VANS Events & Results
Find details of our regular GTA events here.
185 topics in this forum
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The Favourites: Christmas Edition
by Mark Verstappen- 1 reply
- 501 views
The Favourites: Christmas Edition Come and join us on Wednesday 28th of december at 20:00 UK Time on PS4* for The Favorites! Just turn up to the Christmas tree on Legion Square in your favorite reable car where we will hopefully drive in the snow. We will determine who has the best nicest car brought to the meet before we start races where each participant can select their car and track combination they like to race! We will all race the car the player selected against eachother. The person choosing the car will have to own the car and share it unless he picks a stock car to race Pick whichever you think people should get a taste of or should suffer i…
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Tulip Redemption & Tahoma Comeback
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 421 views
Tulip Redemption & Tahoma Comeback Come and join us on Wednesday 21st of December at 20:00 UK Time on PS4* to give a nice end the the shortest day of the year! Just turn up to the parking garage of the Rockford Mall wither either vehicles to complete your christmas shopping, enjoy some races & company. NOTE: The 18th is the Final day you can get the Tahoma Coupe FOR FREE. We will find out who has the best American 2 door before we start a playlist to determine who gets to play Santa at the mall! We will be using custom Tulip M-100's & Tahoma Coupe against each other, but dont worry if you dont have either as we can share where needed.…
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- 22 replies
- 1k views
Yes, your eyes do not deceive you! For one night and one night only, this unconventional driving challenge returns for the first time in almost 2 years for its 5th installment. Join me as I guide you across the wild and challenging terrain of Los Santos' East Coast, with a route that promises to take you and your vehicle to the extremes! While no vehicles are outright banned (except flying / weaponised ones that are pretty obvious), I'd ask that you take something that is not going to be overpowered - in the spirit of the event and for your own enjoyment! I really hope to see some old faces there as this promises to be a pretty nostalgic one! Event s…
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Wide Beemers
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 536 views
Wide Beemers Come and join us on Wednesday 6th of December at 20:00 UK Time on PS4* for Wide Beemers! Just turn up to the upper parking lot of the Banner Hotel on Alta Street with your Sentinel Classic Widebody. We will determine who has the best Sentinel Classic Widebody before we start a playlist to determine the winner of the widebodies! We will be using custom Sentinel Classic Widebodies, but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 Post below to get involved! Verstappen Mulder Warriors *Subject to change depending on people with available platforms & who will all be there. 🙂
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Mystery Car November 2022
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 496 views
Come and join us for Mystery Car on Wednesday 16th of November at 20:00 British time. We will start out in free roam from the Horney's Burgers' parking lot from where we will have to follow the clues to find the Mystery Car. Once the car is revealed we will all buy it, if needed, modify it, then spend the night racing it. The price of the car will be less than $100k so don't worry about having to spend millions to join in. The usual rules will apply, don't bring the emergency services along with you in free roam, don't kill other players, race clean and respect the other racers.... Basically don't be a bellend. Post below to get involved with your available…
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Evil Weevil 🎃
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 737 views
Evil Weevil 🎃 Come and join us on Wednesday 2nd of November at 20:00 UK Time on PS5* for some Weevil racing! Just turn up to the bottom layer of the western parking garage of LSIA in either a Weevil Custom. We will determine who has the best car before we start a playlist for some fun racing! We will be using custom cars, but dont worry if you dont have one as we will be running the races in GTA mode to be able share cars. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Warriors *Subject to change to PS4 depending on people with available platforms & if Dave will make it. 🙂
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Cinquemila vs Rhinehart
by Mark Verstappen- 1 reply
- 483 views
Cinquemila vs Rhinehart Come and join us on Wednesday 19th of October at 20:00 UK Time on PS5* for some Sedan racing! Just turn up to the western parking garage of LSIA in either a Cinquemila or Rhinehart. We will determine who has the best car before we start a playlist for some fun racing! We will be using custom cars but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 Post below to get involved with your preferred car! Verstappen (Rhinehart) Mulder (Cinquemila) Warriors Dave Alex *Subject to change to PS4 depending on people with available platforms & if Dave will make it. 🙂
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Oktoberfest Wed 5th Oktober.
by SkyeDave- 3 replies
- 501 views
Is it about beer? Is it about German cars? Is it just because it's an even in October and Dave is struggling for a catchy title? Come along and find out this Wednesday 5th at 8pm UK time. PS5 We will be racing a variety of cars on a variety of tracks. Highlights will include the Hao's works prepared Arbiter GT around American Gran Park, The LM87 around the Nurburgring and the new Kanjo SJ around the Kortz Centre. We'll also pit the acceleration and straight line speed of Hao's Vigero ZX against the handling and cornering prowess of the Buffalo STX round the LS Airport Infield Raceway. All this and more.
