The Expendables, the best terrbile film I've ever seen.

So yea, The Expendables, every action film lovers fantasy, wet dream, christmas and birthday smashed together in a savage orgy of gratuitous violence. There was only one problem, It was a terrible film.

The plot and its development was truly awful. A band of highly skilled mercenaries are sent to a small South American island to overthrow a horribly stereotyped dictator. What? I thought Stallone had already done this in Rambo? Nevermind eh? As for the development there was no back story to any of the main characters which could have been pretty fun, no disgustingly violent flash backs from previous missions to increase the violence levels and everything seem to happen within the blink of an eye.

The script was bleak as shit for instance Stone cold treated me to such wonders as "you think you're a tough guy" and "you piece of trash". Full on cringe city. Admittedly some one liners were reasonably funny but in a terrible 80's action film sort of funny.

The acting was something else. I've seen every actor in that film act BETTER in other films. It's almost as if Sly asked everyone to become a worse actor for his film. It literally blew my mind. No one acted as badly as Mr Dolph Lundgren though, he was in another realm of terrible acting. I actually remember thinking to my self this HAS to be a joke, that's the best he has to offer? I think the absolute pinacle had to be Mickey Rourke and his character Tools little memoir of being in Burma or some fucked up place. I vaguely remember him saying something about being up to his knees in mud and blood, thinking he was going to die, getting out alive then watching some chick committing suicide and this lead to an enlightening line about saving the girl and saving your soul. I wish I could have made more effort with that recollection but it was so offensively terrible I chose to forget most of it.

There was even a point where some of the characters had genuine emotional problems one about a cauliflowered ear and the other about some chick. NO! NO! NO! Don't try and give these people real emotions they blow people in half for a living! I don't want to see Statham moping around about some girl with a new boyfriend I want to see more of him throwing knives into peoples throats and shooting people 15 times in the stomach to make sure they're dead.

Also has Jet Li's accent always been that awful?

However as my title suggests this truly is the best terrible film I've ever seen. The plot development was tragic but that lead to the action scenes coming around quicker. The acting was terrible but what action films have you ever seen with good acting in? Only war films have good acting and action in. Without the bad acting I would have been bitterly disappointed and as for the characters 'emotional side' it was dealt with quickly and effectively, after all who needs emotions when you have an AA-12?

So now we come to the best part, the violence, the ultra violence. Violence so glorious It makes you feel like a man, a real man the sort of man who revels in the thought of wrong do-ers getting just what they deserve in the form of 56 bullets to the torso. The fight scenes were bone crunchingly breath taking, everything was big, from the noise of a spine being busted on the floor right down to each individual punch. I would go into greater detail but to ruin the visual experience for someone who hasn't seen it would be a tragedy.

As for the combat it was a typical 80's bloodbath where the good guys didn't really need to aim and the bad guys (who are meant to be trained soldiers) cant hit a man stood 20 meters away. And of course more people are dying than actual bullets being fired. The explosions were borderline arousing and pretty much made me weep like a 10 year old and I spent most of the last 20 minutes going "whoa, FUCK".

If the film had not had its all star cast it would have been truly terrible, this was just a violent excuse to celebrate all the very best action heroes of the last 20 years and I for one think why not? This film was glorious for all the wrong reasons and will certainly go down an action favourite.

This ladies and gentlemen was ACTION 101.

Reading Festival, A glorious ordeal.

Obviously I'm not very good at blogging, this post isn't even relevant anymore considering Reading Festival was 3 weeks ago. However if you are reading this disgustingly late post, thank you, hopefully it won't be as testing as some of the experiences I had over the bank holiday weekend.

Right from the start my Reading Festival was looking bleak. I spent most of my time in the week running up to the weekend checking BBC weather and dying a little inside when all I was faced with were 'severe weather warnings' and those unsettling little graphics of angry looking storm clouds.

