Film: Blended - Lazy with a hint of charm

Even with its inane script and limp direction, this film is watchable simply because Drew Barrymore is present to humanise Adam Sandler. How she does this is a mystery, but the fact remains that he's annoyingly unlikeable without her. And history proves the point: Sandler's best-ever performances were in two films opposite Barrymore, 1998's The Wedding Singer and 2004's 50 First Dates. Although this movie isn't quite in that league.

They play Lauren and Jim, who meet on a disastrous blind date and vow never to see each other again. But they end up inadvertently sharing a safari holiday to South Africa when Lauren's best pal (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and Jim's boss cancel a holiday with their five kids. Which is handy since Lauren has two energetic sons (Braxton Beckham and Kyle Red Silverstein) while Jim has three needy daughters (Bella Thorne, Emma Fuhrmann and Alyvia Alyn Lind). Of course, the children are happy to have same-sex role models along, even if Lauren and Jim can't bear to be around each other.

Watch the trailer here: There isn't a split-second when we don't know exactly where this plot is heading, even though the script veers wildly between wacky slapstick mayhem and sappy lesson-learning sentimentality. Every scene is carefully concocted to elicit either laughter or tears, and the manipulative filmmaking occasionally works. Although the movie's funniest moments are offhanded gags that feel improvised between Barrymore and Sandler. The child actors are all decent, carefully cast so each each simplistic character can have his or her corny journey to some sort of personal discovery.

While it's just about watchable, the movie's so under-powered that it feels like director Frank Coraci (who also made The Wedding Singer) was asleep at the wheel. He wastes ace scene-stealers like McLendon-Covey and Kevin Nealon (as a fellow tourist), and somehow manages to make an African safari look dull. In other words, everything about this film feels lazy, and yet with Barrymore and Sandler on-screen it still manages to drum up a hint of charm.

Film: Legends of Oz: Dorothys Return, only for the very young

Despite substandard animation, this brightly coloured sequel has a strong enough sense of both its story and characters to hold the audience's attention. And kids might not mind the quality, as they are re-introduced to classic characters in an all-new adventure based on the book Dorothy of Oz by Roger S Baum (great-grandson of L Frank).

Watch the trailer here:

It starts the morning after Dorothy (voiced by Lea Michele) gets back home to Kansas after her iconic adventure. Her panicky friends Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion (Dan Aykroyd, Kelsey Grammer and James Belushi) summon her back to Oz, where considerable time has passed while a crazed Jester (Martin Short) kidnaps good witch Glinda (Bernadette Peters) so he and his army of flying monkeys can launch their reign of terror. On her long journey back to Emerald City, Dorothy has a series of adventures with Wiser the owl (Oliver Platt), Marshal Mallow (Hugh Dancy), the China Princess (Megan Hilty) and the old tree Tugg (Patrick Stewart), who all help her take on the Jester.

Yes, the plot is rather simplistic (the Jester merely seems evil for evil's sake), but the real problem is that the animation is badly under-developed. Characters are painfully thin, with no gravity to them at all, which makes it impossible for them to properly interact visually. Fortunately there are some clever touches to the design work, such as the way everything in Oz looks battered and broken, which adds a badly needed dark edge to the otherwise sunny silliness.

Meanwhile, the voice cast provides plenty of personality, infusing the characters with humour and texture that are lacking in the script. So while the musical numbers are forgettable, even with a cast full of terrific singers like these, there are some deranged moments along the way that add a momentary blast of real life just when it's needed. If only the filmmakers had worked a bit harder to design and animate characters who were more detailed and engaging. Because this lower level of quality will only work on very young audiences.

Jurassic World - Confirmed Plot Preview

JURASSIC WORLD
We were a little sceptical about last week's plot leak regarding Jurassic World, not least because Universal had done a pretty great job of keeping a lid on things so far. However, it's with a heavy heart that director Colin Trevorrow has confirmed that the rumors leaking online were in fact accurate.