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ZX!
by Mark Verstappen- 1 reply
- 485 views
ZX! Come and join us on Wednesday 28th of September at 20:00 UK Time on PS5* for ZX! Just turn up to the parking lot of Mirror Park Tavern with your Vigero ZX. We will determine who has the best ZX before we start a playlist to determine the tamer of the Torero ZX! We are planning on racing with HSW turned off although we might change this somewhere during the night depending on what people would like. We will be using custom Vigero ZX's but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 Post below to get involved! Verstappen Mulder *Subject to change to PS4 depending on people with available platforms…
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Survive the Hunt 5
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 531 views
Survive the Hunt 5 Come and join us in Survive the Hunt, where the aim is to... Well... Survive the hunt! On Wednesday 21st of September 20:00 UK time on PS5 or PS4 depending where the most players are. Starting from the parking lot next to the the Xero Gas warehouse near LSIA. What is Survive The Hunt? Essentially, Survive The Hunt is a freeroam game mode where one player is "hunted" by 8+ other players. There is no radar, HUD or name-tags in order to make this a bit more interesting. While there is no set tactic, the most popular and effective one is for the hunted player to "blend in" with the game AI - either on foot or in a car. This means obeying traffic…
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Cayo Perico Series
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 480 views
Cayo Perico Series Come and join us on Wednesday 24th of August at 20:00 UK Time for Cayo Perico Series! Just turn up to the LSIA Cayo Perico terminal with vehicle you'd like to race the move on Cayo Perico. We will determine who has the nicest vehicle before we start the races! We will be using custom Any vehicle of your choice. But dont worry if you dont have one thats chosen as we can share at the start. Post below to get involved! Preferably with your available platforms. Verstappen (PS4 & PS5) Warriors (PS4 & PS5) Mulder (PS4 & PS5)
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XO!
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 588 views
XO! Come and join us on Wednesday 17th of August at 20:00 UK Time for XO! Just turn up to the parking lot of Premium deluxe Motorsport with your Torero XO. We will determine who has the best XO before we start a playlist to determine the toreador of the Torero XO! We will be using custom Torero XO's but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 Post below to get involved! Preferably with your available platforms. Verstappen (PS4 & PS5) Warriors (PS4 & PS5) Mulder (PS4 & PS5)
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Criminal Enterprises Racing
by Mark Verstappen- 4 replies
- 652 views
Criminal Enterprises Racing Come and join us on Wednesday the 3rd of August at 20:00 UK Time for Criminal Enterprises Racing! Just turn up to the parking lot of the Golf Club in your favorite released newly release or updated car. We will determine who has the best car before we start a playlist to determine the best Criminal Racer! We will race the currently released cars from the Criminal enterprises Update (or updated cars). Each race will feature only one of the cars so we can all try them out equally. Don't worry if you don't own all/any of the eligible cars, we can spawn cars in for you where needed. Post Malone to get involved!…
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Dinky Winky! (PS4)
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 621 views
Dinky Winky! Come and join us on Wednesday 6th of July at 20:00 UK Time on PS4 for Dinky Winky! Just turn up to the beach in East Los Santos under the highway Bridge with your Winky. We will determine who has the best Winky before we start a playlist to determine the Winky King! We will be using custom Winky's but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 This may also involve races which are not regular circuit races. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Warriors Mulder
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Mystery Car June 2022 (PS4)
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 615 views
Come and join us for Mystery Car on Wednesday 15th of June at 20:00 British time. We will start out in free roam at the Burger Shot parking lot from where we will have to follow the clues to find the Mystery Car. Once the car is revealed we will all buy it if needed, modify it, then spend the night racing it. The price of the car will be less than $100k so don't worry about having to spend millions to join in. The usual rules will apply, don't bring the emergency services along with you in free roam, don't kill other players, race clean and respect the other racers.... Basically don't be a bellend. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Mulde…
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Rigged Random Car Extravaganza: Rockstar Games Special!