I sacked most of these unpleasent feelings off and on wednesday night began to feel the first waves of excitement creeping up my spine until a friend quickly doused these feelings with a text that read something like "bring wellies, it's a fucking bog here". Now no one likes rain really but I don't know if anyone hates it as much as I do. Rain actually has the power to annoy me, to the point where my face gets a bit warm and I can't really hold conversation for long in case I snap at the person unfortunate enough to be in my company at the time.

So with some stylish new wellington boots I got to the station and went to collect my tickets from the handy machine situated in the lobby. To my horror I didn't have the card I used to purchase the tickets. I could have kicked the fuck out the machine there and then I was so angry so I reluctantly handed over £20 of my 'reading fund' to buy yet ANOTHER ticket.

So I dragged my sorry arse to the platform and thought to myself, no worries it's just one train ride and then it's party time for 96 wonderful hours. But no delays on the line meant waiting another 40 minutes for a train. At the time I didn't think this would cause to much of an issue, until I got to the queue for my wristband.

If I had got there in time I may have missed out on the 2 hour queue in the pouring rain and foot of mud I had to endure. Now a lot can be said for dressing appropriately for festivals, If only I ha listened to my parents and taken a 'sensible' mac. The coat I chose to wear could probably take about as much water as there is in a toddlers sneeze before soaking right through, not ideal for the 2 inches or so of rain we had that day.

Now the campsite itself was an absolute disgrace it's certainly not about clambering through a foot and a half of mud to get everywhere and it's certainly not about almost having to swim through mini streams that had decided to run down two parts of our camp.

Also, if you want to party all night at a festival, take a gazebo and camp chairs, I had neither and it made it almost impossible to want to stay up and drink when you have no shelter and your legs feel like your veins are on fire. However over the weekend the weather changed and we had the full meteorological spectrum to endure, torrential rain, freezing nights, blustery mornings and then blazing afternoons. This made choosing suitable clothes a nightmare because you don't want to be too hot or too cold. Especially when you're too drunk to regulate your own temperature.

However when I finally saw some bands all the bullshit of the previous day faded away much like my feeling of what it life used to be like sober. I won't go into massive detail about every band I saw that weekend but here are some of my favourites.

PULLED APART BY HORSES - I can only really describe their music as indie thrash, that girls can dance to. But yea if you like your music with a bit more energy and your live shows full of guitar throwing and equipment climbing get these guys smashing their way through your ear canal.

QOTSA - Purely because Josh Holm was full on wrecked but still managed to play a beautifully tight set. He even stopped playing to comment on what a beautiful evening it was and how happy he was to be playing for us 'beautiful mother fuckers'. Amazing.

CRYSTAL CASTLES - Because Ethan Kath is the bleakest man alive whereas Alice Glass assaults security guards who wont let her crowd surf. She also crawled onto the stage on all fours at the start of the set amid seizure inducing lazers and a fuck ton of dry ice. Also Doe Deer sounds even filthier live.

ARCADE FIRE - Purely for their politeness. Only headlining act I've ever seen who were genuinely grateful and touched to be playing the main stage.

ROLO TOMASSI - Eva Spence, if you don't know who she is watch the video for 'party wounds', then you'll understand. Also I have a lot of time for walls of death at 11 in the morning. Again if you don't know what this is, google it.

LIMP BIZKIT - Fred Durst did the rollin movement during rollin, my life is complete.

BIFFY CLYRO - Ludicrous beard/hair colour combo.

DARWIN DEEZ - For his, and his bands, excellent choreography and dancing skills in between songs.

BLINK 182 - Fucking Blink 182 man. Also upside down drum solos make the solo 100% better.

And so Monday came and with it the feeling of dread and despair that comes after drinking for 90 of the 96 hours of the weekend. The thought of taking my tent down and carrying it home almost made me cry so it stayed there, a stark reminder of sleeping rough. My head felt like it was made of lead, I could feel each and every one of my internal organs and my legs felt like they belonged to somebody else. Upon leaving the festival and joining the outside world, part of me felt scared, it was time to be a normal member of society again, feeling sober felt new and strange and I looked like the ghost of a ghost. However if you haven't done irreparable damage to your body, you haven't had a rad enough festival.

Reading 2011 anyone?