Christmas Time. Vengeance is mine. Children weeping all of the time.

Here's a Christmas movie quiz. Very little additional help for ya'll, but if you need a clue, the internet is always at your disposal…

So why not give it a try? If you get all the answers right I promise to let them all go... who, you ask? That's for me to know and you to find in several different skips in the Berkshire area.

You can comment, Facebook or email your answers back to me and, if you are the first, you win a sticker (this is real. I have 2 stickers to give away). Yeah. Stickers. I bet you're thinking 'why, oh why, didn't I take the blue pill'

Anyways, happy landings.

1. How many gigawatts does it take to power a flux capacitor?
2. What kind of skills does Napoleon say he needs to get himself a date (other than owning a Sledgehammer or developing the ability to grow a moustache)?
3. What character links Christopher Nolan's debut film Following with his 2010 film, Inception?
4. What are the names of Alex's droogs?
5. Which characters does Mathilda dress up as during her game with Leon?
6. Can you name the creatures Dorothy so afraid of in the woods, other than flying monkeys obviously?
7. What is the name of Douglas Quaid's alter ego (or his other name, or his dream name, or real name, or whatever…)?
8. How many drummers have been in Spinal Tap?
9. What's 'like a virgin' really about?
10. What's the name of the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird?
11. According to Henry Jones, what is Indiana Jones' real first name, and who does he call himself 'Indiana' after?
12. Name the actor who portrayed Hitler's Downfall.
13. Robocop had 3 prime directives: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law. What's the secret 4th directive?
14. In The Night of the Hunter, what words are tattooed across Robert Mitchum's knuckles?
15. What happens if the groundhog sees a shadow?
16. Which instrument does Gene Hackman's character play in The Conversation
17. Which oscar winning film was a remake of Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs
18. See if you can name the American counterparts to these foreign language films too: REC, Reykjavik – Rotterdam, Seven Samurai and Let the Right One In.
19. Who played Rob Gretton and Martin Hannett in 24 Hour Party People?
20. Where's a good place to stay on Summer Isle (if you can stand the tinned fruit, missing pictures and creepy locals)?
21. Blow up is about a photographer who may have witnessed a murder. Who's the star?
22. How many Iron Man suits has Tony Stark been through already (up to and including The Avengers)?
23. According to Tyler Durden, what do you get if you mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate?
24. What was the working title of the first Scream movie (think about it)?
25. Explain the effect of crossing the streams (yeah, you might have to look this up, but what the hell…)?

Finish these written or spoken lines from classic films:

1. "Come quietly, or there will be….."
2. "Frank was here, went to get…"
3. "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a God, you say…"
4. "Some people call it a sling blade, I call it a…"
5. ""I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him." Well I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is…"
6. "Never mind that shit. Here comes…"
7. "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else…"
8. "You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to..."
9. "I'm not in the business…."
10. "You can't fight in here, this is the…"

Merry Christland Day. Enjoy your little faces off.

xxx

English Must Hard

This morning I decided it was high time to throw on my galoshes and take an extended stroll around the local community. No sooner had I removed my electronic tag and opened my Knife Crime Wound Spotters Guide, when some playful local oik approached me; “Dear Mr Savage, have you a copper to spare, I’m right on my uppers? I’ve n’er a single groat to spare for Special Brew.”

Post haste I replied, “Ahh, my sweaty, overweight, greasy, ugly, dim-witted friend. Fear not, for this is England. In this land of hard workers and strong backs you shall not go hungry. Go forth and work a day’s toil in my field, then thou shalt find me a generous master”.

When I woke, I continued my stroll to the nearest hospital to be treated for head wounds and report the theft of my almanac, my galoshes and everything I own.

Whilst making my way back to reservation towers, bandaged but proud, chomping on a cox’s and sporting a tweed bandana over my newly minted stiches, I took the chance to reflect on my Englishness.

I recently read an article about the national burden those German fellows feel in relation to their recent past and their desire to cover up their own history: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/16/bernhard-schlink-germany-burden-euro-crisis

Historian, philosopher and former judge Bernhard Schlink argues that the European project presented Germans with a chance to whitewash their history and replace it with the colours of the European dream. For Germans, the burden of shame stemming from the War and more specifically the holocaust, could be dissipated so long as their identity remained tied to a central European, rather than national, experience.

The faltering of the Euro has led to some describing German foreign and economic policy as dictatorial and ugly wounds have been reopened. If the European dream goes sour, Germans will be forced to confront their past once again.

Whilst the German experience has been examined and dissected, in no small part due to the West’s continuing obsession with Hitler as a kind of psychological bogeyman, I wonder how the English public would respond if they were to sum up their sense of nationality.

Many people seem to classify their relationship with their country as the same as their relationship with their flag – either hanging it out of the window to ‘reclaim’ it from the far right, or wincing at the sight of cars daubed with national emblems. This seems to be restricted to the English flag as there was something altogether more jolly about the Union Jack’s roger, which seems to be viewed as the kindly old aunt to the George’s Cross ASBO gathering teenager.

I can’t speak for the Scottish, Irish or Welsh relationship with their identity, but there seems to be an easy pride in the flying of the flag at least, something which English people seem to regard as a frontline in their national identity.

I hope that it is too simplistic to boil down the English experience to flag waver, flag hater, flag burner or flag ignorer, because a bit of cloth seems a rather pointless way to demonstrate your relationship with your country.

