I'm currently sitting at the International Terminal of Melbourne Airport waiting for my flight to LA to board, having braved the wilds of duty free, marvelled at the fact that there's a WH Smith here (seriously, what's with this trend of having international chains AT THE AIRPORT and nowhere else?!), and consumed a fairly nasty hot chocolate.
I'm sulking a little, because I have a window seat and I object to the window seat on account of how I feel guilty having to ask people to move so that I can pee. This results in me only standing up twice for the duration of the flight. And when I *do* stand up, I inevitably brain myself on the roof of the plane. On the upside, VIEW. So far, Twitter is not backing me up on my dislike of the window seat. Clearly, I should travel with y'all because then YOU can all fight over the window seat, and I can have the aisle!
I'm also sniggering, because the woman who's doing the announcements for Qantas is from the north of England, and all I can hear is this:
Wish me luck getting to LA with my sanity intact, and then surviving my five hour layover. On the plus side, my luggage has been checked all the way through to DC, so at least I don't have to pay $25 to check my suitcase!!
So from time to time, I come across a truly spectacular movie that I feel the need to share with you guys pretty much immediately, rather than waiting for Monday to roll around. The last time this happened was waaaaaaay back here. This morning, I came across another one.
The Spanish Film Festival is on in Melbourne at the moment, and one of my uni peeps was desperate to go. And so this morning - at stupid o'clock for a Saturday - we went to see El Capitan Trueno y el Santo Grial, or Captain Thunder and the Holy Grail.
Here, watch the trailer.
Doesn't look that bad, right? Filled with action, and kind of funny? Yeah, no. It was... It was like Prince of Persia, Hocus Pocus, Princess Bride, Doctor Who and Eurovision had a baby. It's apparently based on a series of Spanish comic books from the 1950s, which kind of explains a lot. Let me see if I can try and give you an overview of the plot without my head exploding...
So. Captain Hammer Thunder is a twelfth century Crusader in the Holy Land. He attacks a fortress to save his...sidekicks? Minions??...and in doing so rescues a bunch of Christian prisoners. One of them recognises a scar on his neck, gives him the holy grail, and tells him to take it to Spain and give it to the mystical knights who protect it. Thunder's all "Uh huh, whatevs".
"Tell me the secret to life, Magic Cup?" Also, source.
He then rescues(?) a Viking princess named Sigrid, who seems to be doing pretty well at rescuing herself. #selfrescuingprincessFTW The prince of the fortress sees the scar on Thunder's neck (which is a pentacle with a lightning bolt through the middle of it. Take THAT, Harry Potter!), and is all "*gasp* He's the one who'll save us all!", and lets him escape.
Back at the crusader camp, King Richard (of Spain?!) tells Captain Hammer Thunder that he's being sent back to Spain to investigate a mysterious plague thing, and that as an added extra to this, he needs to take Princess Sigrid home. In order to this, he'll be accompanied by a company of six highly trained men from all over Christendom. They all have special skills with various weapons, and are entirely forgettable. Which is good, because they all end up dead. (Whoops, SPOILERS!)
Back in Spain, they find a bunch of people buried up to their necks, making a nice little path of heads sticking out of the ground. Turns out one is still alive. They rescue him and cart him back to his village, where he tells them that there are bad people from England living in a castle in the mountains, effectively using all the peasants as slaves and that there's no way out.
Captain Hammer Thunder and his band of merry men go ploughing into danger, only to have Captain Hammer Thunder captured by a bonkers witch. She tortures him, trying to find out where the ruby from the holy grail is, because without it, they can't complete some kind of weird arse ritual during an eclipse. Oh, and the bad guy's name is Jonathan Black.
Pretty much exactly a scene, but with different actors and more midriffs. Also, source.
Blah blah, a wizard breaks Captain Hammer Thunder out, Viking Princess Girl nurses him back to health, and then gets herself kidnapped. The fortress prince from back in the Holy Land turns up, and is all "Hey, bro. Need some help with getting your lady friend back and killing the bad guy? I'm here for you." The witch gives her a mind control potion, and then makes her kill the wizard and Captain Hammer Thunder. She steals the ruby, and hightails it back to the castle where the potion wears off and she's all "ZOMG WHAT DID I DO?!?!?!"
Unbeknownst to her, all she's done is stab the book the wizard was carrying around, and give Captain Hammer Thunder an upper body workout as he has to pull himself back up the cliff she tried to throw him off. Everyone gears up, and they head off to storm the castle in sneaky ways.