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 621 views
Come and join us on Wednesday 20th of October at 8 PM British time for the Rigged Random Car Extravaganza: Rockstar Games Special! After accidentally driving the forgotten Seven-70 last week I thought it was only fitting (and time) to see what wacky, fast, slow, stupid cars the game will give us again. After a meet up in free roam at the tennis courts on Vespucci Beach we will launch into a playlist of races where you will only know what car we will be racing each race when we get to the car selection screen. Each class is determined by a random number generator. After this when we are in the car selection screen i will press the 'random car' button and we will…
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Big Paulie's Budget Car Night!
by SkyeDave- 4 replies
- 538 views
Tired of all this chat of Liberty City coming to GTA online? Big Paulie is and he says, if you can't come to Liberty City, he's gonna bring Liberty City to you! Come join as at the LS docks this Wednesday where we'll meet a familiar face fresh off the boat from Liberty City who has brought some of the cars from GTA IV over for us to race in LS. We'll be racing OG classics such as the Dukes, Vigero, Primo, Blista Compact, Stallion, Futo, Sabre Turbo, Ruiner, Ingot, Stratum, Intruder, Habanero, Patriot, Oracle XS, and Rhapsody as well as others that I've forgotten and you can remind me about. Hopefully Paulie is going …
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Peashooter! 🟢
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 880 views
Peashooter! 🟢 Come and join us on Wednesday 18th of May at 20:00 UK Time on PS4 for Peashooter! Just turn up to the parking lot north of the gas station in Mirror Park. We will be racing Ardents as you before not used to be able to race them. R* only allows stock ones but that means no-one has to buy anything! 🥳 For this event the person in each race to finish lowest in an Ardent will have to drive a stock Turismo Classic. If you win in the Turismo Classic you switch back to the Ardent. This may also involve races which are not regular circuit races. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Dave Warriors Mulder
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The Paleto Bay Tourist Board Presents.....
by SkyeDave- 4 replies
- 770 views
Come join us this Wednesday 11th May at 8PM uk time on PS4 for the 30th Annual Paleto Festival. It's not just about the the Monster Trucks! We'll be racing Go karts, motorbikes, R/C cars, jet skis, as well as the usual tuners, sports, muscles and classics all in and around the streets, forest and cove of Paleto Bay.
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Sharknose! 🦈
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 929 views
Sharknose! 🦈 Come and join us on Wednesday 4th of May at 20:00 UK Time on PS4 for Sharknose! Just turn up to the parking lot behind the Chinese restaurant near the Vespucci Helipad in a Zion Classic. We will determine who has the best taste in cars before we start a playlist in Zion Classics to determine who is the Sharknose King! We will be using custom Zion Classics but dont worry if you dont have one as I do and am willing to share. 😄 This may also involve races which are not regular circuit races. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Mulder Catman Warriors
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Something with Compacts! Wed 27th.
by SkyeDave- 5 replies
- 477 views
Come join us this Wednesday 27th April 8pm uk time when we'll be doing something imaginative with the compact class. I was holding off because I thought there was some kind of update today but it's turned out to not be very much so I figure we can just race from the oft forgotten compact class round the tight and twisty stuff.
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Survive the Hunt 4
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 472 views
Survive the Hunt 4 Come and join us in Survive the Hunt, where the aim is to... Well... survive the hunt! Wednesday 20th of April 20:00 UK time starting from the bottom layer of the eastern LSIA Parking garage. What is Survive The Hunt? Essentially, Survive The Hunt is a freeroam game mode where one player is "hunted" by 8+ other players. There is no radar, HUD or name-tags in order to make this a bit more interesting. While there is no set tactic, the most popular and effective one is for the hunted player to "blend in" with the game AI - either on foot or in a car. This means obeying traffic laws, following the road at an AI-ish pace, stopping at traffic lig…
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Audience Participation Playlist, Wed 13th PS4
by SkyeDave- 8 replies
- 828 views
The Wednesday 8PM we'll run an mixed playlist where we take it turns to choose which car and class we race on some of our favourite tracks. We'll run GTA race or stock cars so no matter if you don't own anything specific. (I don't own anything except a Zion because I transferred to PS5).
