wheeeeee! it's time once again for a doodle infested ramble about a movie. today, get to your choppahs with 1987s predator

This was a pleasant surprise. I watched this fresh off total recall which left me expecting campy fun in the jungle complete with big guns and more one liners than you can shake a big beefy Austrian at. Instead, what we’ve got here is a pretty tense action flick.

Speaking of beefy Austrians, ho boy. Nobody told me I was invited to the gun show. There are biceps in this movie like you would not believe. Actually, the whole thing’s grunting and dripping with pure machismo. OOT shoot outs with guns that should be reserved for taking down air craft, tobacco chomping sexual tyrannosauruses and explosions to eclipse the sun- This movie’s got it all.

But wait, there’s more! There’s a little brain to go with all that brawn. The audience is thrown in with a particularly burly group of mercenaries. much like that other lauded ‘cannon fodder for creatures from outer space’ flick, alien, it’s not long before chests cavities start exploding but akin to that film, the writers actually make us care about these hardened vets with a few scattering of lines busting with character. There’s also the sense of mounting paranoia, not only from the thing stalking our heroes through the jungle, but also from a possible enemy within.

But more about the invisible entity stalking Arnold and friends through the jungle. I don’t know about you, but in today’s CGI sodden movies, I’d forgotten just how awesome practical effects could be. The predator suit is top notch (well, except for the mitts. The predator would be fucked if his quarry was some double knotted shoe laces) and Kevin peter hall, despite being a giant of a man, gives the creature a certain air of grace.



Still, this film is a tone of fun. Best enjoyed with some mates and beers.

Interesting fact: we owe a joke kicking round Hollywood for this one. Following the release of rocky IV, folk were saying that balboa had run out of earthly opponents to butt gloves with and he’d be taking on aliens next. The Thomas brother’s heard this and thought it would make a pretty good premise for a screenplay. Thus, predator was born.

#THE MORE YOU KNOW#

half baked... but i kinda like it as it is... like 'whoa... intense back lighting'.

wow. there's some deep art analysis for your ass.

there IS a background coming but it's pretty lazy. also, whenever you copy an individual layer out out of open canvas into photoshop, something in this machine's inner working's is convinced that everything would look so much better with jaggy edges. awesome.

anyhoo, just something for my dad. hooray for nepotism.

and now for something retarded (really, is that such a departure from the normal schedule?). you can blame the hosts of spill.com for this one.

TALLY HO!

holy moly. haven't done proper portriture in sooooooooooooooo long. i miss charcole.

anyhoo, we were bumming around a mate's flat in edinburgh who was kind enough to let us crash there for the fringe festival (which is absolutly awesome. if you happen to be up north during august/september, you really owe it to yourself to go. there's some fantastically inovitive stuff going on there). we wern't rushing off to anything that morning so i figured it was as good a time as any to indulge my voyeristic, uh, i mean tendancies.

note to self. it's rediculouse how much you need to get back into life drawing.

...well, i guess angry mobs aren't well renowned for their ability to approach whatever it was that got them grabbing the nearest pitch fork in a cool headed manner anyway.

page 6 from Q's web comic. eugh. let's break that last panel down into a mathematical equation, shall we? stale pose + abuse of the blur tool= MEGA FAIL.

the yeah yeah yeah's were the first thing we caught at t. i really REALLY want to see these guys again when they're playing an indoor venue since the only thing they didn't bring to the stage was the volume. this seems to be something of a common complaint when it comes to this band playing outside. still, watching the entire set under the unblinking gaze of a giant eye ball was pretty nifty.

on the topic of set pieces, a whole troupe of bag pippers materialized out of nowhere for skeletons. that really added some grandeur to what's already and oddly moving song.

man, i swear Karen o is single handedly bringing back the thumbs up.

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Yeah… despite being one of the main reasons for haemorrhaging a gout of cash on a ticket to t, I managed to miss a massive chunk of bloc party’s set.

Well played. and the very same can be said of these guys- Oh man, is this band awesome. There was even a pretty bitching rendition of the somewhat marmite m-m-m-mercury performed on a foot pedal. Hands down this group had the best banter with the crowd. They were happy to see us and the message got across without it creeping into clingy-wet-boyfriend territory *cough* KOL *cough*.

