Art

Review: Piggy

It's comforting to know that, if ever the necessity to commit acts of prolonged, unspeakable violence on another person crops up, as it inevitably does sooner or later in a man's life, there are plenty of disused warehouses around London that will make ideal locations for it. I will have no problems gaining access to them, nor will I need to worry about anyone turning up during the three days I keep my victim there, or hearing his screams, so remote will the location be. Or so Kieron Hawkes' debut feature Piggy would have us believe: with one foot in the gritty realism of traditional London crime drama, Piggy makes a respectable go of planting the other in a murky, almost fantastical netherworld of the psyche, but ultimately can't quite keep its balance.

Quiz: On The Road poster quote or David Brent philosophy?

I'll admit, straight out of the gate: Jack Kerouac's On The Road is not one of the one-and-a-half books I have read. However, I don't think you need to be a 'reader' to recognise that the movie's poster quotes this far are frightfully pretentious and really quite naff. In fact, they could easily be confused with the words of homespun wisdom regularly dispensed by Wernham-Hogg regional manager, David Brent. Let's play a game!

Mind-blowing movie-based time-lapse video of the day

Courtesy of Jeff Desom of Vimeo (via @James_Warren)

Dark Shadows character posters given kooky face-swap makeover

It's easy to make a poster for a Tim Burton film. Whack up the contrast, choose your gaudy neon colour highlight and let the PosterTron 6000 software do the rest. We thought the characters for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows were lacking something. So we made them better.

Gymkata > John Carter

Nine John Carters that are more interesting than Disney's John Carter

Disney's rubbish John Carter will be coiled off into cinemas on Friday, but we found nine other John Carters from history who sound way more interesting than the shirtless crusader from Mars.

Review: John Carter

Already written off as potentially "the biggest write-off of all time", it's a shame to put the boot into a film that was always going to struggle during a crowded, franchise-heavy summer. Andrew Stanton is a director with two of the finest animated films ever made on his CV (WALL-E and Finding Nemo), and he has one of science-fiction's true originals on his side in Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess Of Mars. A production this large must have taken thousands of men and women years to create – writers, runners, artists, builders, designers, extras and animators alike. You feel for them all, because there is no escaping it - John Carter is a calamitous failure; a dirty bomb of laughable dialogue, boneheaded plotting, wooden acting and uninspired direction that will leave a smoking crater in Disney's Q1 box-office returns. If it is to flop, it's so woeful it deserves it.

Mandatory Oscar post is mandatory

It's the day after the Oscars, which really should mean we're free to talk about anything BUT the Oscars, but no. Oscar talk is still on everyone's lips. Ho hum. Here's my mandatory Oscar post, including my mandatory thoughts on last night's awards, and some mandatory funny pictures. Mandatory.

Prepare ALL the awards: The Counselor is coming

Move over, Despicable Me 2 3D - I have a new favourite film of 2013. Michael Fassbender officially joins Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's The Counselor: time to board the BADASS MOTHERFUCKER express.

Review: Rampart

Is he though? The most corrupt cop we've ever seen onscreen? Really? Even if you take both Harvey Keitel's and Nic Cage's Bad Lieutenant out of the equation, that's still a bold statement given that, according to a stat I just made up in my head, 70% of ALL THE FILMS EVER MADE features some kind of law-breaking, double-crossing dirty cop. Frankly, this claim - like the film - doesn't stand up well to close scrutiny.