rather than actually just weak actors. Yes, that’s you I’m talking to Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. That ‘try wearing a corset’ line was fucking shockingly delivered. And if anybody out there knows for sure, do let me know: is Orlando gay or what? I have no beef with the dude if he is, I just can’t figure out how the pretty-yet-talent-bereft plank ever gets gigs - he’s got to be blowing someone… (Oh yeah, and the teak fuckwit refused to do a question for the quiz, so he can swivel. Not for nothing was he known behind his back on the ‘LOTR’ set as ‘Wooden Legolas’)… 3) ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ A film that finally adheres to my theory that the world is full of assholes, (myself included on occasion, as certain of the cats scattered around the quiz who know me outside of it can testify). Much as the CGI fish flick at No.1 appeals to the Nice Bloke in me, so this nasty piece of work appeals to the part of me that will steal your wallet given half a chance. This year’s ‘Fight Club’, I reckon; it’s going to be a DVD classic in years to come. Could be wrong… But when has that ever happened before? 4) ‘Rules Of Attraction’ Bleak as you can get, with a fantastic use of Erasure’s ‘Stop!’ over the end credits that wheedled its way into my brain in about, what, January or something, and has set up camp there ever since. I finally downloaded ‘Stop!’ the other week and now listen to it daily; not because I like it, but because I’ve had a continual loop of the first four lines in my head for over ten months, and thought I may as well find out the rest of the fucking words if the gay disco hellhound was going to chase me to an early mental grave. 5) ‘School Of Rock’ Okay, it’s not out ‘til next year, but I saw a preview this year and it’s about the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time so it’s making my list. In comedy terms, it just edges out ‘Old School’ on this list – fuck, man, say what you like, ‘Old School’ is just plain funny; its not a work of innovative genius, but is it entertaining? Oui, c’est l’entertainment beaucoup – but ‘School Of Rock’ just pips it, because it has Jack Black doing Jack Black, and getting it down to a fine art. Also, while I don’t subscribe to the idea of films as medicine, (ie. yes, ‘Battleship Potemkin’ is an important work, but come on, wouldn’t you sooner watch ‘Ghostbusters’, you fucking snob?), this flick actually did cure my ills in a way, and that’s what a cunt, (ie. me) would call ‘the magic of the movies’. I saw this film on the night I got royally blown out by some chick I dug; potentially a real shitter of an evening, I ended up lying in bed laughing at my reminiscences of Mr Black and his teen cohorts rockin’ out, rather than dwelling on the other bullshit. Which seems like a good thing to me. Chicks may come and go, (or just plain fuckin’ go in this instance), but flicks stay with you for a lifetime. Ponce. Oh, and of course, ‘Return Of The King’ really tops the list of the year for me, but it’d’ve been kind of boring to lump the thing in there, don’t you think? Every bugger and his mother will pass enough comment on it, so let’s stay with what we’ve got, eh? Also due to my lax nature, I’ve missed some stuff that some of you may champion to the hilt, (‘Master & Commander’, ‘Once Upon A Time In Mexico’), and completely forgotten until this exact moment in time films that I really enjoyed and may have been up for Top Five-dom, (‘X Men 2’ for one), but hey – that’s what the boards are for if you’re that hot ‘n’ bothered, Cochese… STEWART’S TOP FIVE CINEMATIC DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2003 (Felt I had to stress ‘cinematic’ there – let’s stick with the flicks, or I’m running a warm bath and reaching for the razor blades to the accompaniment of some real Dark Gothic Rock like, oh I dunno, Evanescence or something. Y’know – something Deep that represents my angst…) 1) ‘Cabin Fever’ It’s just NOT THAT GOOD. It was just perennially ‘okay’. Plotholes you could throw a tin bath through. No real point. Not scary. Hyped to shit with no delivery beyond some old school gore and decent gratuitous breasts. Not bad, just boring. Mutant hillbilly-fest ‘Wrong Turn’ and the ‘Texas Chainsaw’ remake were both way better than ‘Cabin Fever’ in my opinion despite getting nowhere near the critical kudos, and seeing as all three essentially had the same bleedin’ plot, I think that’s a valid point to make. 2) ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ Reviewed elsewhere on this site, check it out to see what I think on the whole. The biggest crime of all? – this film was so pointless, lifeless and all-round dodgy that, as a result, I haven’t even bothered seeing the third one. AND I’M A NERD! What is the world coming to… 3) ‘SWAT’… sort of… Ahhhhhh, now, you see, I actually loved ‘SWAT’. What disappoints me about ‘SWAT’ is the general reaction to it. As well as Yer Proper Critics, normal people I like and respect, (or at least like), saw it and said it was shit – for the exact same reasons I found it eminently entertaining. Weird. I thought everybody would ‘get it’ for the cliché-ridden old heap of horseshit it knew it was and go along for the ride, but clearly not. I thought it was a mindless throwback to those old Cannon and Golan/Globus flicks you used to rent on video in the mid-80s, but with cool actors you like to watch being cool rather than Michael Dudikoff in a bandana and demi-wave. That is to say, a big dumb paint-by-numbers action movie with no bigger aspirations than to entertain on the lowest level possible. Which it did. In spades. 