Whereas Germany has tried to position itself as part of a wider, cooperative community within Europe, the English have adopted the position of social pariahs, lurking at the fringes of the party, smiling at the host, but dissing their CD collection and stealing beers from the fridge when his back is turned.

The English seem to have a curious sense of false entitlement which stretches back to the chastening experience at the end of the war when foreign territories were handed back and the Empire was consigned to history. As my American friends ceaselessly remind me whenever a certain ‘George W’ is brought up, there isn’t many corners of the world that the English have failed to fuck up royally, something which we have never really been held account for.

Whereas Germans retreated from themselves by hurling themselves into the European Project, the English acted like spoilt adolescents, drunkenly swaggering around and picking fights whilst silently guarded by an American older brother, ready to knee the rest of the world in the balls if we get in a tizz, so long as we lend them our pocket money when they need to buy petrol.

English people seem to revel in our dominant ‘otherness’ and being viewed as eccentric or cynical while the rest of the world is emotional, excitable or moody. We position ourselves as above reproach, whilst going slightly bonkers, tortured by the memory of how we used to be contenders, a Miss Havisham of a country, jilted at the altar of history.

Looking online at the reaction to the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I tried to find comments to describe why so many people regarded it a success, especially as it was so individual. It was precisely its lack of a homogenising ‘one world’ corporate approach that seemed to make it so palatable. We know we’re odd, so you just have to go with it. And they did, American press reports gleefully passed the time commenting on the unique vision being somewhat baffling, hinting that it might have been a joke that the rest of the world simply didn’t get.

In spite of a spate of articles reflecting on what it means to be British, the English have so far remained immune to self-reflection or chastisement in relation to its sins and its responsibility to the rest of the world. All attempts to recognise ourselves as the cause of our own problems have been resisted, perhaps in fear of what we might find. Fingers have been placed in ears and we’ve started humming the theme to Super Ted.

Rioters remain chavs, protesters idealists and politicians fuckwits and everything is neatly explained away into its own little box, but sooner or later we are going to have to get to grips with ourselves or we might find that the after party has already started and no one gave us the address.

I guess it won’t matter. We seem to like it that way.

Goodbyeeee

Blog: Redux

The world needs better lighting.

We could also do with high fidelity sound and digitally enhanced colour. While we’re at it, can I order some jump cuts, Dutch angles and a red velvet curtain primed to descend when life gets too tricky? I could do with more montages when there’s hard work to do and more chance meetings with beautiful strangers who become instantly enthralled and seductive when I start blithering insecurely about spoons or milkshakes or catching ghosts.

I need a pithy and withering comeback for someone who barges past me in the queue at Tesco. Something to make them reconsider their life choices and reduce them to a burbling heap of angry tears. Then they transform into a mind altering cuttlefish of doom that I have to wrestle to the ground and behead with a spatula from the home wares section.

One thing’s for sure; if life were on film (the crazy, imagined, goblin fighting, ninja cat-scrap, dynamite version. Not the sofa jockey, haircut, tepid tea, bum picking version – i.e. reality) then I’m pretty sure it couldn’t be any less well received than Hollywood’s current output, which seems to be about as popular as a pie made of arses.

Looking through the movie blog bile duct (the internet), the anger and despondency seem to be divided into 5 categories of hatred. I like to call them;

The 5 Categories of Hatred *BOM, BOM, BOM*

(BOMs added for dramatic effect. Any relation to any BOMs living or dead is purely coincidental)

TV spin offs.

The Sweeny, The 3 Stooges, Miami Vice, even The Muppet’s Oscar baiting toe-tappery doesn’t cover up the fact that it’s pretty lazy. Chucking money at instantly recognisable no-brainers so they can expand their width from tellybox to bigtellybox doesn’t take a huge leap of faith does it? Come on Hollywood, if you had any guts you’d try the same with Rainbow or the Clangers or the weather. Surely Antiques Roadshow: Annihilation, is a summer hit waiting to happen?

Foreign Language minus Foreign Language.

Everyone likes homogenising, so REC becomes Quarantine, Let the Right one In becomes Let Me In and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo… stays exactly the bloody same, but with crap script and acting. Quite right too. All that wacky noise from foreign mouths and bizarre symbols no-one really understands is just a way for dusky looking otherplacers to try to be smug. Let’s get Justin Timberlake and Orlando Bloom in and remake Triumph of the Will.

Comic book adaptations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all love whining about this shizzle, whilst slapping our tenners down on the counter of the Odeon popcorn hut; “I think Hollywood is a machine, designed to exploit established pop culture lamb chops, because it’s too lazy to season and prepare the filet mignon of tough and troubling, blah, blah, bumcakes, let off, wee, poo, cocknoise.”

Sequels, reboots and the seemingly bloody endless stream of vampire movies.

Speaks for itself…

Remakes

Nothing espouses more Soylent Green infested, guttural bile from the mouths of filmgoers than a straight up, merchandise hag, ‘buy yourself a ticket and I’ll tickle your balls’ remake. The potential harm remakes can inflict on an audience is most evident in the horror genre. At a creative peak during the 80s, poorly backed directors exploited the shock value created by handwringing censors and religious zeal, to grab attention, scream their guts up and satirise the age.

