Beginning like the Top Cat cartoon of old, the movie opens with a traditional montage of TC doing what he does best; scamming his way through New York City with confident swagger as the mischievous yet loveable back street alley cat. As a heady wave nostalgia sweeps over courtesy of the memorable theme tune and classic animation style, the early signs are indeed positive. Unfortunately, as the music stops and the film gets going, any expectation that this big screen adaptation would do ol’ TC justice steadily begins to dwindle.

The movie sees Top Cat and his gang of misfit felines, Benny, Choo Choo, Fancy Fancy, Spook and Brain, face off against a new narcissistic police chief who isn’t too happy with TC’s shenanigans or Officer Dibble’s inability to control him. As the new chief, Strickland, aims to police the city with an army of robot minions, it’s up to Top Cat and the gang to help Officer Dibble take his rightful place as New York’s chief of police. The characters themselves are lovingly portrayed like they always have been. The design of everything, from the grimy alleyways to the gang themselves, appear pretty much exactly as we remember and are a respectful nod to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Aesthetically, then, the film really does hit the mark. Maintaining the visual charm of the original TV show, the 3D is subtle but effective, with traditionally crisp and colourful 2D illustrations popping out above the rendered 3D backgrounds. It is actually quite refreshing to see the instantly recognisable Hanna-Barbera style relatively untouched in a modern world where detailed CGI and mo-capped animation is the norm. Alas, as classic as the visual style of the movie is, everything else fails to maintain any sort of appeal. Admittedly, the story is far from groundbreaking, but as a film aimed solely at the children, it’s fair to expect such a bare bones hero versus villain tale complete with nonsensical hi-jinx and simple physical humour. There is however, a lack of appeal for the parents who will be forced to sit through 90 minutes of regurgitated jokes and annoying character voicing.

With studios like Pixar setting the standard for storytelling nowadays, the story Top Cat: The Movie tells and the jokes that litter it just don’t seem relevant anymore. A more telling factor for this notion is that in a screening filled with children juiced up on free cartons of Um Bongo, I didn’t hear one shred of laughter at any point. These kids were either the most well behaved bunch in all the land or the humour they were being force fed just isn’t funny to them. As a result, it just all felt a tad patronising. It was clear that a few jokes were lost in translation (the film is actually Mexican and did perform well in its native country), but a curious inclusion of an unexplained solar eclipse gag that made no sense and a villain that is downright annoying made it seem that the writers were scraping the very bottom of the comedy barrel in their attempt to revive TC as a comedic property. To help masquerade an inability to make Hanna-Barbera feel relevant, the film is bafflingly awash with an unnecessary and incessant inclusion of modern gadgetry that is just thrown in to say, “look, Top Cat can live in the 21^st Century”. Overall it just seems a very half hearted and cheap attempt to modernise a classic. Shamefully name checking GPS Trackers, MP3 players and a constant reference to modern surveillance is just bizarre more than anything, especially since the setting, characters and even design is all so respectfully portrayed in an old-school 60s style.

Essentially the film is 90 minutes of jokes lacking any real humour, a littering of absurd anachronisms and an animated villain that is one of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a shame really that Top Cat and his gang are lost in this alternate 1960s limbo. TC and his gang deserve better. **

Top Cat: The Movie will be released nationwide on June the 1st.

Judy Barton is often a little overlooked in Vertigo; the obvious assumption is that she’s damaged goods and possibly a mistress of Gavin Elster, used by him and then discarded. Her story is tragic yes, but largely the audience feels for the more manipulated victim Scottie, played fantastically by James Stewart, or even the unwittingly doomed Madeleine Elster. Until now I’d given very little thought to Judy’s backstory or motive and perhaps what is most successful about this book is how easily it alters your perception of Hitchcock’s film by cleverly highlighting the misfortune and folly of her character.

Top: Kim Novak as Judy in Vertigo. Above: The fantastically Hitchcockian book cover design..