4) ‘LXG’ Jesus, I wanted to like this. It had some good bits, (I thought Mr Hyde was sort of good, for instance, and the, erm, production design was good and that), but when the high point of your movie is Stuart Fucking Townsend, you know you got troubles. There were enough glimmers of something going on in amongst the muddled editing to make a cat despair that, as with Connery’s other recent fantasy fuck-up ‘The Avengers’, given the raw footage, you could probably have cut together a 60-70% more entertaining, more coherent, just plain better film yourself. A massive, massive missed opportunity. Crying shame… 5) ‘Freddy Vs. Jason’ Reviewed it already. Just a load of crap. I wasn’t disappointed from a fanboy point of view, (being not especially a fan of either film series), just from the point of view that, given the time, money, resources and talent available to the producers in the 21st century, you think they could have come up with something better than this load of old hogwash. I can’t even muster any swearing, that’s how duff it was… TOP FIVE QUIZ MOMENTS (This is a site to do with a quiz, after all…) 1) Helping to destroy Kym Marsh’s career Well, not really proud of this one per se, don’t know the girl and she’s never done anything against me if you know what I mean, but I’m more happy with what it represents in terms of the quiz. We scrabbled around to get a celeb question for the first quiz, and she agreed to do it, (for which we are eternally grateful of course), but it somehow got written up in the Sunday Mirror as, (not a direct quote): ‘Kym Marsh’s career really has gone to the dogs if she’s asking questions in a Highgate pub quiz. What next? Opening a garden fete?’ Well no actually, mate – she had a few hit records and we got the likes of Ian Holm & David Carradine in to do stuff for us subsequently. Which by anybody’s standards ain’t too shabby an upward curve in both instances. 2) Nathan Nathan, besides being a friend and former workmate of ours, is also perhaps the most thoroughly Good Egg you could ever wish to meet. Therefore, him fair-and-square being in the second-placed team who chose to take the first DVD player we ever gave away, not two days after his own DVD player blew up and one day before he was going to go out and spend his hard-earned on a new one – well, it fair warms the cockles of our jaded ice-cold hearts. Good thing happens to good bloke when he needs it, purely by chance. You don’t see that every day. Oh, and to stress once again – knowing us doesn’t increase anybody’s chance of winning; Paul’s own brother frequently loses. Mind you, being a Hot Blonde seems to help out when I’m giving away the videos during the intermission. Which is weird, because in my everyday life I have no sensual affinity with blondes; its big tits that usually sway me. Hmm. Curious… 3) Video giveaways Don’t remember how or when these came into being and they might not last much longer, but I have to say that they only happen through the generosity of you crazy cats, who bring us in any old VHS/DVD tackle you want us to disperse back into ‘the community’, (much like The Man does with dangerous multiple child-rapists or unable-to-cope-on-their-own retarded folk). Particular thanks go to Matt & Otis of regular team ‘2 Slow 2 Clueless’; these crazy bastards never win, but they don’t play to win, they play for fun – and have donated scores of videos to The Cause of their own free will and volition, for which myself and Paul are truly grateful. These cats not only help us to make the night more amusing and enjoyable for all of youse, they also restore my faith in human nature. Hail fellow, well met and all that… 4) Bonfire Night November 5th; the boozer was as good as empty at 8.30. I thought we’d fucked it, and would be playing to 18 people. Come 9pm, the place was fuller than ever. Cheers, everybody. The fact we hold greater sway on your leisure time than a pile of burning forklift truck pallets fills me with great joy and the certain knowledge that we must be getting something right… 5) Scissors, Paper, Stone I just find it amusing that all vital head-to-head play-offs can be decided by the shittest game in playground history. The Xmas quiz SPS game between Television’s Ethan McKinley and Internationally Celebrated Playwright Ghee Fraser (pronounced ‘Frah-zhay’) was almost breathtaking – it took over six (ie. seven) tries before Ghee stormed to hand-based victory and took the coveted prize. Which I seem to recall was a t-shirt for ‘Blood Gnome’, the best killer gnome movie ever made, (or so it said on the t-shirt). TOP FIVE NOT-SO-GREAT QUIZ MOMENTS (Just for the symmetry, really. It’s not like any of these keep me up at night…) 1) Three Dimensions Of Terror Quiz 3 in 3-D. