Dishiest chaps in a 2012 film.

Happy Valentines Day readers! What better way to celebrate than with ten dishy dudes! For the 10 most alluring ladies of 2012, click here!

10. Chace Crawford, What to Expect When You're Expecting

A whole lot of DUNKIRK talk.

I’ve recently been losing a lot of time down the rabbit hole that is TV tropes, which outlines common storytelling devices, arcs and techniques employed in film and TV. It doesn’t just dissect the plot of films but the cast and credits as well, and one of their pages, ‘And Starring’, offered some food for thought.

What a Character: Ben Mendelsohn

This post is my contribution to the What a Character! blogathon as organised by ONCE UPON A SCREEN, Paula of PAULA’S CINEMA CLUB and yours truly, Kellee of OUTSPOKEN & FRECKLED which celebrates supporting performers in film. I have gone with a contemporary actor who has stolen the show in almost everything I've seen him in, Mr Ben Mendelsohn (aka the baddie from Rogue One).

I first noticed the actor before having watched him in anything, and it was seeing his name on the Starred Up poster (a film, lamentably, I still haven't seen, although it's high up on my to-see list for the trifecta of reasons that it's from the director of Hell or High Water, and it stars Ben and Skin's Jack O'Connell, easily the best actor to emerge from that show).

The reason Ben Mendelsohn's name struck with me is because there is a composer of the same name (albeit with two 's's, Mendelssohn), who composed the famous Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's funny how the mind makes irrelevant cognitive connections like that, but with a memorable surname like that, I was curious to watch his acting performances.

He had a short-but-memorable appearance in The Dark Knight Rises in a suitably shouty, sweaty cameo, but the film that gave him an outlet to truly show his acting range was in The Place Beyond the Pines, a three-act story which follows the intersecting fates of a bank robber Luke (Ryan Gosling) and the cop, Avery, who pursues him (Bradley Cooper).

In The Place Beyond the Pines Mendelsohn plays Luke's only friend and co-conspirator who helps him commit the bank robberies (a nice counterpart to the role he played in The Dark Knight Rises). The two men, both outcasts, share a tentative, wordless bond, and the chemistry between Gosling and Mendelsohn is excellent, deftly portraying how the latter can pre-empt the former's actions before he's even done them. In the final act, when we see Mendelsohn's character again, and in his inarticulate way, he shows how much he cared for Luke, hinting that there may well be honour among thieves.

Ryan Gosling enjoyed working with Ben Mendelsohn so much on The Place Beyond the Pines that he cast him in his directorial debut, the critically panned misfire Lost River. Almost everything about that film sucked, bar Saoirse Ronan (who is amazing in everything), and Ben Mendelsohn, as a smarmy bank manager Dave who will do anything to get his way with struggling single mother Billy (Christina Hendricks).

Throughout the film, Dave repeatedly tries it on with Billy, only for his brusque courtship to be knocked back every time. However, as one of the patrons of a local burlesque studio, and her financially precarious situation, Billy has little choice but to play right into his hands by first working there, and then agreeing to partake in an after-hours 'shell game' for more money. In this bizarre ritual, a woman is locked in a transparent case and the payer can do what ever they want... to the shell. In theory, the woman should be safe as the shell is looked, but that doesn't render the whole experience any less terrifying.

Naturally, Dave seizes his opportunity, and such has been his unsettling demeanour that you have no idea what form of depravity he will unleash onto the shell. As a matter of fact, he dances in front of it!

The lousiness of Ben Mendelsohn's dancing in this scene, accentuated by the neon backdrop and the electro-score playing in the background, that the whole sequence is incredibly discombobulating. The way he looks at Billy whilst doing so, too, tells you that this is his idea of asserting his raw masculinity, a kind of recompense towards the woman who has had the temerity to turn him down.

As a very amusing stray piece of trivia, Ryan Gosling revealed that the music Mendelsohn had during this scene was 'Bad Bitches' by Kendrick Lamar, which would explain a threatening line of dialogue he barks at Hendrick's character whilst dancing at her. At the time I thought it was his character being crude, but now I see he was just quoting the song.

Ben Mendelsohn has plied his trade as an actor playing villains, of which Director Orson Krennic in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, an appropriately evil performance, will add to his litany of baddies. One such villainous turn from him that I particularly liked was as Payne in Slow West, a character who teases with an (almost ingratiatingly) amiable veneer, but deep down, you wouldn't trust them as far as you would throw them. Mendelsohn uses his whole face when acting (a quick sly look sideways, a twitch of the lips, a twist of the jaw) to convey thorny characters who occasionally let their masks slip.

Ben Mendelsohn didn't rise to prominence until relatively late in life (he's 47 now), but he has such a characteristic look about him, that once you see the Aussie in one role, you won't forget him. His acting style is distinctive but never distractingly mannered. As I've always said, I tend to identify more with villainous characters in movies, so it was only natural that I would gravitate towards Mendelsohn, who's ability to mould sinister antagonists in films is prenaturally good.

I'm delighted at how well things have gone for him (he is a massive Star Wars fanboy so getting to play the main antagonist in the film must have been a special moment) and eagerly await whatever film roles he takes next.

Review of the songs in the “Dynamic Duets” (S4E7) episode of Glee.

This episode was all about duets, and started with the Glee club, rather bizarrely, in a meeting for superheroes. My favourite of the rather eclectic bunch was Tina's guise as Asian Persuasian, naming her great power as Manipulation. Superheroes goes on to be a theme for the episode, as the singers don superhero attire in their performances. 