Going right back to the beginning of her life, The Testament of Judith Barton tells the story of Judy’s childhood in small town Salina Kansas, her growing up and moving to San Francisco, and then to her untimely demise tumbling from the San Juan Bautista clock tower. In the process of doing so it slowly layers up the motivational keys that help to explain how Judy ended up where she did: her fondness of jewels – in particular emeralds, a love of acting, the thrill of taking centre stage and becoming a character, the love and loss of her father, a weakness for older men, and the more obvious need for money. Suddenly there’s a greater picture of who she was and how she ended up being led to impersonate Elster’s wife to begin with.

This is not to say she isn’t culpable in the deceit of Scottie and the murder of Madeleine Elster – she makes some very stupid decisions, some of them out of desperation and a need for money, others perhaps from not questioning things enough – but the backstory creates a sympathy for Judy that perhaps wasn’t so readily present before. Her death is only more tragic in the knowledge of the loss of her father, her brush with success and the loss of another father figure in San Francisco, her loathsome treatment at the hands of Gavin Elster, and then the troubling transformation forced upon her by Scottie.

The Testament of Judith Barton is a welcome addition to the story created in Vertigo, it adds depth to a character that was not present before. Whilst this is true though, the story is more heavily weighted in the events that took place before the film’s timeframe, and when it does get into covering old ground it seems to proceed through the narrative events of the movie very quickly, perhaps too much so. It does manage to add a few extra tidbits to that storyline, thoughts and feelings of Judy’s, but very little in comparison to its earlier descriptions – arguably the film says enough so the book’s focus is elsewhere. Another thing it does succeed in doing is to push forward Gavin Elster who, whilst the instigator of the whole plot, is somewhat ancillary in Vertigo. This is not the case here; Elster is slimy, cruel, frightening, and a true villain through the eyes of Judy.

Since we know what’s going to happen (if you’ve not seen Vertigo why are you reading this, and more importantly what have you been doing with your life?) The Testament of Judith Barton has a sense of inevitability, but it’s the mystery of how we end up at that conclusion that makes the twists and turns of the story ever more compelling. This book is tightly written with an obvious reverence for the source material and for anyone who has seen Vertigo and perhaps wondered who Judy Barton really was this book is a must read.

Film critics are calling it “The Best Action Film of the Year”, The Raid, is hitting over 280 cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 18 May.

An up to date list of all the cinemas playing The Raid and show times is here or at the official UK Facebook page.

Deep in the heart of Jakarta’s slums stands an impenetrable apartment block; a safe house for the city’s most dangerous killers and gangsters and considered untouchable to even the bravest of police.  Cloaked under the cover of pre-dawn darkness and silence, an elite SWAT team is tasked with raiding the safe house in order to take down the notorious drug lord that runs it.  When rookie cop Rama is the last man standing, he must fight his way to the top of the building to complete the mission and escape with his life.

The Raid stars the newest action movie superstar, Iko Uwais, was written and directed by Welshman, Gareth Evans and features a kick ass score by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and composer Joe Trapanese.

Xavier Marchand, managing director of Momentum Pictures commented, “Hands down, The Raid is spectacular and exhilarating, it’s an action masterpiece.  Gareth Evans has reinvented the action movie; he could be the godchild of Sam Peckinpah and John Woo!”

Since its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, where it won the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Audience Award, The Raid has wowed packed cinemas here and abroad including Sundance and SXSW festivals.  At the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, The Raid scooped both the coveted Audience Award, and the Dublin Film Critics Circle Best Film – the first time both awards have gone to the same film and received a 9 minute standing ovation when it played within the Filmfour Frightfest strand at the Glasgow Film Festival.

The Raid will receive a special 12 screen premiere across Wales on Wednesday 16^th May and Evans will be on hand for a preview and Q+A at Manchester’s Odeon Printworks on the night of 17^th May and in London on the day of release.  Awesome!

The film is currently in post-production. The first official still is below.  Enjoy.

Got this in the mail recently…

“We are an award winning British production company looking to shoot an extremely exciting feature film this summer in Bristol. With the backing of Aardman, our team is composed of various professionals including make up artist Michelle Webb, designer Simon Farrell, composer Philip Kay and hot young director Rob Savage. Our film Brief Intermission is to be shot on a RED Epic camera and all the film’s proceeds will go towards the charity Creative Youth.”