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh… All I can say is that, since I was born with a squint and have half-vision in my left eye anyway, I’m taking Paul’s word for it that it looked okay on the telly beforehand, and only went doolally tap when it got fed thru the projector. I think it probably was adequate on TV, but much as the world of Magic Eye Pictures is denied me, so is the fantastical third dimension of movies nine times out of ten, so it always looked like a pink smear to me. Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The night itself worked out okay in the end though despite the technical hitch, I seem to recall… 2) Brummie White Noise A nickname apportioned to me by Television’s Ed Hall, (friend of a friend, presenter of all the shows Dermot O’Leary’s too expensive for, as well as ‘X-Fire’, the duff paintball combat show that doesn’t feature Emily Booth as compensation), following my super-pissed-up waffling on at the quiz where we couldn’t find the remote control for the projector and the show had to run entirely by My Mouth alone. Please forgive me; since we threw the gig for free that night by way of apology, my heartfelt plea that you all buy us beers as recompense was rather astonishingly met. And I rather astonishingly drank every single one of them. Which numbered about 14 in total, I believe. Fucking hell. So, way too much booze, the urge to ‘fill in’ due to the missing video screen, and what Mr. Hall assumed to be the effervescent effects of evil drug cocaine but was in fact me operating in a siege-state of blind panic, all combined to present said Celebrity with such a shit night he said he was never coming again. And hasn’t. Fair play. Man of his word. Clearly thinks I’m a cunt, but that’s alright. And I clearly didn’t put any of you cats off too much, so that’s alright squared. But Christ, ‘Brummie White Noise’ is an entirely fair and accurate summation; I did go on a bit. As I’m doing now… 3) Heckled whilst flu’ed-up by a horny-handed son of toil Some bloke heckled me about how he was doing better than the media wankers in the audience despite being a ‘builder’, and then pissed and moaned very loudly at the end of the night about his score not being read out despite it having been, you know, like, read out. I don’t mind a bit of heckling, (in fact, off the record I positively encourage it), but that was the night both me and Paul were under the weather, (both of us debating whether to call it off as we lay on banquettes in infected agony around 7.45, but we Stood Fast For Queen, Country, The Boogaloo and The Prize - him puking, me having to lean up stuff thanks to me getting an infection-type-thing in my hips of all places), and I just wanted to fucking cry. Hey, hulking arrogant twats like me have feelings too, y’know… 4) Getting sacked Oh God, yeah, Paul sacked me after the second one. He was somewhat justifiably pissed off that I rolled up at 8.30 and proceeded to have a burger, (I hadn’t eaten all day), rather than do me fair share. Then half the pub couldn’t hear me, (not my fault – later transpired one of the speakers was fucked; we’ve had no complaints since its been fixed, you’ll note), and his nose was out of joint because this girl he fancied who he hoped would enjoy the evening told him she hated it ‘cos I was the worst quizzer ever, (which is fair enough; you either like how I do it or you don’t – and incidentally, I present in the style of a bolshy prick because it amuses me. I’m not anywhere near that bad in real life; you’d get strung up, wouldn’t you). Anyway, all of the above, plus a shedload of booze and me continuing to drunkenly wind him up rather than just sensibly shut up, led to me getting sacked. Then we realised we were a pair of fucking idiots, agreed that I had to do the job properly and he had to not treat it like life-or-death, and it’s been plain-sailing ever since. Except for the 3-D… 5) The End Of An Era Ah, our little Highgate community. How it doth wax and wane. Over the course of the past nine months, we’ve lost a few regulars… The aforementioned Good Egg Nathan, who’s buggered off around the world with his equally-lovely girlfriend Mel, (herself a frequent quizee). Currently photographing corpses in Cambodia for shits and giggles, they will return. But no one’s quite sure when. Hey, at least they’ve got a sweet DVD player waiting for ‘em in storage… The world’s gayest straight man, Frits Holst; a wild and crazy Swiss/Philipino dude who some of you may recall was allegedly hit by a bus prior to one of our shindigs but came along anyway. He found True Love with a lovely young lady he met at