Fearlessly moist, fingers aloft and buttocks clenched, Sam Raimi, George Romero and Peter Jackson forged reputations. Now endlessly re-jiggled, classic zeitgeist gorefests have been boiled down and Hollywoodefecated until they retain the shock value of a rude and amusingly shaped carrot.

The remake backlash is strong and the arguments are endlessly trotted out as an example of the decline of the film industry. Still, I don’t remember anyone getting on at the RSC about their constant remakes of bloody Hamlet, or the ‘Richard’ trilogy that keeps popping up (I didn’t see the first one, but the sequels were ace). Come on Stratford, isn’t it about time you got a new flavour?

Well, no. No it isn’t. I’ve never been sure why remakes are immediately derided before even having been watched. Sadly, the wages and the potential profits involved mean there’s a deep suspicion it’s only trotted out for the benefit of people with deep pockets which weighs heavily on the back of directors, who in turn seem reluctant to try anything more radical than concoct a misty eyed episode of ‘I love 1982’ and be sure to name check all the ‘classic moments’ from the original.

The fact that most remakes are indeed cack doesn’t help, but simply being a remake doesn’t instantly equate to a bad film. It’s very hip to sit around in café bars, examining your vintage iPad collection and emitting high pitched squeals of derision about the lack of Hollywood creativity. It’s even easier to forget True Grit, The Fly and A Little Princess and only remember the turd stained undercarriage of Psycho, Planet of the Apes and The Wicker Man (“Not the bees!!!”).

Still, I don’t ever remember any directors or actors dropping much ‘new and exciting’ out of their collective bum hole in the recent past. If Seth Rogen, Christopher Nolan, Will Ferrell or George Clooney pitched a Victorian period drama about a terminally ill squirrel living in a wood made of car parts fighting a giant talking squid, the studios would probably see where they went with it, offer them a $100million budget, then dismiss it as a vanity project if it all went tits to the sky and bombed like Kevin Costner on a U-Boat.

The studios can only develop what’s out there, folks. Yes, we know they’re morons, but until the people who own the thinking caps start trying harder, rebelling against the studios or abandoning the gravy train, the whinging will go on for a long time to come. It’s not all bad. Go watch Submarine.

Lotsoflove xx

Back to the Present

And so…

Where once was calm, only chaos reigns.

The Earth is in the early throes of the second dark ages. The Book of the Dead has been opened and incantations of a deadly nature have been uttered. Where once professors with wild notions leapt from buttock to buttock with excitement at the prospect of creating a world where we summon the spirits of the past to instruct our future, now only glance suspiciously out of the log cabin window and await the sound of a cackling moose which signals their doom.

Dark forces circle like herds of cattle. Evil, demented, wild-horned cattle. Their once soft lowing now taint the air with their bovine wails. Zombie Cattle. Zombie Cattle from Mars. Cattle with Guns. Yeah, big laser guns that melt your eyes and rattle your teeth.

Humanity, morality, underpant elasticity… once constant and reassuring bastions of stability now fluctuate wildly and our lives spin dizzyingly out of control as we lack a moral compass to guide us. Even now the undead walk the earth, chanting repetitious bile from our telly boxes and radiotrons to keep us just bored enough. All the while, the detritus of what they have us consume clogs up our veins and our seas. The sun scorches our backs, but all we can do is lather up and sit burning under the decaying skyline. Wizards live in trees. A lamb shot a pensioner. Cupcakes give you cancer. It’s all true; I read it in a newspaper.

The modern world is failing and flailing, hunched under the weight of its own expectations and repeatedly slapping itself across the forehead in disgust. We are connected but distant, kept as pets by wax eyed automatons who occupy government while we provide compliant defiance by occupying the bit of concrete outside. Financial spivs treat the world like their own personal Playmobil barnyard, to rearrange and break at will and keeping us looking at the moving cups rather than the ball. Blood is pouring from the cracks in the wall and our own hand is trying to choke us.

Somewhere, quietly, in a backroom next to nowhere, a cold, desperate and desolate figure begins to cough and shake. Could there be life? Could there be someone to pick up the chainsaw of truth, to once again wield the shotgun of fury, to go down into that dark and terrifying cellar ready to ‘carve ourselves a witch’?

Yeah, I guess I’m back…

Groovy.

Hubris aside, since my last post (March? Really? How cruelly you have been neglected my faithful few) I do feel that there has been a lot more to be positive about. Perhaps it’s the Olympic hip-hip-hooraying epidemic that has me all mollycoddled and cutie-pied or maybe it was the tedious perma-drizzle giving way to ten seconds straight of good weather, but I was feeling pretty good and also pretty silent.

However, recently the dark clouds have begun to gather once again. American Senate candidate Todd Akin stuck his finger in the brain pie and pulled out the plum of ‘legitimate rape’. Lucky for us all, George Galloway waded into the rape debate and had a similar revelation that if you’re asleep (or drugged or mute or dead) you’re fair game, which is pleasing to hear, as I’m planning  to release a hoard of death row inmates into his bedroom at 3am to see how their ‘bad sexual etiquette’ impacted on his morning. Happily, as with everything that George Galloway says, does or even imagines, during the act of expressing his opinion, he simultaneously reminds everyone that his opinion can’t be taken seriously. It’s a sort of Mobius band of infinite twatbadgery.

