Well well well.

I can’t make up my mind: does the trailer for Terry Gilliam’s Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas laugh with you, luring you into a sense of “hey, you can totally read Hunter Thompson’s book as a buddy comedy about the Sixties”, or does it laugh at you, in a grand, evil plan to suck money out of unsuspecting moviegoers?

The trippy ambiance is laid out for anyone to see, except for the more explicitly disturbing bits (White Rabbit, anyone?), and there is a sense that larger things are at play here - see the gorgeous “bat county” sunglasses shot, or poor little Christina Ricci being (we assume) left alone to fend for herself. On the other hand, compared to what happens in the movie, the score is cut and used in a drastically different way: same tracks, opposite situations. Everything sounds so much raunchier, and so harmless here, it might even work as a recut trailer.

Three Dog Night pops up at 1’ 12”, and that’s probably the moment of truth.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “I love this movie. It appeals to all generations.”

We’re going a little off track with this one, but it’s worth it - so make room for today’s guest, Miss Catriona Potts, with a Very Special Past Attraction, And We Do Mean Past…

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I’m way too romantic for crying at movies (I’ve cried once, during the “Mau! Mau!” scene of The Deer Hunter, but that’s another story). But I’m a sucker for romantic comedies and, yes, they don’t  make them as they used to, so I’m always  in desperate search of a new/old one. And it’s getting hard, because I’ve seen most of them, even a flick called Expensive Husbands (don’t even bother: it’s a 1937 C-movie plagued by an awful script, a non-existent direction, bad acting and bad editing).

But I’m rambling.

A romantic comedy should deliver open, unabashed feelings, the strongest being the erotic attraction between two characters everybody thinks should stick together (but they don’t know it yet). And it must turn that attraction into an exciting game, making you laugh and cry (well, sort of) and play with the characters.

Here’s a challenge: name the last romantic comedy you saw and you could say those things about.

For me, it’s I Know Where I’m Going! (affectionately known as IKWIG), a 1945 movie by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Okay, I worship Powell & Pressburger and Martin Scorsese (who said “I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw IKWIG”) but let’s forget that.

The thing is IKWIG has everything: a stubborn, materialist young woman and a romantic, Scottish young men; blinding mists and deafening gales; harsh reality and fascinating legends; a long-lost and unattainable love and a new and possibly ever-lasting love; a deadly whirlpool and a sparkling diamond ring; a tooting hat and a wedding gown; a tamed eagle and a skinned rabbit (off screen); a phone booth under a waterfall, men in kilts, cursed castles, tartan-covered hills…

You can’t get any better than that.

Actually, you can.

You can watch the whole movie on Youtube.

Another day, another dollar. Right?

The 1995 release of Tank Girl - The Movie would go on to become one of the most infamous cases of “comic book done wrong”. And a bitter reminder to future generations about how bad things can get when American middle-level producers try to stick the cool-by-association label to their output, acquiring the rights to any obscure “cult” phenomenon and then proceeding to butcher it senselessly.

Following a sky-high rights auction (at one point Mr. Spielberg himself chipped in) and some dubious expectations from Tank Girl fans, it ended up a) being a huge flop and b) bankrupting the magazine that featured the comic book as well.

To which I can only say: “Wow. Really?”

From the look of things, it’s a cheap, sad affair. Production values were trying for a campy, wink-wink two-dimension feel, maybe. But everything falls horribly flat. Come on. It looks like a Christophe Lambert vehicle from the mid-Nineties. And guess what? It plays out exactly like a Christophe Lambert vehicle from the mid-Nineties. Damn you. Damn you all to hell.

And yes, the very diverse and very large “featuring music by…” cards at the end should have warned us to stay away. Instead, we caught it on cable, were fooled by the cute intro and stayed there, unable to move.

Like they say - avoid female directors. They ovulate.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “Ice T is a gangsta ass kangaroo. Calling him a ripper didn’t change the fact that that nigga was a damn kangaroo neither.”