The witch and Jonathon Black conduct a creepy ritual designed to bring Satan back to earth (I think?), which makes a pentagram appear on the moon when it passes in front of the sun, causing a beam of light to fire down into the holy grail (I think this was about the point where Doug and I lost our shit and started giggling hysterically). Captain Hammer Thunder turns up in the nick of time, unchains Viking Princess Girl (who kills the witch), and saves the holy grail from evil Jonathan Black, who gets eaten by a giant worm beast thing that comes up out of the ground.
Then Captain Hammer Thunder, his sidekicks, and Viking Princess Girl fly off to Scandinavia in a steampunk looking hot air balloon, as Thunder and Viking Princess Girl do some face nomming and the words "To be continued" appear across the screen.
Um. Let's look at a list of problems I had with this:
1. THE ACTING. Oh my God, was it terrible. ESPECIALLY from Viking Princess Girl.
2. Captain Thunder was like a cross between Captain Hammer (you may have picked up on that already...), Kelso from That 70s Show, and Kevin Sorbo as Hercules. He's meant to be this big, brave hero dude, but he just gave off the impression of being thick as a block of concrete.
3. Crispin, one of the sidekicks, sports a peroxide job worthy of Paris Hilton.
4. The other sidekick, Goliath, is basically the troll in the dungeon from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He just wanders around the place, eating and bashing people on the head with a club.
5. Good Lord, Viking Princess Girl, PUT YOUR BOOBS AWAY. I guess the comic book artists are really the ones responsible for this, but seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if she'd hadn't had any feeling left in her boobs by the end of filming, thanks to her uber-corset. She also seemed to be channelling Angelina Jolie at this year's Oscars, as she had a hip-high slit in her dress, and kept sticking her leg out of it as often as possible.
6. The underground beastie. It's hinted at numerous times, including within the first five minutes, which are set in the Holy Land. But WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.
7. There seem to be a lot of animals from Central and South America involved - big ass pythons, chameleons etc. Nearly 300 years before the Americas were discovered. Uh, SURE.
8. The song that played over the end credits was truly worthy of Eurovision. I don't remember the exact lyrics (well, what the subtitles said the lyrics were, anyway), but they were HILARIOUSLY AWFUL.
9. Evil Witch Lady had three skank bot minions who danced around her, "helping" with spells. But in reality, they were just an excuse to dress some girls up in black leather with their midriffs showing. And they pretty much reminded me of the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. Also, Evil Witch Lady had this thing on her chin that looked like a goatee. So that was weird.
10. It was an epic cheese fest.
11. This one isn't really a problem, so much as the fact that 90% of the Spanish I've heard spoken is Latin American Spanish. So whenever they said gracias as "grathiath" or generally any word with an S sound in it, I sniggered. Lisping is funny, yo.
And of course, when I got home, I checked it out on IMDB to find that it has a whopping 3.3/10 rating. At least we're students and we got cheap tickets?
So. Have you seen any truly terrible films recently (foreign or otherwise!)???
This morning, I woke up to a bunch of tweet saying "Congratulations!!". Being slightly brain addled at stupid o'clock in the morning (okay, FINE. It was 9am. I'm unemployed!), it took me a while to work out that I've been voted 20SB's featured blogger of the month! There's a possibility that I Kermit flailed with excitement while still in bed.
So to honour the occasion, I vlogged. You're welcome.
And I'd very much like to thank Youtube for selecting the most flattering screenshot of all time. *sigh* (Oh, and contrary to appearances, I'm not actually a vampire. I just get sunburnt and then go back to being the palest person on the planet.)
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that curls into a ball when you touch it?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you use to change the TV channel?
Oh, and I also wanted to tell you guys that I thought of a category I left out of my crazy-people-at-the-gym list last week. (I said it in my first attempt at the vlog, and then completely forgot to mention it subsequently. Oh well....) Anyway, the category I left out was this:
The Woman Who Refuses to Bring a Handbag
I witnessed this the other day. She had her keys, her phone, her gym membership card, and I have no idea what else SHOVED DOWN THE FRONT OF HER BRA. Quite how she exercised while being stabbed in the boob by her keys I will never know.
So thank you again to everyone who voted for me, and I hope you enjoyed my awkward talking-with-my-hands vlogging. I love you guys a butt load.
K xx
PS. Thanks to everyone on Twitter for persuading me to actually post this vlog <3