Mitt Romney (est. wealth: $190-250 million. Hmmmmm…) danced into the popular consciousness as the Republican presidential candidate (Just think about that... This man could potentially become the owner of the finger dilly dallying over the nuclear button whilst looking at a picture of Iran on his wall and secretly hoping the coin lands tail side down. I wonder if he’d remain Pro-Life when it does) and apparently has an eye on increased military spending, expanding the death penalty and drilling a big hole in Alaska so he’s got somewhere to stick the straw and ‘drink their milkshake’.

Then there was Julian Assange letting down his golden hair from the Ecuadorian balcony for giddy journalists to scamper up and send everyone into a moral quandary over the fit and proper nature of his Ecuadorian sponsorship (which was reported along the lines of: ‘Ecuador. Why, oh why, oh why…’) and remind everyone that although his work, his website and his stance are not only right but required,  J-Ass the man is at best a bit of a tit and at worst a rapist who deserves to be tried and convicted for that crime.

In amongst it all, Georgie Porgie Osbourne can still be seen doodling pictures of helter-skelters and cobwebs in his exercise books whilst we surf a tidal wave of bullshit, Nick Clegg is still pretty sure he’s relevant and Camerobot2000 continues to channel the spirit of Kipling by meeting triumph and disaster and treating those two imposters just the same. As disaster.

Between Harry Hewitt’s twirling scrotum, continuing council cuts, The Unamazing Spider Man and the resurfacing of the Spice Girls for the taxi ride from hell, it seems there is, just as ever, reasons to be furious.

So with more of a spring in my step than a Brazilian Paralympian on a tightly wound trampoline, I leap back into the world of denouncing, decrying and decomposing for your viewing pleasure.

Beware. Once again, there be beasties here….

Isolation approximation

Blog me up, buttercup...

After spending a hard day toiling unflinchingly at the furious, white knuckle coalface of minor administration I'm lucky that when I'm released back into the the real world, I live in a kind of perpetual Cheers bar of bonhomie giddiness.

I can walk freely through every town and city of the globe, backslapped and 'go get em-ed'. I'm cheered and winked (WINKED) at by passers by who are eager to embrace my every move and support me along the yellow brick road of life. Everybody not only knows my name, but wants to take my name out for a candlelit supper and canoodle on a rowboat in springtime, take my name out for an awkward second date that failed to rekindle the magic, before ultimately declaring 'it's complicated' on Facebook and then never calling my name again. Poor my name. Always the bridesmaid.

Sadly, much like my name's dreams of a union that goes past the feeling up stage, my cheery, daisy chain, hippy commune fantasy is bothersomely deluded. Recently, while walking through town I'm feeling less and less like Sam Malone and more and more like there's ghosts everywhere. Dark silhouettes of danger, loaded with the potential to want to fight you, rob you or squawk ugly challenges in your general direction. Perhaps my failed dreamland fantasy of other people simply being extras in my own personal deodorant commercial has turned into bitterness and, in a fit of pique, my brain has created another, darker, fantasy. My head has constructed a mysterious world, populated by shadowy figures waiting to test my pain threshold with their fists.

What could easily be elderly men chatting to their grandchildren on the phone has become beer bottled, broken jawed, sawn off shotgun owners, mumbling the addresses of their latest hits to their mob paymasters. A group of youngsters on their way back from the gym are transposed into unshaven crack heads with riot hangovers, loaded with simmering desires to kick my face off my face, leaving me with a kind of pulpy mass where once my delicious features sat.

I'm not sure where it comes from. Is this fear a result of my disappointment now morphing into silent self harm, where fear and danger become the default setting for perceiving my world?When did it start, this walking around with eyes on the floor, avoiding people's gaze, waiting for a glass bottle to be pushed into my brain cavity by an imagined assailant? Why do we perceive the stranger as a ghost that you try to see right through rather than look at, to fear rather than ignore, to label rather than excuse?

Natural introversion is no bad thing despite the stigma the modern world tries to put on it. We put a lot of stock in extrovert toss bags who clutter up day to day life by appearing to be smarter, more 'on the ball' or even (sweet Jesus, NOOOOOOOO) have more friends than you simply because they squark the loudest in meetings and have the concentration span of a goldfish with Alzheimer's.

People like this are the kind of onion faced, cack eyed weasels who end up doing some kind of marketing knob-hole job, getting paid to swan up to you in the street, steal all the oxygen in the world by spouting pointless rhetoric designed to entice you to buy this tat or other, have 'banter' with you and then disappoint everyone by failing to crash through the window of a moving articulated lorry or duck the hot knives you've just launched towards their eyelids.

Introversion is not the same as shyness. Just because you don't high five everyone you meet is not the same as worrying about social disapproval or stigma until it prevents you from doing as you ple-diddly-ase. But when introversion becomes mutilated by shyness, it becomes suspicious or isolating. Then you can find yourself wandering in a world of fear, trying to see around corners or avoiding eye contact with both cuddly charity shop workers and slavering rapists alike.

I suppose there's a middle ground somewhere. If people didn't have a safety net of avoiding strangers we'd all be swanning up to every wrong'un on the street, trying to make small talk with murderers and excusing people who fart on buses. But I'll wager that no introvert ever got themselves into a scrap on a Saturday night, or a bellowing festival with a klaxon mouthed bint accusing you of 'looking at me'.

The other golden rule is to never take unnecessary risks. Unless you have a handy friend in marketing with you, then everyone will keep the fuck away.