quiz one, then fucked off abroad in order to comprehensively avoid said lovely young lady by quiz seven; classy guy. Also had an incredible knowledge of obscure Italian zombie flick ‘Dellamorte Dellamore’, (aka ‘Cemetery Man’; check it out if you can – great movie), starring Rupert Everett. Yes, he nattered to me about that once or twice as I recall. Great fun and incredibly handsome. But so was Ted Bundy… *Internationally renowned synth-pop diva and Electrosexxx Enthusiast Ms. Anne Ferguson; started out as a friend of a friend, came to the quiz fairly regularly, unexpectedly became a proper friend of epic proportions. To be completely expected in retrospect, as she quickly revealed herself to be one of the most inherently spontaneously funny people alive, and therefore well worth soaking up like a luxuriant mirth-bath. Nope, I don’t know what that means either. Anyway, now she’s rather aggravatingly cleared off back to New Zealand for good, I will be holding auditions for a replacement Funniest Woman I Know between the 5th and 8th of January. Although this time, I’m scouting around for a Hot Blonde rather than some backwater convict-spawn who looks like a member of the Kings Of Leon… TOP FIVE FILM THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2004 1) ‘Starsky & Hutch’ Might be shit. Might be genius. 2) ‘Kill Bill Vol.2’ I reckon the world at large could have sat through a three-hour all-in-one film rather than have to wait six months for part two; I know I for one enjoyed the first ‘Kill Bill’ greatly, but wasn’t tremendously fulfilled by it since the fuckin’ end was missing from it. But now we get everything all wrapped up, so I am beefless. Sweet. 3) ‘Lost In Translation’ I always go a bundle for a nice bit of Bill Murray. I’m not too au fait with how this movie pans out, but am drawn like a moth to a flame to it purely on the strength of the poster plastered around the tubes. The look of monumental disenchantment on Murray’s face is something I can relate to… 4) ‘A Mighty Wind’ More mockumentary stylings from Christopher Guest and jolly improv chums. I could watch Michael McKean take a shit – the man is an unsung comedy genius. Anybody who hasn’t seen ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ deserves a bloody good shoeing. 5) Our film Like everybody, I/we are ‘working’ on a script. We have no idea what happens in it, what genre it’s going to be, haven’t written a word or even had a decent conversation on the subject. All we have is a tagline for the poster: ‘They can die fast. They can die slow. But they HAVE to die’. Could be a horror film, could be a thriller, could be a documentary about lemming migration for all I fucking know, but lets be honest – that is one great tagline. I don’t think I’ll ever write a script that does its perfection justice, but its something to strive for, innit… TOP FIVE QUIZ THINGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2004 1) Virtual crowds numbering in the tens of thousands… I seem to recall the Christmas quiz being rather good. I think we’ve finally got it right. Which is just as well, as it’s going to make a bizarre transference of sorts to the telly in a roundabout way in the coming months. Not with me in charge though. But I’ll get to that in due course… Yep, my compadre Paul works in development for a TV channel, and they want to pilot the quiz, (or rather, a very, very similar quiz, but NOT, repeat FUCKING NOT ‘You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat’), as a TV show. Ah, but here we enter the labyrinthine story of how this came to pass, and ‘tis a fairly interesting one. Pre-that particular job, Me and Paul had the idea to do ‘Buzzcocks’ with films, (comedy panel show, you know the drill), but no fucker in creation would touch it, believing it to be prohibitively expensive in terms of clips, (even though, as you can see for yourself every first Wednesday, there don’t necessarily have to be that many friggin’ clips in it). Well, they were all wrong, but anyway, we wrote up the format. Unfortunately, Pablo then gets this job, and shows it to his bosses – it thereby becoming their intellectual property into the process, due to cock-sucking corporate law. Well, sort of – the version we effectively ‘own’ and the one they’ve got dibs on are different enough, in so far as ‘a film quiz’ isn’t exactly fucking Nazi Gold in terms of originality; it’s just that no one else has done a good one yet. For one as wizened and bitter as me, there’re very little if any sour grapes in play. Hard to believe, but true - fair play if the bleedin’ thing gets to air at all, I say. But anyhoo, his bosses originally passed on it, hence us doing it for our own tiny amusement as a pub quiz. It wasn’t so much a case of trying out the idea by doing it in a low-key pub quiz fashion, more a case of us doing the one show we’d chop off a nut to make anyway, on our own terms, for fun, in a different format and context. To cut a long story short, they’ve now got hot for the comedy