Good times.

i think we waited two hours for blur to come on. the official decree was that the guitarist had been taken ill but i'm pretty sure that was code for 'oh christ, damon albarn's pissed as a newt.' there was talk of the set being cancled but that turned out to just be fear moungouring.

thak god too since these guys were quite possibly the best thing at t. it would have blown doubly since they were headlining on the final day and it was a damn good note for the festival to go out on. there's nothing quite as intoxicating as being in a crowd of thousands who are all having the time of their life.

hats off to albarn as well. despite possibly not being on the same planet as everyone else, he kept it together. he also gave us some wonderfully abstract banter between songs.

and just to carry on the display of ignorance that has been the last couple of posts, vv brown had also passed under my radar. in my defence she's pretty new to the game though, right?

god, this was fun. the whole band was having a blast (perticularly the bassits. they should scratch the deffinitition of jolly from the dictionary and just have a little picture of that dude instead). they've got spunk. i hope it works out for them. despite rolling off an over night bus at quater to seven in the morning, downloading 'shark in the water' was pretty much the first thing i did when i got through the door. fuck, that song is the equivelant of musical crack.

to my great shame i confess the only things i know about pete doherty was that a couple of years ago he was in the tabloids almost as often as he was in court, had a passionate chemical romance and did the occasional watercolour. with his own blood.

i wasn't planing on seeing him but i was passing through the tent he was playing in and had to stop and look. i'd heard that his live performances were either the stuff of legend or a grizzly train wreck. this was most definitely the former. i only caught the end of his set but it left an impression. undoubtedly joining f+m on that list of stuff i REALLY have to check out.

elbow. managed to get right to the front for this which was a welcomed change to being a bajillion miles away from whoever was on stage. on the other hand, it was a bit of a downer since hardly anyone turned up to see this set and the well marinaded guys we were standing with were definitely in the surely stage of drunkenness. it was a shame too since the band had a really solid vibe. there was something incredibly chummy about these guys and the front man comes off as quite possibly the nicest man in the world.

florence + the machine. this is one of those bands that i've been meaning to check out for forever and her set left me kicking myself for not getting round to it sooner. it's damn vibrant stuff and i can get behind anything involving harps.

pendulum. i have no idea idea what was going on during this set cause i was too busy taking part in the riot that was the audience. it was hot, it was sweaty, i got clocked in the face by flying elbows and doused in beer.

it was fucking awesome.

kings of leon... this was a bit of a weird one. was super stoked to see these guys since i missed them at reading and everyone was like 'OMG. THEY WERE THE SHIT.' don't get me wrong, the music was awesome but there was a bit of a too cool for school vibe going on (coud be wrong given we were a million miles from the stage but the drummer spent the entier set looking as though he could not give a fuck and popping gum. one of the things i love love love about live music is getting to see people in their element, doing what they love so that kinda killed it)... at least that was until the lead singer opened his mouth (uh, between songs that is).

my freind and i came to the conclusions that someone deffinatly didn't get enough hugs that day. the dude would not stop pouring his soul out to the audience and how much we meant to him. it was a little creepy. there was much cringing on our part.

but then prehapse my friend and i are just souless, unsentamental harpies.

i'm a bit behind the times when it comes to knowing what the kids are listening to nowadays, evident by the fact that prior to t, i had no idea who/what lady gaga is. that was quickly amended by her eye popping set.

can't say i'm too wild about her music (came off as your run of the mill bubble gum but she did do a couple of jazzy numbers with just her and a piano. think i could have got into that if i hadn't had to do the five mile trek to the site entrance to pick up a friend) but holy crap is she a spectical. almost every five minuets there was a costume change into an even more mind boggling outfit... which was quite a feat considering she started the show in a disco ball of lovecraftian dimensions.

don't belive the hype; it dosn't always rain in scotland. infact, i don't think i've ever seen quite so much sun burn and peeling skin as i did at t in the park, the north's answere to reading music fesitval. okay, so tickets did cost an arm and a leg but for three and a bit days of slap up sets, i'd give it two fits in the air.

given a combination of my wack sleeping patterns and a tent that may as well have been pitched on the surface of venus, i had a lot of time to kill in the mornings. thank god for mole skins.


so the specials. gotta admit, beyond 'ghost town' my knowladge of this band is pretty limited. and by limited, i mean none existant. that really didn't matter though. despite the band's combined age of 2,335, these guys had a furvour that was up there with the more energetic performances. okay, so their stuff did get a little samey after a while but watching them run around the stage having a blast kept you hooked.