Until next week, sexy.

I'mjustputtingonmytophat....

A lasting impression

Blog looks like a lady...

I forget the name of the minstrel who first uttered the immortal, haunting words:

"The very first time that I saw your brown eyes, your lips said hello and I said hi..."

My initial thoughts led me to Confucius, via Victor Hugo... or was it Shakespeare, Petrarch, Barlow?

For those of you looking smug, remembering back to your early 90's heyday, I can tell you that it wasn't even the twin forces of Brian Harvey's East 17 and Gabrielle (who first brought these beloved verses into the hearts of the nation in 1997) who actually wrote this lyrical ballad. In actually it was the great Carl Martin who penned this mastodon of melody.

What? Surely not THAT Carl Martin? Not the Carl Martin who was a member of 90's boy-band pan flashers Shai? Not Carl Martin, formerly of Howard University who formed the group aged 18 with college friends and who went on to submit the single "The Place Where You Belong" for the Beverly Hills Cop III soundtrack which placed at number 42 in the US charts? Yes, it was he, that very same songsmith who accomplished all the feats listed above, who also penned the thoughtful lines that open this blog.

Say what you want about Carl Martin (which I assume is absolutely nothing at all), he knew the value of making the right first impression. He knew this, apparently most acutely, when gurning in the general direction of a presumably startled, hazel eyed floozy who can only blither a startled "hello" before leaping in, breathlessly uttering bold and impassioned rhetoric, such as "Hi".

But Carl 'knew right from the start'. I too know the value of a great first impression, especially when I'm hanging around a wooded area, wearing my cut out cardboard Carl Martin mask over my own face and jumping out on dog walkers from behind a spruce and screaming "HIIIII" into their astonished faces, before making my escape to the chorus of rape alarms and hysterical screaming that usually signal the end of another successful date.

And it's not only woodland predators and chart botherers who can appreciate how important a good first impression can be. The recent Match.com adverts that have been plastered all over my tellybox espouse the benefits of instant attraction to the mating ritual (getting laid) and the importance of seizing upon that first chance meeting to snare your perfect partner. The fact that they do this by puzzlingly featuring a flaccid eyed, ukulele plucking tossbadger ("The girl on the platform smiled...") smugly serenading a stranger like he's a George Formby impersonator making a public information film warning commuters against dangerous stalkers, is beside the point.

Sadly not all first impressions go as smoothly as they do for the train stalker, whos' artless plucking (...I said 'plucking') eventually wins him a date and presumably the lifting of the restraining order. Most right thinking people would instantly assume that a man standing opposite them on a deserted railway platform and singing a song to himself about the colour of your hair is either an escaped convict, a dangerous sex pest or from Coventry.

Most first impressions are made within seconds of meeting, or even hearing the voice of, another person. It's depressing, but a fact that in my new job of sifting through CVs for suitable candidates to fill various teaching roles, the brutal reality is that my left wing champagne socialist ideas fly out the window quicker than a half eaten spam fritter from a bulimics' car.

I've become lost in a fog of requirements and mired in the soil of a lazy desire for an easy life, so I find myself taking less and less time considering each application especially if there is anything quirky or unexplained. Sometimes I find myself zoning out mere seconds into an interview because I already know that the person on the other end of the line didn't fulfil some mysterious wish list of 'needs', 'wants' and 'might possibly consider if I really can't be arseds'.

People have an in built 'kill switch' when it comes to new people that kicks in after the first 10 seconds of seeing someone. On one hand, it protects us from potentially dangerous liaisons with nutbars on train platforms, but it often leaves us perpetually afraid. I suppose this tendency towards making an instant judgement served as part of a long docile survival instinct, the same animal tendency that prevents lonely wildebeest shuffling up to lionesses, holding a tray of mixed canapes and making small talk about the state of the England team. Then again, as it's unlikely in most human encounters that a perfect stranger is sizing you up for a between meal snack and wondering how best to get that difficult but tasty meat from between the more fiddly bones in your spine, this instinct seems at best defunct and at worst totally isolating.

It's a sad part of our nature that so many people fear what they don't know, especially when it leads to more profound restrictions, cutting them off on an island of their own tastes, their own ideologies or perhaps their own company. Before we all start getting out our E17 back catalogue and heading for the nearest wood though, perhaps it is good to remember that privacy is one of the rights that makes us civilised. We don't have to like everybody, but being a miserable fucker is a different kettle of cod.

Unless you're carrying a ukulele, in which case you'd better get with the programme. Get a Carl Martin CD on and let the good times roll.

Night night cupcakes.

Daydreambelieverandahomecomingquee-eee-ee-eeeen

R.I.P Davy Jones.

Sleep queasy

Blogbeat, the word is on the street...

If I was to march into a room during a dinner party and declare at the top of my lungs that I was being hunted by a giant seal with the skin of a cactus and the voice of Martin Clunes, I'd be derided as an idiot, hauled into a separate room away from where the cheese course was being served and immediately be shot in the head with a crossbow, so that my pink brains were splattered across the walls like it was the inside of Bernard Matthews shed.

However, in the world of my dreams, my lunatic exclamation would be met with sorry acceptance from the assembled guests who would silently turn away to gaze apathetically out of the window across the salty planes and beyond the orange river running through the forest of guts.