A downbeat Trevorrow said: "When I was a kid, you got to discover everything at once, it washed over you and blew your mind. Now it only takes one person to spoil it for everyone else. I hope whoever leaked it is actively trying to undermine what we're doing. Because if they're trying to help, they're doing it wrong."

The filmmaker - whose only other previous credit is the comedy-drama Safety Not Guaranteed - called the leak "discouraging", saying, "not because we want to hide things from the fans, but because we're working so hard to create something full of surprises."

Don't read on should you not want to know anything about Jurassic World.

The details leaked last week suggested 'Jurassic World' will be a real running theme park with monorail, shops, rides and shows. To get there, visitors need to take a shuttle boat from Florida. Attractions include a Dino petting zoo - which must breach health and safety regulations!

Things begin to go wrong when the greedy park staff fuse together a T-Rex, raptor, snake and cuttlefish to create a monstrous new dinosaur. Of course, it breaks loose and takes over the park. 

Trevorrow gave some further details of the new dino, saying, "...there will be one new dinosaur created by the park's geneticists. The gaps in her sequence were filled with DNA from other species, much like the genome in the first film was completed with frog DNA. This creation exists to fulfill a corporate mandate - they want something bigger, louder, with more teeth. And that's what they get."

He also revealed that Jurassic World will take place 22 years after the first movie and will explore two primary themes: greed and our indifference toward scientific discovery. 

"What if, despite previous disasters, they built a new biological preserve where you could see dinosaurs walk the earth.and what if people were already kind of over it? We imagined a teenager texting his girlfriend with his back to a T-Rex behind protective glass. For us, that image captured the way much of the audience feels about the movies themselves. 'We've seen CG dinosaurs. What else you got?' Next year, you'll see our answer."

Jurassic World stars Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jake Johnson and Judy Greer. It hits theaters on June 12, 2015. 

Culture Club Reform, UK Dates this winter..

The 80s revival continues to grow apace, an era of unforgettable songs and performers. There is not a country in the world that doesn’t know the names of Boy George and Culture Club. 

Grammy Award winners Culture Club sold in excess of 100 million singles and over 50 million albums, and were one of the biggest pop bands of the 1980s. 

They achieved seven straight Top 10 hits in the UK, nine Top 10 singles in the USA and nine Top 20 singles in Australia.  They had number 1 singles in over a dozen countries and multi platinum album sales across the world, and were first group since The Beatles to have three Top Ten hits in America from a debut album.  They were also the first group in music history to have an album certified diamond in Canada. 

We are thrilled to say that the original line-up consisting of Mikey Craig (bass guitar), Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), Jon Moss (drums and percussion) and flamboyant front man Boy George (lead vocals.) have confirmed they are to play live dates across the UK in 2014 for the first time in over 15 years.  Prior to these live dates Culture Club will be going into the studio to record new material, with producer Youth (Paul McCartney, The Verve, Embrace) for an album to be released early in 2015.

Boy George also recently released his first solo album in 20 years, 'This Is What I Do', and said being sober for six years has helped him to focus more on his career.

He said: ''Certainly being sober clears things up, it gets rid of all the cobwebs in the clouds and you start to think about things in a more professional, functional manner. It's more a question of following my instincts. As an artist, you just follow what you feel, and it felt like the right time.''

Joining Culture Club on this tour will be very special guest Alison Moyet, well renowned musical icon, who has amassed sales of more than 20 million records both as a solo artist and half of influential duo Yazoo.  In 2013 Alison returned to her electro roots with her album ‘the minutes’ which was co-written and produced by Guy Sigsworth.  ‘the minutes’ was a Top 5 hit in the UK and Alison toured throughout the last quarter of the year visiting UK, Europe, USA and South Africa topping it off with a triumphant show at the Royal Albert Hall in April 2014.

Now we are trying to establish if Alison will actually be joining Culture Club, taking the role of Helen Terry, the amazing voice that supplemented those early Culture Club records. There's no doubt that being a veritable artist in her own right, she could fill Ms Terrys boots without trouble.. Imagine her belting out those bits on Black Money..

Anyway, those shows..