Sounds amazing!  Checkout their IndieGoGo page here.

It’s been said (but unsubstantiated) that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed in a standoff with the Bolivian military in 1908. In Blackthorn, Cassidy (Shepard) survived, and is quietly living out his years under the name James Blackthorn in a secluded Bolivian village. Tired of his long exile from the U.S. and hoping to see his family again before he dies, Cassidy sets out on the long journey home.

Check out the trailer…

However, when an unexpected encounter with an ambitious young criminal (Eduardo Noriega, The Devil’s Backbone, Open Your Eyes) derails his plans, he is thrust into one last adventure, the likes of which he hasn’t experienced since his glory days with the Sundance Kid. Co-starring Stephen Rea (Ondine, The Crying Game) and Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (Game Of Thrones, Kingdom Of Heaven), Blackthorn was directed by three-time Goya winner Mateo Gil and was shot on location in the breathtaking Bolivian landscape, believed to be Cassidy’s final resting place.

An opening sequence narration introduces a man called Kase, and just as we think he might be one of the films characters theres a surreal sidestep into murderous chaos and from there the movie devolves into a deranged juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated segments, flitting forwards and backwards through the story in a non-linear roller coaster of strange. Ayame Enjoji (Riko Narumi) is a, somewhat unsuccessful, pin up girl whose meltdown in a local supermarket somehow earns her the position of Chief of Police for 24 hours – from that frankly bizarre sentence you should be able to gauge that the reality meter on this film is broken, or more likely never existed.

Reluctant to take on the duties of the Chief of Police, Ayame is reunited with Haruki Onda (Kento Nagayama) someone she used to date and is now a detective. As if things weren’t odd enough the backstory between these two characters reveals that he has a penchant for brutally murdering girls, but its OK because it’s all quite hilarious… Naturally. This is a comedy, so rather than him being a dark monster who preys on and murders pretty women, he’s a ‘kooky’, bashful young man who just can’t help tearing them to shreds. One interlude actually has his mother and a psychoanalyst discussing his predilections in the foreground whilst in the background he tries to kill Ayame.

Ayame, though, is on his side and no matter how much he wants to turn himself in various other characters also seem happy to let him continue picking off women one at a time and help him to cover it up. Yes. This movie is bat shit crazy. Then there’s a robbery, a kidknapping, an unnecessary sequence involving urine, and various other oddities. It takes a while for any of it to make even a semblance of sense, but like the logic of complex systems seemingly small and irrelevant acts have a purpose when considered as part of the whole, and it takes until the end of the film to finally realise the big picture.

Crime or Punishment?!? takes cues from surrealism, having peculiar and out of place things appear on screen, for instance scantily clad pin up girls are rolled across the screen at one point and no one in the scene bats an eyelid. The movie takes the gamble of muddling everything up into a large surreal melting pot of crazy – both by messing with the linearity of the story, and by the inclusion of so many out of the ordinary things. It’s not immediately engrossing or entertaining nor is it flawless by any means, but if you stick with it there’s enough madness littered throughout for it to be funny and towards the end it’s impossible not to have enjoyed this kaleidoscope of lunacy.

Crime or Punishment?!? is available on DVD May 14.

Chata Pictures have released the artwork for the upcoming film from writer/director Paul Tanter (White Collar Hooligan, Jack Falls), titled The Hooligan Wars. In the vein of The Football Factory and the upcoming White Collar Hooligan, comes the blisteringly violent and gritty story of a man drawn into London’s most lucrative trade.

A bar fight leaves up and coming footballer Andy injured and out of the game. Needing an income to support himself and his pregnant girlfriend, he buys an ice cream van and sets to work. However, he soon finds himself battling intimidation from Polish gangs who use ice cream vans on their patches to sell drugs. Needing protection, Andy allies himself with a gang of British gangsters who introduce him to the world of football hooliganism. Soon Andy finds himself engaging in terrifying violence and forced to sell drugs from his own van. Desperate, and with the police closing in, he searches for a way out before the world he has entered destroys him.

The films official pages can be found here and here.

A trailer for The Hooligan Wars is due for release later this week.  Here is the poster.