Obviously, many people have dreams. Most of us in fact. Sometimes our dreams remember our 4 little children, sometimes they're interpreted by lengthy bearded hippies, or intellectual cigar chompers, preying on our insecurities. Sometimes our dreams scare us with their truth or simplicity, or because we don't like the thought of being chased by an army of plastic mannequin legs. In fact, most dreams are such a tornado of the personal and comforting, the unsettling and bizarre, that it's a wonder that we are ever able to sleep through them at all.

I've spent quite a lot of my twenties wrestling with the ticklish problem of getting to sleep. If you're lying in bed and start to think about doing it, you can't. If you're trying not to do it like while you're sitting in a church, driving on a motorway or attending a child's birth, nothing could come more easily.

I find that I need a failsafe; some kind of ludicrous drizzle of thought to think on in an attempt to 'trick' my brain into believing it's asleep and leaving my imagination take up the narrative automatically and drive the autopilot of my mind into sleepyville. My current favourite is to imagine I'm taking part in a massive competition to see how long I can stand on my head for. The ludicrous image of hundreds of people in row upon row of arse over titedness of set against the tedium of the endurance contest somehow combines the dreary and the ridiculous effectively enough to switch my mind on standby. It's a bit like imagining you're listening to a Newsnight debate on the colour of peanuts.

I'm not sure that it's a measure of my insomnia growing or a symptom of simply being too bored to sleep that I have to resort to waking dreams before slipping into an otherworldly coma. Perhaps it's a concealed desire to resurrect a part of my brain that becomes more and more underused the older I get - the simple, resuscitating power of imagination.

I'm envious of children who use dolls and action figures to construct elaborate worlds that exist in an imaginative universe. The power struggles of little green army men, facing an evil and tormenting plastic skeleton (won from a grizzly toothed carny in a ball throwing game) all the while controlled by my own omniscient and unflinching hand, were perpetual battles on my blue carpet when I was nipper. This followed an afternoon spent constructing impenetrable fortresses out of bedclothes and scaling the insurmountable mountain summit of my stairs using only tied together dressing gown belts.

The more I disappeared into whatever insane, nonsensical, misogynistic and derivative universe my friends and I had the care to recreate, the Z'ds followed as easily as cows up an abattoir conveyor belt. The more time I spend in my adult life, circumnavigating my own imagination and relying on TV, interweb, computer screens and staring at neighbours through my steamed up binoculars, the less I'm able to suspend the real world and wonder into snooze town.

Perhaps I'm a victim of my own desire to be switched on, alert and 'living in the real world'. A little suspension of disbelief could well be the remedy to induce narcolepsy.

Thank the lord there's still delicious rum to guide me into the abyss. Pirates are never wrong.

Later dudes. xx

IfyoustrikemedownIshallbecomemorepowerfulthanyoucouldpossiblyimagine.

Re-run Around #2

CHINATOWN

The private eye thriller is a well worn path, trodden by films since time was time and secrets were secrets. Vivid images come naturally to mind at the mention of the genre: incriminating photographs taken from unsecured rooftops. Trilby's shadowing grim faced ex-cops. Smokey eye'd, smouldering, cupid-bow lipped molls. Dirty fingered exchanges of cash, loot and threats.

All these cliches are present and incorrect in Roman Polanski's 1974 noir Chinatown, captured so perfectly that within the first ten minutes you feel comfortable inhabiting the offices of Jake Gittes's private detective agency as if you yourself have a wayward husband and you need a PI to snoop out the misdeeds.

Jack Nicholson lives, breathes and reclines in the role of Jake, showing his now customary combination of slick seduction and manic danger. Set during the chronic water shortages that blighted 1930's LA, Gittes is an ex-cop escaping the pressure and danger of working in Chinatown to take up more slippery work, uncovering private indiscretions for the highest bidder.

Jake is hired by the wife of a prominent water engineer Hollis Mulwray who is apparently playing away from home. With precision, Jake photographs and discredits Mulwray's reputation and soon Mulwray's body is found washed up in the reservoir. Nicholson is pitch perfect in his portrayal of the hardened ex-cop taking a sly relish in his work, enjoying operating on the fringes of the law he once upheld in Chinatown.

However the conventionality of the film begins to twist as, in the ensuing scandal, Jake becomes aware that he was hired by an impostor. Jake's incredulity is matched by a newly invigorated passion to discover who is responsible for fooling him and why. Soon it becomes clear that he has been dragged into a battle for control of the water supply to the city and must challenge sinister corporate faces with dark fingers lining the pockets of city officials, if he is to find the truth.

By resisting the urge to use a conventional voice over, Polanski draws his audience into the world of Jake, uncovering the clues as he does, taking each step alongside him and becoming just as emotionally entangled in the plot. Jake's profession is a paradox of uncovering what is hidden by exposing what is seen through the lens of a camera and we as an audience take the same journey to discover each delicious nugget of truth served up in tantalising portions on the screen.

Chinatown becomes a paradox in it's own right, a juxtaposition of horror and joy. The joy in the film lies in uncovering each mystery, of piecing together how Mulwray's true wife, played with understated regality by Faye Dunaway, fits into the schemes of her wealthy father who has vested interest in the water supply. The horror in the film comes when we realise that uncovering that which is hidden, leads Jake to face dark secrets and subversive lives.