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The Fastest Car
by Mark Verstappen- 2 replies
- 726 views
The Fastest Car Come and join us on Wednesday 6th of April at 20:00 UK Time on PS4 for 'The Fastest Car'! Just turn up to the parking lot in the middle of the Vinewood Racetrack in any car. We will determine who has the best taste in cars before we start a playlist in what everyone thought was the fastest car in 2013 to determine who is the Adder King! We will be using stock Adders for this so you dont need to prepare a car. Post below to get involved! Verstappen Mulder Warriors
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Coupé Kings
by Mark Verstappen- 3 replies
- 572 views
Coupé Kings Come and join us on Wednesday 30th of March at 20:00 UK Time on PS4 for Coupé Kings! Just turn up to the parking lot of the small str*p mall two blocks east of the Rockford Mall in any Coupé. We will determine who has the best taste in cars before we start a playlist to determine who is the Coupé King! This is the list of all Coupés currently ingame. Previon Zion Zion Cabrio Felon Exemplar Jackal Sentinel XS Cognescenti Cabrio F620 Felon GT Sentinel Oracle Oracle XS Windsor Windsor Drop Don't worry if you don't own all/any of the Coupés, we can spawn them in for you. But it would be nice if poss…
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232Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
@LimeGreenLegend I remember watching some of Threads when at school, maybe a year or so after it was released, as part of an English project on nuclear weapons. I didn't live in Sheffield then, which I seem to recall making it seem more distant and as teenagers we kind of dismissed it with a "this can't happen to us" type of attitude. I do intend watching it at some point, I noticed it on iplayer, probably not this weekend.- 1
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232Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
What I Watched This Week #171 (Apr 7-13) Captain America: Brave New World dir. Julius Onah/2025/1h59m The latest entry in the MCU sees Anthony Mackie take up the shield as Captain America for the first time (on the big screen at least, I've not seen the TV show, which made a lot of this quite confusing), getting caught up in an international incident that I honestly can't remember anything about. The entire time I was just waiting for Harrison Ford, playing newly elected president Thaddeus Ross, turn into a big red Hulk, which is all I knew of this going in. It's actually quite amazing that I can't remember any of the actual plot because most of the film is made up of people spouting exposition at each other in bland locations. The villain, played by Tim Blake Nelson, looks so stupid that I thought his reveal was a joke after being kept hidden in the shadows for a lot of the run time, but no, that's the look they actually went with. I don't care if it's accurate to the comic books, it looks f*cking stupid on film. Mackie and Ford both give decent performances, and and I liked Danny Ramirez as Cap's new sidekick Joaquin Torres, but this just feels like content churned out to meet a schedule drawn up by committee. 3/10 Mickey 17 dir. b*ng Joon Ho/2025/2h17m Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, a man who, to get away from some dangerous people he owes money to, signs up as an expendable on a colonisation voyage to a distant planet. His job is to perform all of the most dangerous tasks and occasionally act as a lab rat, and each time he dies they just print out a new one, an act made illegal on Earth. This is director b*ng's follow up to his Oscar winning masterpiece Parasite, and while this film shares similar themes with its attack on the elite it comes at it with a very different tone. This leans heavily into comedy, with Pattinson giving an almost slapstick performance at times. His whiny, weedy accent also took me by surprise, but it really does fit the character. Mark Ruffalo as failed politician Kenneth Marshall, the leader of the colony, also gives a very broad comedic performance, similar to the one he gave in Poor Things, and he steals every scene he's in. I had a lot of fun watching this but it all feels kind of inconsequential and throwaway, like all of the clones of Mickey, and a little short of b*ng's best films like Parasite, Memories of Murder or Mother. But this is still an excellently crafted film with great supporting performances from Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, and British comedian Tim Key as a man dressed as a pigeon. 8/10 The Foreigner dir. Martin Campbell/2017/1h53m The Foreigner is an action thriller starring Jackie Chan as Quan Ngoc Minh, a London restaurant owner whose daughter is killed in an IRA bombing. He suspects that politician and former IRA member Liam Hennessey (Pierce Brosnan) knows something about it, and seeing that he's former Chinese special forces he'll stop at nothing to find out what. A conventional yet well made film from the director of two of the best Bond films: Goldeneye and Casino Royale, what really kept me hooked here was the totally serious performance from Chan, something I've never seen before. That extends to the fight scenes where there's none of his usual fun and games with random props. Here he just wants to hurt people. There's a haunted look in his eyes that he has for most of the film that feels so real and full of pain. Brosnan is also very good as a politician with a murky past, and he does a good job at keeping us guessing as to how much he actually knows. 