Monday 1st December, Glasgow The SSE Hydro
Tuesday 2nd December, Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
Thursday 4th December, Leeds First Direct Arena
Friday 5th December, Manchester Phones 4U Arena
Saturday 6th December, Nottingham Capital FM Arena
Monday 8th December, Liverpool Echo Arena
Tuesday 9th December, London The O2 *
Thursday 11th December, Brighton Centre
Friday 12th December, Birmingham National Indoor Arena
Sunday 14th December, Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
Monday 15th December, Bournemouth International Centre

All venue tickets: £38.50 & £48.50
* Except London The O2: £37.50, £42.50 & £55.00

Tickets available from Friday from:

Livenation.co.uk and Ticketmaster.co.uk

Watch the superb Black Money performed Live at the Bands 20th anniversary concert

Michael Jackson - Xscape Review - feels a little pointless

Michael Jackson is the self declared King of Pop, this presumably done on the basis of some of the most well-known pop songs under his name. His 1982 album 'Thriller' still stands as the biggest selling album of all time. We now see his second posthumous album of previously unreleased material in the form of 'Xscape'. 

There are two trains of thought when it comes to posthumous albums. On the one hand, they're a great opportunity for people to listen to music that otherwise would never be heard. On the other hand, the artist isn't here to help make any improvements and give the album their blessing and so posthumous albums run the risk of being poorly executed with the quality solely coming down to how the songs are produced, not how the artists can better them. This can ruin the legacy of an artist for some people, but for others it's merely songs pilling onto a back catalogue. So does 'Xscape' spoil the "legend" of Michael Jackson?

It begins with the single 'Love Never Felt So Good' which leads with its disco beat accompanied with warm strings, classy piano, rhythmic clicks and lush guitars that get you in the mood for a good time but sounds very dated. The song gives a half hope that this album could be something great but, sadly, that hope quickly diminishes. After second song 'Chicago', an average R&B number featuring well-crafted but clearly recently added synth-pop elements, the album goes downhill with some tracks that are just plain boring.

'Loving You' lacks any imagination or excitement due to chorus lyrics as lazy as, 'Loving you, that's what I wanna do'. 'A Place With No Name' initially peaks an interest, with beats reminiscent of Stevie Wonder through an electronic filter, but it gets dull when these beats take a backseat. 'Do You Know Where Your Children Are' is a disappointment with Jackson seemingly trying to tell a gripping story of missing children, but it comes off as a bit daft with synth-pop elements and his signature high-pitched 'hee-heee'.

Its easy to see why these songs originally never saw the light of day.

The album regains a modicum of strength on 'Blue Gangsta' which conjures up old magic, taking a darker tone and having an echo of 'Earth Song' and 'Billie Jean' about it with bursts of quiet horns; it's quite intense, but the album falls once again on the title track and final song. 'Xscape' has a low beat that coincidentally sounds slightly similar to Massive Attack's 'Angel', but the rest of the production and instruments sound tired and overused at this point, making it rather forgettable.

The verdict of this posthumous collection is that, while it has a few raverage songs, namely 'Love Never Felt So Good', 'Chicago' and 'Blue Gangsta', the rest are well below average and have been polished as much as they can be which feels a little pointless. It's not bad enough to damage Jackson's legacy, but it doesn't hold a candle to the likes of 'Bad' and 'Thriller'. You'll probably listen to the whole album once, then go back to listening to his classics that will never get old.

Movie Review: Godzilla - Cranston steals the show

For a blockbuster about gigantic radioactive monsters, this is a remarkably humane movie. But then that's no surprise for a film from Gareth Edwards, whose micro-budget Monsters (2010) showed that effects-based movies don't need to sacrifice characterisation and real emotion. So while this film is still a big action romp, it's also cleverly grounded by believable people.