The legacy of Chinatown is clear in its familiarity. The cliches are a flattery, the copy cats a homage. Such is it's influence that a second look at LA Confidential, Blade Runner (at least in the directors cut) or Who Framed Roger Rabbit are a deja-vu. However, the real legacy of Chinatown is as a pillar of storytelling without patronising or over indulging your audience with distractions and grandstanding. Polanski treats us as grown ups, capable of discovering the nature of people and being horrified by the consequences.

This is never truer than as Jake makes his final and brutally dark discovery. A discovery which subverts both the genre and most people's fundamental understanding of what people are capable of. Jake is forced to realise that sometimes the horror is just too great, justice no longer worth the sacrifice. So, just like Jake, the audience cannot help but look away as the edifice of slick PI's, corporate money men and finding redemption in truth are torn apart by the gruesome nature of the world we live in.

"Forget it Jake... it's Chinatown"

xx

Derisory Inquiry

Blog Hawk Down

As is customary for a Wednesday morning, the tendrils of the dawn light rip open my sleep and I step dry mouthed and dizzy from bed (nearly tripping over the hooker's corpse) and into the bathroom for a shower and a fag, all the while consumed with hangover regrets. How did a 'quick ale' in the Lamb and Screwdriver turn into a 8 hour search for liver failure? Did I really declare all cheesy snacks crack lined agents of the devil and start a fight with a bag of Quavers? Could it be true that spray paint doesn't come off tombstones? Does a whole bottle of rum constitute 'reasonable doubt'? I'm sure you know the feeling.

After a refreshing Alka Seltzer enema and a few hours on the sofa weeping and shivering like a puppy in an RSPCA advert, I'm back on form with a determination to forget everything that went before. It's in these brief moments of sobriety that I'm prone to ponder why any sane person would then wish to assemble a panel of their friends together the next day and joyfully pick at the carrion of the previous night's debauchery like insects suckling on a cream horn.

Why gather braying, giggle trumpet pals to reminisce about your indiscretion with a hose? I try to ignore times when alcohol releases inhibitions by continuing to test my theory that drinking Toilet Duck can induce amnesia.

"Sure thing Alan, lets meet up down the pub, re-live some horrors I can't alter. While we're at it, why not invite all my ex-girlfriends over to discuss my individual failures armed with penknives and pepper spray? We could bring along an old school teacher and go over my lack of talent, perhaps uncover the reason I spend my days morosely tippy-tappying into a keyboard rather than building a business empire, dating international catwalk models, selling T-Shirts of my face and establishing a private army? Is that what you want? Is it Alan? What good would it do me now, Alan? WHAT GOOD WOULD IT DO ME NOW? YOU GUSHING TURDHOLE OF A PERSON, ALAN. ...what's that? Yeah, I'll see you Friday."

I really can't understand anyone wanting to haul their conscience over the hot coals of shame and make bold claims that "it could never happen again", whilst simultaneously turning hair of the dog into an Oliver Reed tribute concert and getting just as leathered all over again. It seems to me that gathering more tits in one place than Jordan's Guide To Ornithology and discussing my failure to keep my trousers on in a nightclub, has no effect whatsoever as a preventative measure for future idiocy.

I suppose it's fashionable to have a retrospective inquiry into mismanagement, misdemeanors and mistakes despite the fact that the horse has not only bolted but has run out of the paddock, spent all his sugar lumps down the dogs and been forced to live rough on the streets selling his arse for glue. Every time things are buggered, we like to celebrate the fuckupishness off it all with a big inquiry party and pick over the bones.

Leveson, Chilcot, The 9/11 Commissionandonandonandon. Nothing says 'Western Regret' quite like governments screwing up royally and, fearing the public are getting a bit miffed about all this murder and mismanagement, scrambling to avoid actually altering their ways by having a good old hand wringing session at an inquiry.

The standard model for an independent inquiry is to get some dusty bookend peer with time to spare between AA meetings and thrashing his children to sit at the end of a long table and fall asleep while bickering law schoolers spout non-sensical guff towards minor celebrities (like the Prime Minister) and look very pleased about how much they're getting paid.

Everyone called before an Independent Inquiry adopts the correct facial expression (an alarming combination of seriousness and attempting to break the world record for holding marbles up their bumhole) to give their version of events. Although, oddly enough, their 'version of events' always miraculously points the blame in every direction other than their own. The inquiry becomes little more than a desperate attempt to cover more arses than the trilby department of a Topman factory. On top of this, the process goes on so long that independent inquiries now appear to be a new kind of endurance sport where the winner is determined as the person who doesn't die of old age before the end.

These thrilling sessions are usually followed up by a handy 30,000 page report that no-one bothers to read and half arsed calls for an 'overhaul' of something or other, leaving all involved free to pat their bellies in a self congratulatory way and put in an order for enough Guylian chocolates to double the GDP of Belgium. By this point the press and public are so disinterested they can't remember the thing that was so wrong in the first place that we needed and inquiry to investigate it, and the calls for the overhaul in question are highlighted on That's Britain in a hilarious skit entitled 'political correctness gone mad!'

My favorite inquiry of the last week was investigating the high cost of the closing ceremony at last summer's under 20 Football World Cup, especially the payment of $12,000 to retain the services of a shaman employed to prevent rain. As organiser Martha Ana Pizarro rightly points out, "It didn't rain. We'd use him again", a particularly encouraging outcome for me as my meteorite preventing tea-cosy is currently available to the highest bidder on Ebay.