7/10 Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw dir. David Leitch/2019/2h17m The Fast and Furious franchise takes a little detour with this spinoff film starring The Rock and Jason Statham as the titular Hobbs and Shaw who must team up to defeat Idris Elba's evil cyborg Brixton who is searching for a virus that could wipe out humanity. The virus is in the hands of Shaw's sister Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) because what would these films be without family? Just as mindlessly fun as the recent films in the series, what let this one down for me is the constant trash talk between The Rock and Statham. It's cute for a while but over two hours of this pissing contest is just tiresome. There's also an extended cameo from Kevin Hart who I can't stand. The action scenes are totally ridiculous - Elba's transformer like motorbike is a personal fav - but they're all fun and unique. The final act showdown set in Samoa is also a nice change of location. This does feel like a script where they changed the names of the two main characters to make it fit into the Fast and Furious universe just for the name recognition, but this film delivered exactly what I expected from it, which I guess is both a positive and a negative. 6.5/10 Threads dir. Mick Jackson/1984/1h57m Made for BBC TV on a tiny budget, Threads is a docu-drama set in the Northern English city of Sheffield during the lead up to and fallout of a nuclear war. With its use of actual BBC documentary narrator Paul Vaughn, stock footage and text on screen detailing the time line of events this could be mistaken as real. The drama part of the docu-drama comes from following young woman Ruth (Karen Meagher) who has just become pregnant with her boyfriend and is just about to start her life. In the background on news reports and newspapers tensions are rising between the US and Russia. This lead up to the bombs dropping is incredibly well executed, the tension slowly being cranked up as these reports come to the foreground slowly but surely. It begins to invade the normal everyday lives of the people of Sheffield. The second half of the film details the bombings and the breakdown of society in the aftermath and it is the most grim, brutal, depressing, hopeless, scary, and sadly realistic (judging by the extensive list of doctors and professors in the special thanks section of the credits) depiction of the apocalypse I've ever seen. I nearly stopped watching at a couple of points because it's all just too much. That says nothing of the ending, a horrific series of events set over a decade after the end of the world which snaps into a freezeframe just as a character is about to scream and then the end credits roll in total silence. This is one of the best films I've ever seen and I urge you all to watch it, it's on the BBC iPlayer if you're in the UK or have a VPN. 10/10 Lime's Film of the Week! The Devil in a Convent dir. Georges Méliès/1899/3m Another short from Georges Méliès sees him continue his fascination with demons and religion. Here he plays a tricksy devil who appears in a convent, disguises himself as a priest and torments the nuns there before being banished back to hell. As well as his continued perfection of his special effects techniques what really stands out in his films are the gorgeously detailed sets that look like they're taken straight off of the stage. His films are also becoming longer and more intricate, three minutes was considered long for a film at the time, and his 12 minute Trip to the Moon a few years later was initially mocked for being too long to keep people's attention. A wonderful slice of magic from the dawn of the artform. 8/10 Monsters University dir. Dan Scanlon/2013/1h44m This totally unnecessary prequel tells the story of how Mike (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) met at college, starting out as adversaries before having to work together to help their fraternity win the annual scare games and keep their place in school. Mostly a collection of tropes, cliches and stereotypes from every college film since Animal House this still does have some good jokes scattered throughout and, as usual, the animation is excellent. Crystal can get grating at times but Goodman is always a pleasure to listen to, and there's a good supporting turn from Helen Mirren as the dean of the college. In my opinion Monsters Inc is one of Pixar's best films with a perfect ending, so I'm glad they didn't try to do a sequel (and I hope they don't in the future), but that stuck them with doing a prequel, and the characters aren't really that different at the start of the film than at the end, so there's not even any growth or development. It's just more time to spend with them, which isn't a bad thing, but it's time spent doing nothing. 5.5/10- 2
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232
Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
