I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

http://www.restrainingbolt.com/ - this site is terrific! It's home to printable movie props. I now have Tyler Durden's business card in my purse, and a box of Red Apples on my desk at home. Hidden, in case my parents a) get alarmed I have a pack of cigarettes or b) get alarmed I've printed out and assembled a fictional pack of cigarettes. Either would be pretty bad.

Speaking of Tyler...me seen Fight Club. It wonderful. It would have been more wonderful had certain plot details not been known to me beforehand, but such is life. It probably would rank with my favourite films too had it not been thoroughly spoilt first (hence the title...)

Still...it doesn't rest on its twist alone, and there are plenty of other great things about it:

1) Marla Singer. Wow. She is so noir. I haven't been bowled over by a character's sense of style since Clem in Eternal Sunshine. Seriously, I still want to die my hair orange/blue after that. Back to Marla - she's just so out of control in an elegant, stylish sort of way and aside from the dash-consumerism theme of the film, has to be one of the best advertisments for smoking ever.

2) Speaking of style, the colour scheme in this film is wonderful. Think the first Matrix, all sickly greens and grubby. Beautiful!

3) The editing. Fantastic. I want to make my editor (my editor in inverted commas. She's an editor as far as I'm a director, which is not saying much...) see it.

4) The script. Some of the best and most savage one liners ever here. Comments about single-serving friends on airplanes, about posessions owning you all ring very true indeed. And the speeches? Ace also. I particularly enjoyed the Narrator's threatening monologue to his boss. Even the indecipherable comments like "I am Jack's tormented spleen" had a certain ring, even if their meaning's not clear.

5) The tagline - "Mischief. Mayhem. Soap." Pure Gilliam.

6) This speech by Brad Pitt aka Tyler Durden: "Is this essential to our survival? In the hunter-gathered sense of the word? No. What are we then? Right. We're consumers. We're by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty -- these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra..."

Now Brad was quite good in Fight Club, but he was even better in Twelve Monkeys. This speech by Brad Pitt aka Jeffrey Goines: "We are not productive anymore, they don't need us to make things anymore, it's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers. Okay, buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, you know what? You're mentally ill! That's a fact! If you don't buy things...toilet paper, new cars, computerized blenders, electrically operated sexual devices... (getting hysterical) SCREWDRIVERS WITH MINIATURE BUILT-IN RADAR DEVICES, STEREO SYSTEMS WITH BRAIN IMPLANTED HEADPHONES, VOICE- ACTIVATED COMPUTERS, AND..."

See where I'm coming from? Somehow, I think Jeffrey might have approved of Tyler. They would have got along well.

7) The DVD warning which flashes before the menu. The mischief begins before the movie...

8) Ooooh...running out of things now. The direction goes without saying, really. It was good. What else can I compliment? Basically, this is one of those rare films which deserves an award nod in every catagory. Except, possibly, best foreign language film, and I'm sure they could get around that somehow.

PS - a friend has decided we should do the Bond marathon. I nodded. What a mistake. I'm quite looking forward to it though...

Final word: My godawful complainin' days are over. At least on this topic. Somehow, a whole cabal of my friends have confessed to really wanting to see Reservoir Dogs, with only a tinsy little bit of pursasion, the odd heavy hint here and there and the occasional outright lie ("It's not that violent" comes top in that line. OK, so it's really not that violent - it's simply the way violence is portrayed which people find disturbing - but I'm not looking forward to defending that corner if by some unhappy chance they suffer from a more delicate stomach than me...I mean, at least there is plot behind the blood unlike, aka, Saw III which I hear has caused faintings throughout the country. Er, yeh. Seriously, it's a sequel sequel - nobody in those cinemas could not know what they were letting themselves in for) Now this, of course, has made me deleriously happy if somewhat uneasy i.e. I'm fine with complete amorality and goodness knows how many swear words, but my friends...well I just don't know.