As if there has been no time away at all (which works rather well as precisely not one person has noticed in the interim) I will now list a few cinematic clichés that always strike me as particularly entertaining.
I was recommended a film starring Liam Neeson by my Father the other night called Unknown. I sat down to watch said film with no prior knowledge other than 1. it had Liam Neeson in it and 2. it's premise (as relayed by the Old Fella, who knows to operate on a strict "no spoilers please" basis) involved a loss of identity at some point.
As a semi-cinephile I am a fan of Mr Neesons work. We won't talk too much about Krull, which I chose to hire from Screen Videos on VHS for my Tenth Birthday party and then every week after that until I was roughly about Twelve, but Darkman was a childhood favourite when I was going through my cool Sam Raimi phase and I read Keneally's Shindlers Ark in my early teens and thought he was brilliant in Speilbergs adaptation. Ra's al Ghul was a stand out character in the excellent Batman Begins and I consider Taken to be a "leave your brain at the door" revenge favourite.
Liam Neeson is also one of those actors that you grow to love as a person. Not that you really know them or ever will, but your perception of how they conduct themselves in the real world based on interviews and articles and such leaves you with that warm "he seems pretty cool him, I could see myself going for a pint with Liam" feeling and I was sad to hear of his wife Natasha Richardson's death a few years ago, it really made me feel sorry and upset for someone I have genuine respect for.
Same goes for Gary Oldman, Jonny Depp, Eric Bana, Michael Gambon, Daniel Day-Lewis, and numerous others. Anyone that is good at what they do but remains down to earth and humble with a sense of humour has always appealed to me.
Anyway I watched Unknown a few days ago and it is a fairly enjoyable film with a decent plot but it descends into complete film cliché about half way through and then never recovers. While watching, it occurred to me that I used to have a list of such things committed to memory and always meant to write them down somewhere so here they are:
When driving a car at high speed you must do all of the following things:
-1. Drive on the pavement, aiming at pedestrians and white Cafe' furniture while beeping your horn and gesturing with one hand for them to jump out of the way. This will positively affect everyone's reaction times and enable them to avoid harm.
-2. If you must hit an obstacle that is not another car, enemy, or anything relevant to the plot of the film, it must definitely be a blue barrel with an open top that is filled with clean water. Such receptacles are placed on every road in every major city in the world for the purpose of collecting fresh water but you will do no harm by driving into them and knocking them over/spilling their contents.
-3. If you are pursued by the police, simply engineer a situation whereby you can make them crash into each other. This means that two or more police cars are incapacitated (if you are really lucky, loads more will smash into the back of them also) but yours is ok so you can then drive away but they are unable to catch you. In case you are unsure of your success this event will always be indicated by the sirens of the police cars making a sort of "weeeeeooooooouuuw" sound (I am not sure this translates too well when I type it) as they sort of stop working.
None car related:
-4.If at any point you encounter someone that writes/draws/paints for pleasure and they are above average, it is imperative that you do not make an issue of this as most people do not think that their work has any merit at all. If for example the other person has secretly drawn a really good portrait of you in pencil, they will not at any point appreciate you telling them that it is really good or that they should do more portraits in pencil. This only serves to draw attention to the fact they are insecure.
-5.Any and all mixtures of letters and numbers that are handwritten anywhere (inside the front cover of a book, behind a hung painting etc) are references to a Bible passage and are a piece of piss to decipher. Simply obtain a Bible and look up the corresponding bit. Like John 3:16 and that sort of business.
-6.If anyone shows you a picture of their bird/wife/newborn kid, they are brown bread in the next act. Keep away from them. Brown bread means dead as it rhymes with dead.
-7.If you trust someone and always have, that means they are a 100% grade A twat and will probably try to kill you at some point. A good way to counteract this is to never trust or love anyone ever. Basically if you are searching in vain for the someone that wronged you/committed some crime/is the head of the massive conspiracy that you are trying to unravel then go for the the person you have confided in the most. I would especially recommend the frail elderly man as it is always him. And he secretly used to be a Nazi.
-8.Firearms will always be in abundance but it is important to know when to use one correctly as your enemy and you will always shoot more bullets than your gun can physically hold and then run out of ammunition at exactly the same time leading to the possibility of a fistfight which you may not be in a position to win.
Here is a rather large tip: when you encounter a downed foe, take his gun. If you have the same type of gun or one that fires the same calibre of ammunition then take his spares, empty his gun and then reload yours. This is really easy to do and will gift you a tactical advantage but nobody ever bothers with it except in Die Hard, which is the best action film ever and nobody has taken note, even when they should have done.
-9.When having sex with a women, make it last more than twenty five seconds of clothed humping, no foreplay, blind insertion and arched backs as in my limited experience they don't like this very much. The kissing with tongues part is cool though.
-10.If you ever fall out of a building, the metal roof of a car, however forgiving and crumpled afterwards it may be, will not save you. I would suggest either falling onto something soft such as a stuntman's air mattress or not falling at all and taking the lift.
-11.By the same token, if a car ever hits you, you will always roll up over the bonnet and smash the windscreen with your body, but it's totally cool as you will not be harmed save for a few freely bleeding cuts on your face.
-12.Never order a double spirit on the rocks then down it in one, then order another and do the same, then order another and do the same, then order another and do the same, then order another and do the same, then order another and do the same, then order another and do the same. Normal people do not drink like this and you will be fucked and have to go home early.
-13.When diffusing a bomb, DO NOT call upon any actual training or bomb diffusing expertise. Simply pick the Green wire, think about it until the digital timer counts down to 00:01 then change your mind and cut the Red wire. This will prevent an explosion 100% of the time.
-14.If you have a big dog, train it to not bark when it is about to be easily killed or if it is about to eat a juicy steak. Train it to whimper or be happy in these situations but by all means teach it to bark loudly at all other times.
-15.If you own a laptop computer, always allow it to be easily stolen and never password protect it as this would prevent simple access. Same goes for removable USB drives, never password protect them and if you backup your computer onto them then make sure you leave them out in the open so that they can be nicked.
-16.If you are on a subway train and are being followed, wait for it to stop and get off. As the doors are about to close, hop back on again. Your pursuers that will be in another car, as seasoned as they may be, will never spot this, will never be prepared for this and will then run alongside the train with an expression of frustration tapping on the windows as if they will be able to go fast enough to override it's momentum and thus the door mechanism. And I say fuck them, they want to get you and I don't want them to.
-17.Feel free to shout either "Noooooooo!" or a persons name if they ever die in your arms after a few minutes rather than taking the time to get your mobile out and call the ambulance that would inevitably arrive within that timescale and possibly save them.
-18.Always offer a person that has professed to be a recovering drug addict/alcoholic a drink/some drugs like it's the most normal thing in the world. This is THE most sensible thing you can ever do as it allows you to have a great night.
It was organic and I hope you stuck with it.
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