It centres on Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), whose life was upended in 1999 by a nuclear accident in Japan that killed his scientist mother (Juliette Binoche) and turned his father into a conspiracy-theory nutcase. Now just as Ford returns from military service to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and young son, he's called back to Japan as his dad spots tremors similar to those 15 years earlier. And as three terrifying creatures rise out of the earth, Ford is drafted in to help protect humanity. Following the beasts via Hawaii and Las Vegas to an epic confrontation in his hometown San Francisco, Ford works with scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) and military commanders (David Strathairn and Richard T. Jones), eventually realising that the big-daddy monster Godzilla might actually be trying to help.

One of the more interesting aspects of Max Borenstein's script is that it reveals fairly early on that humanity is responsible for all of this and also helpless to avert the coming cataclysm. And yet the military machine does what it can, firing pathetic bullets and mobilising nuclear warheads because that's all it knows how to do. This approach adds a moral complexity that plays out in the decisions the characters have to make along the way. Taylor-Johnson is fine as the bland but muscled everyman at the centre, but Cranston steals the film with a far more textured role. Watanabe proves to be a master at the distant stare, while everyone else just runs and/or yells like real people would.

There are some contrived plot points and the pacing drags badly in the middle, but the film is livened up by witty directing touches that include references to all kinds of genre films, plus Alexandre Desplat's superb monster-movie score. Impressively, Edwards resists letting the film slip into a full-on effects extravaganza, keeping the visuals gritty and real-looking. Even the monsters have an earthy gravity to them: when was the last time a climactic battle between duelling animated characters was genuinely moving?

Watch the trailer

Prince opens tour with amazing set....

Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL opened their ‘Hit and Run Tour - Part II’ last night, May 15th 2014, at the LG Arena in Birmingham, England.  Prince and the band (guitarist Donna Grantis, bassist Ida Nielsen, drummer Hannah Ford-Welton with additional musician’s keyboardists Joshua Welton and Cassandra O'Neal) took to the stage to play an astonishing set that mixed brand new songs, rarely performed tracks and old school classics from Prince's massive catalogue to a rapturous reception from the West Midlands Arena.   

The enigmatic icon arrived from America just yesterday and was escorted from the airport straight to the arena for a brief soundcheck and last-minute rehearsal.  Forty minutes later than the scheduled concert start time Prince holding a huge bunch of purple and cream balloons released them to the roof as the band launched into 2014’s ‘FUNKNROLL’.  A turbo charged medley ensued with ‘Take Me With U’, ‘Raspberry Beret’, ‘Kiss’ and ‘Lets Go Crazy’ before Prince declared ‘soundcheck over!’ and the band moved into brand new material including a riotous version of the title track of the highly anticipated forthcoming 3RDEYEGIRL album ‘PLECTRUMELECTRUM’ which is set for release this year.  Lead track from the album ‘PRETZELBODYLOGIC’ was performed fully live for the first time.

Running for nearly two and a half hours the set was a masterclass in the very best of Prince – incredible singing, electrifying guitar playing, breathtaking showmanship and some seriously funky moves!  As well as leading the band Prince also took things down a notch with an evocative solo piano set which included ‘How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore?’ and ‘Diamonds and Pearls’, before bringing the band back for a selection of catalogue classics including ‘Controversy’, ‘1999’ and ‘Little Red Corvette’.  After mixing it up with more hits the night closed with ‘Purple Rain’ and a curfew-defying version of ‘Play That Funky Music’.

The ‘Hit and Run Tour - Part II’ follows on from Part I which saw Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL take over special and intimate venues in London and Manchester this February for a series of history making spontaneous shows announced at the 11th hour via Twitter.  Legendary venues included Ronnie Scotts, Electric Ballroom and Shepherds Bush Empire, with the band often playing up to three shows in one night.  The Guardian said it best, describing the Electric Ballroom shows in this way: “These are performances by one of the greatest funk-rock bands ever.”  The group has been showered in 5-star reviews from all major reviewing media.

Now with ‘Hit and Run – Part II’ these exclusive arena shows in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Leeds are his first since Prince’s sold out residency at The O2 London in 2007.  This will be the first time Prince has ever performed in Leeds and is also the first time he has headlined a show in Birmingham and Glasgow in 19 years.  His Manchester show follows two nights at the Academy in February.