film quiz show again, so it’s very definitely back on the boil. As yet, my own participation is nil. I believe this is being ironed out, however, as Paul has kind of stipulated in discussions that should anyone other than me write for it, it’ll be shit. And I am inclined to agree. So, if it all works out, Paul’s producing the sucker in his official work capacity, while I’m flying in like the A-Team with a tank made out of a combine harvester firing cabbages for a swift question-and-script-brush-up before they shoot the pilot. Fine by me. So, who will be the face of whatever this show ends up called, (cos if I ain’t making out like Gangbusters on the format rights, no way are the mothers taking the title)? Ahem. Well, much as my ego would like to present the fucker (or at least make it onto one of the pilot panels), I am all too aware that outside of a boozer, I’m no presenter. And not much of one inside a boozer, actually, but hey. To repeat, who’s going to be fronting this comedy-movie-quiz-show-pilot? Alex Zane. The bastard who wins our pub-based version of it with alarming regularity. He’s a comedian, a TV presenter, and he knows his films. That kind of ticks all the boxes as far as I can see. And fair play to him. He has on occasion rubbed an entire room full of ye quiz-goers up the wrong way with his youthful hi-jinks, but he’s a nice boy really, and he’s pretty good at his job, (which is kind of a bonus). Don’t know who the panellists are yet, but I reckon everything will come together okay. The rounds will take on a far less question-and-answer oriented feel when the comedy aspect comes into play, and it’ll obviously be a studio-based battle of wits rather than a bunch of drunks listening to me bollock on in order to win a book on Ken Russell or a copy of ‘The Hitcher II’ with Jake Busey and C. Thomas Howell. Mind you, fuck ‘em all – ‘You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat’ will continue, every first Wednesday of the month, same Bat-time, same Bat-pub, regardless of how badly those goons fuck it up on TV, (or otherwise). And you can take that to the bank, Frank. This past year the quiz has survived technical nause-ups, our fragile physical states, and various other peculiar sideswipes. But still we keep marching on, questions about ‘Blade’ at the ready, sound samples from ‘Trading Places’ and ‘Stripes’ waiting to be unleashed, grammatical errors writ large upon the screen for all to see – because it’s quite good fun really. And cheers to you all for coming along. Clearly you have even less to do than we do of a Wednesday night… 2) Non-pissed/health-conscious presentation from yours truly Ah, good old 2003. Personally and professionally, probably one of the best years of my life; that said, it ended on a strange, temporarily inexplicable downer. I had spent the end of November/start of December reacting very oddly to all manner of basic situations, culminating in me bursting into tears whilst watching the ‘Making Of Alien 3’ on DVD. You know you’re fucked when you start blarting at the ‘Making Of Alien 3’ - not even at how bad David Fincher had it, but at how they denied Vincent Ward his vision of a wooden planet full of monks. That’s just nuts, that is. However, despite me thinking I was just spiralling into some weird unaccountable depression, it’s been officially medically diagnosed as some weird accountable blood-sugar/hormonal-imbalance-based depression brought about my knackered innards going diabetes-and-temporary-liver-dysfunction supernova on me. Still not an ideal state of affairs, but at least now I know I’m not going fucking wackjob, and just need to watch my diet and lay off the joy-joy juice to maintain The Funk. Grrrrrrreat. So, from now on, I’ll be throwing down the questions between sips of Diet Coke in the venerable halls of The Boogaloo come first Wednesday of every month, with each successive month seeing me become less gargantuan as I foreswear the sugary pick-me-ups which have in fact been putting me down. Tip fucking top. Bummer though, cos I absolutely adore getting soused. Still, it’s that or die, so pop it is, squire… 3) New rounds The old saying ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ springs to mind, but now we’ve got it right we’re going to change it a bit or we’ll just get bored and sack it off, (or you will). To start with, we’re dropping the dialogue clips round, (as they always sound shit, let’s be honest), and are adding more visual elements. No, I’m not coming on wearing Speedos and a cape atop a cage of ravenous white tigers – we’re throwing a poster round in. Also, we’re going to try to differentiate between the two general knowledge rounds by making one of ‘em a tad more discussion-based, (ie. you can have a decent crack at it if you don’t know for sure, rather than there being a black-and-white answer you either know or you don’t). 4) Can’t think of a fourth one. 5) Ditto. Oh, other than looking forward to the quiz in general, of course. See you there. Flame on.