Team America: World Police (2004) dir Trey Parker A film from the makers of South Park, so you should know what to expect; totally irreverent, doesn't care who it offends, anything and anyone can and will be made fun of, with some great comedy songs and few Star Wars references thrown in. It's made with puppets in in the style of Thunderbirds and the other Gerry Anderson shows from the 60s/70s/80s. The title refers to an international crime fighting force with a very gung-ho attitude. So long as they get the bad guys, it doesn't matter who or what else gets hurt or destroyed in the process, even if they end up leaving an even bigger trail of destruction than the one they were trying to prevent. They recruit a new member, a Broadway actor, because they need someone to “act like a terrorist”. They are up against a wave of attacks, organised, behind the scenes, by North Korea's then dictator Kim Jong Il (the father of the current one). He is hosting a “peace conference” for all world leaders to hide his true intents. He has enlisted the assistance of F.A.G. (the Film Actors Guild), a group of Hollywood actors lead by Alec Baldwin and including Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Samuel L Jackson, Helen Hunt and many more, who hate Team America. Just to be clear for anyone who has no idea what this film is; none of those people are in the film, it's puppet versions of them. A puppet Michael More also makes an appearance protesting against Team America. And all the voices are done by the same sort of people who voice South Park It doesn't take sides. I don't think it's trying to make any political points. I'm not really sure you can even call it satire because, just like South Park, Parker and Stone are simply having a laugh in their own way and doing what they think is funny for no other reason than comedy. Some good aspects to point out. They chose to make this with puppets and I'm sure with modern technology they could have made them a lot more realistic than Thunderbirds, especially when it comes to how they walk. But other than the mouths moving better in sync with the dialogue, they don't look that different, and you can clearly see the strings. The puppets are obviously small, so the film is mainly made on model sets. But they have a couple of scenes using real-world backgrounds, so the puppets look really tiny – for comic effect. There's one hilarious scene in which a couple of characters are attacked by what are supposed to be black panthers, but they use domestic cats instead. Then what I think is the best scene, the s*x scene. This would have been extremely graphic if it used human actors. It would have been fairly graphic if the puppets had g*nitals. But they don't. So it's just two puppets, minus their clothes, playing out various s*x positions. I have not seen this in full since I saw it at the cinema back when it first came out. It was not as funny as I remembered, but still a very novel idea. 7/10- 1
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232
Rate the Last Film you Watched 2: Electric Boogaloo
What I Watched This Week #170 (Mar 31 - Apr 6) The Fate of the Furious dir. F. Gary Gray/2017/2h16m The eighth film in the franchise sees Dominic (Vin Diesel) do the worst thing imaginable, betray his family. But he's only doing it because he's being coerced by cyberterrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron), with his gang, led by The Rock (The Rock) and newly turned good guy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), having to hunt him down and stop him. This is a big, dumb, fun Bond film that ended up in the wrong franchise but somehow works and is my favourite so far. I think this is also the best directed film in the series, Gray's first in the franchise, with some excellent action set pieces and fight scenes that defy all logic. I also think it's impressive that a film this deep into its run can attract such a good cast. Theron is really good as the villain, and I also loved Kurt Russell as mysterious government agent Mr. Nobody and, in a really fun cameo, Helen Mirren as Shaw's aggressively Cockney mother Queenie. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I'm a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise. 7/10 Two short films by Georges Méliès: A Nightmare 1896/1m The Infernal Cauldron 1903/2m These two shorts are from the father of movie magic, Georges Méliès, a French stage magician who, while tinkering with a newly bought film camera, invented special effects by accident and was one of the first filmmakers who was able to show what this new medium was really capable of. The first film sees him playing a sleeping man who is tormented by various things he's scared of, including a giant moon with a menacing face - a recurring image in his films, most iconically in A Trip to the Moon - clowns and, unfortunately, Black people. The second film has him in the role of a green demon - a lot of his films were painted by hand frame by frame so they had colour before colour film was a thing - consigning some people to hell by throwing them into a giant cauldron. The sheer inventiveness and creativity in his films makes them still a joy to watch today - racism aside - and these shorter ones are just a taste of what he's able to do in his masterful longer films like The Kingdom of the Fairies and The Impossible Voyage. Respectively I'll give these a 6/10 and 8/10 Brave dir. Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews/2012/1h33m Pixar takes us to the magical ancient Scottish Highlands where Merida (Kelly Macdonald) is the princess of a kingdom ruled by King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Elinor wants to prepare Merida for marriage, whereas Merida wants to be free to make her own decisions. Thanks to a visit to a local witch (Julie Walters), Merida gets a cursed wish and inadvertently turns her mother into a bear. I'm a big fan of the setting of this film, it feels unlike anything Pixar has done before, and some of the landscape shots are gorgeous, but the story really drags, with a lot of obvious filler thrown in to pad the runtime. I also didn't really like the main character even though I could sympathise with her not wanting to just do what she's supposed to do. What this film has in its favour is the legendary Billy Connolly who I love in anything he does, and he's great here. I just wish Disney had the b*lls to release the profanity riddled outtakes that I'm sure exists in their vault somewhere. I also appreciate that this is an original film in an era of Pixar sequels (this came between Cars 2 and Monsters University), but that's not enough to get it more than a 6.5/10 65 dir. Scott Beck, Bryan Woods/2023/1h32m Set 65 million years ago this is a sci-fi thriller that stars Adam Driver as a deep space explorer of an alien race who crash lands on prehistoric Earth where he and a young girl, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), are the only survivors. The two don't speak the same language, making it harder for them to work together to not get eaten by dinosaurs and make it to an escape pod before the giant extinction level asteroid hits the planet (spoilers: they don't have long). This is from the same directors of the recent Hugh Grant religious thriller Heretic, which I enjoyed quite a bit, but this is just bland bland bland. The premise is cool but they've managed to execute it in the most vanilla way possible. The two performances are good, with Driver really putting a lot of effort into basically nothing, but all of his dialogue was so hard to concentrate on because it was so dull. I also thought the dinosaurs just looked weird and never really felt like a threat. There was more tension from the ticking clock of the asteroid than from anything earthbound. 4/10 Law Abiding Citizen dir. F. Gary Gray/2009/1h49m My second F. Gary Gray film of the week, this one stars Gerard Butler as Clyde who, after his family are killed during a break in, decides to take revenge on not only the murderers but also the lawyer who got them a plea bargain that set them free, Nick (Jamie Foxx). I don't know what it is but there's something about this film that makes it feel like it should have come out in the mid 90's starring Nicolas Cage. It wants to be both a serious legal thriller and an overblown action film but it never really commits to either. The various traps and gadgets that Clyde creates to take his revenge are well executed but it becomes ridiculous in the third act, culminating in what was to me a pretty bad ending. Still, I enjoyed the scenes between Butler and Foxx, and I always like seeing Colm Meaney pop up in stuff, here with a sizeable supporting role as a detective trying to stop Clyde's murderous plans. 6/10 Come Drink with Me dir. King Hu/1966/1h31m This influential martial arts film stars Cheng Pei-Pei as daughter of the local governor who has a secret alias as Golden Swallow, a sword for hire. Her latest job is very personal as she has to rescue her brother who has been kidnapped by a gang led by Jade Faced Tiger (Chen Hung-Lieh). Helping her on her quest is Drunken Cat (Elliot Ngok Wah), who has a secret of his own. This is both graceful - Pei-Pei was a trained ballet dancer, not martial artist - and brutally bloody, and incredibly gorgeous to look at with some beautiful production and costume/make-up design. Pei-Pei is great in the lead, being both demure and deadly at the same time, with Ngok Wah having a lot of fun as her playfully drunk sidekick. I did find the plot to be a bit too convoluted for what it is, mostly with the plot about Drunken Cat's past, but it's worth it for the climactic mountainside showdown. 8/10 Lime's Films of the Week! Two short films by Phoebe Jane Hart: JamieSonShine 2020/5m Bug Diner 2024/7m I'm finishing off the week with two very different shorts from Phoebe Jane Hart. The first is a very personal experimental documentary about her older brother and how his schizophrenia has affected their relationship. A mixture of live action stop motion and animation, this feels like we're getting a small glimpse into their world, and it's able to convey so much love and empathy without every seeming trite or sentimental. The second film is a stop motion film set in a diner staffed and visited by a selection of different anthropomorphic animals and insects who all have very human problems with their relationships. There's a pair of grasshoppers having marital issues but the husband becomes aroused at the thought of his wife with another man, an anteater with the hots for a squirrel, and the fly waitress can't stop fantasising about the mole chef's hot *ss. Weird, crude but strangely very relatable. These are Hart's only two films so far, but I can't wait to see what she does next. I'll give these a combined 8/10- 2
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