As Coach Bieste explains, when you don a cape, you become another person, not dissimilar to the effect of what happens when performing on stage. To that end, then, it seems an apt motif for the Glee club to take on this week.

Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

After eight years of relative inactivity in the streets of Gotham, mainly thanks to a Harvey Dent act – constructed in false honour of Harvey Two-face from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a recluse in his manor, hobbling around with a walking stick and never showing his face. However, he’s kicked back into life – quite literally – by Selina Kyle, a swish, sassy cat burglar who’s also not bad to look at. 

It soon transpires she’s working for a greater evil, Bane, a hulking badass who was born in a prison known as “hell on earth”. Walking around with a hugely creepy gas mask in front of his face and casually disposing of anyone who gets into his way, Bane christens himself “Gotham’s reckoning.” But Bruce Wayne, never one to take attack to his beloved city lying down, fancies letting Batman reckon with him.

Nolan’s final instalment of his epic Batman trilogy is the most ambitious of the three, and no shortage of love nor money has gone into creating it. Action sequences which would be hard to direct at the best of times are made ten times more so with the almost unmanageable size of the quantity of extras employed – the American football game stands out in particular here. 

There are one-on-one fight scenes, as well as thousands-on-thousands, and some of the martial arts sequences (particularly involving Selina Kyle aka Catwoman) are thrillingly choreographed. But the real challenge didn’t lie in any part of the action, but bringing the trilogy to a close in both an emotionally satisfying way, and one that did justice to the massive Batman franchise. Other critics have been left wanting by the ending, the direction of the film (at 164 minutes, it will test your bladder), as well as the sprawling nature of the screenplay.

Indeed, Nolan co-write this film with his brother Jonathan, and at times, the dialogue (between Batman and Bane in particular) feels twice as portentous as that of Inception, and, considering I sure-as-hell was no fan of Inception, that’s certainly saying something. Another aspect of the film that has bugged some people is that the majority of time, it was difficult to decipher what Bane was actually saying due to the mask in front of his face. 

This was infuriating and confusing, definitely, but overall, I was quite impressed with how it contributed to the eerie, ominous sense of the film. Then there are the plot holes. Usually when I watch a film, I choose to suspend belief and just go with it, but there were a few subtle things that even I couldn’t ignore – for example – how policemen who had been trapped under rubble for months were suddenly as sprightly and energetic as ever. I won’t reveal any others at the risk of spoiling the plot, but plot holes are so rife in the film that some wags have taken to giving TDKR the moniker “The Plot Holes Rises.”

But all this pales in comparison in the grand scheme of things, when the end product is so epic. Chris Nolan recruited the majority of the cast of Inception for The Dark Knight Rises, so he must really enjoy working with them. 

Of the Inception crew, Marion Cotillard impressed me the least here. There were times when her facial expressions were borderline Drama GCSE, and considering the amazingly accurate depiction of Edith Piaf she has given before, we all know she can do a lot better. 

Michael Caine was very good, as he has been throughout the trilogy, and he has a few heart-rending scenes in which he tells Bruce how much he means to him. But my favourite performance of the Inception bunch is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a John Blake, cop, who, like Wayne, is an orphan, and thus sees him as a kindred spirit. Blake is very resourceful and comes to Batman’s aid at various points throughout the film and makes for a commendable supporting hero. And as the baddy, Tom Hardy is absolutely terrifying. He had a thankless task, having to follow-up Heath Ledger's terrifying Joker as the Batman villain, but he gives Bane genuine malice when the character could have easily become a hilarious caricature and for that, Laurels should be given to Hardy (boom boom :p).

Christian Bale, surely one of the most versatile actors in Hollywood, takes the lead role again wonderfully. It doesn’t quite match up to his work in The Fighter, The Machinist or my personal favourite, All the Little Animals (remember that film? lol), but in a role that is so easy to get wrong, he gets pretty much everything right. 

However, every scene he shared with Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was stolen from her, for she was sensational. I had my qualms about seeing wholesome Princess Mia from The Princess Diaries playing such a sexy, amoral role, but Hathaway nails it. Her fight scenes are electrifying, and she deserves further plaudits when you consider she’s doing them in six-inch stiletto heels. Like a real cat, Hathaway slinks about the film like she owns it, and as a result, it really feels like she does. There’s also an engaging turn from English Rose Juno Temple as Catwoman’s friend and possible lover. Temple doesn’t do much, but it’s a proud moment to see her in such a huge blockbuster.

So engrossing that I did not check my phone once throughout the viewing of The Dark Knight Rises, I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough. It definitely has flaws, and several blog entries could be dedicated to the inconsistencies alone. But the overall good in the film – and boy, there is a lot of it – more than counterbalances it. 

Christopher Nolan has really done himself proud here, and for this alone, I am willing to forgive him for Inception (incidentally, Hans Zimmer’s score at points really do sound Inceptionish throughout the film (528491 from Inception sounds like it was played in every scene in TDKR), but we’ll allow). His brooding direction has given Batman what was seriously lacking in the previous cringeworthy George Clooney-starring Batman Forever films – soul. 

Much like Bruce Wayne, I haven’t been fulfilling my film critic duties much this year. But The Dark Knight Rises is my very own Bane, in that sense. The passion for cinema is back, all thanks to this film. 

And at the end of the day, there is no bigger compliment I can pay a film than that.

8/10