It seems that people are now asking awkward questions as to why sinister executives enticed a terrified, pig fearing government to fork out cash like Scrooge McDuck in Vegas on enough flu vaccine to allow us to cut off the heating in every nursing home in Britain and still keep the residents cough free until the rapture. Various agencies are united in 'calls' for an inquiry, presumably by hanging about in the woods with a special whistle, hoping an inquiry rears it's head up long enough to be pumped full of buckshot.

In that vein I look forward to a future Mirror Replacement Programme where Tamiflu executives are installed behind your bathroom reflection weeping for your future and humming a funeral durge each time you look inside the medicine cabinet for Lemsip or moan about a vague feeling of dreariness.

Any hope that future generations might learn from the past by ceaseless inquisitions probably rests on our own ability to press gang nervous officials to act responsibly and with accountability, but right now it seems that repenting at leisure is the only way forwards. Makes you want to turn to drink, doesn't it?

Come on. I'm buying...

Solongandthanksforallthefish xxx

Re-run Around #1

Note from the Reservation:

As of this week my ranting, non-sensical and semi-coherant views on retro movies are being inflicted on the population as a whole via Source Radio. If you have no regard for your sanity, you can catch my retro movie reviews live and in living sound-o-rama every other Wednesday. If you fancy, you can catch up (Retro-retro-reviews, anyone?) on this weeks review here

I'll be following each one up with a written version which replace banal mutterings with banal scribblings, but will still be a damn sight better than Radio 1's.

Thanks for listening, enjoy the film.

NETWORK.

The 1960's and 70's saw society lurch forwards into a new age of enlightenment, fighting the trends that had restricted and restrained society, popular culture and embittered people's lives. The sexual revolution, drug counter-culture, black rights, women's rights and the rise of populist television made for a molotov cocktail of conflicting and emboldening viewpoints, especially in the United States, where an increasingly enraged public fought a war on intellectual frontiers.

For the baby boomers, their war wasn't on the battlefield. They paid no homage to those who returned from World War II and opposed the anti-communist strategy in Vietnam. Their rage, fear and mistrust of the government was growing as was a sense of disenfranchisement. Hollywood was becoming a melting pot of political and social agendas and with a government isolated and mistrusted and television media outlets compromised, it was Hollywood who held a prism up to society, at once reflecting and refracting the concerns of the populace.

Set in the world of a fictional 4th television network within the American broadcasting system, Network was born out of these concerns and used both satire and realism to create a grand allegorical parable, warning this enraged generation that their rage and their desire for change could be manipulated and redirected by the one tool that was bringing them all together: television.

In the fictional network UBS, television news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) becomes increasingly morose as the measure of his success becomes reduced to ratings rather than factual content, until the time comes when his boss and great friend Max Schumacher (William Holden) is forced to fire Howard to appease the new owners of the Network, CCS. It's only when Howard returns to give one of his last shows as news anchor that he informs the public, live on air, that he intends to shoot himself on camera and quips that the ratings will soar.

At first, all hell breaks loose and Howard agrees to apologise, only to embark on a live, on air rant against the 'Bullshit' society that allows the hypocrisy of the world to continue unchecked. This public meltdown creates huge controversy, but at the same time, manipulative bosses played by Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall conspire to turn the news into an entertainment show, placing Howard's rants as the centrepiece and 'articulate the public rage' all for a larger share of the ratings.

As Howard's sanity gives way, his speeches become more and more alarming, culminating with his furious bellowing of "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" in a barnstorming performance from Peter Finch. The audience, finding in Howard, someone to represent their isolation and anger, lap it up and the machine of the corporation turns this disturbed man into the biggest thing on television. In doing so, the producers make rage mainstream, fury primetime and the exciting banal. The 'whorehouse' network which has solicited ratings from every possible source can now use the counterculture movement to distract and placate the population whilst at the same time insulating the public from the horrors of the age.

Part of the genius of Sidney Lumet's direction lies in how the details of the film were designed to reflect the central corruption by the networks, who streamline feelings into ratings. The film itself manipulates the audience into compliance through the lighting set up, which at the start of the film is whitewashed and grey, gradually improving throughout until the final scenes are as glossy and 'television' as possible.

The film is also strangely prophetic, as eventually Fox became the 4th US Network and their News programme is often little more than table thumping rhetoric designed to entertain and editorialise rather than impartially relay current events. The anchors on Fox News sometimes make Howard Beale's enraged rabble rousing seem positively tame in comparison, seeming more like a call to arms than a factual programme.

Following Max's sacking when he opposes the exploitation of Howard, he embarks on an affair with one of the bosses responsible for keeping Howard on the air. Faye Dunaway's depiction of a woman in a man's world, sees her strip her character of emotion, feeling and sexuality. She explains to Max that she loves like a man, "Arousing quickly, consummating prematurely", while Max retains his humanity as he is in the twilight of his years, seeing death as real with 'definable features' and wrestling with the guilt of leaving his family for a person who reduces human life to "the rubble of banality". The story itself becomes melodrama, moving between emotive afternoon play sentimentality to the stark reality of modern living. The film Network takes on a new life, aping the affectations of TV and reflecting how it reduces the human experience into soundbites, seconds and ratings.

As Howard becomes increasingly unhinged, he eventually directs a tirade against the network bosses for a proposed deal with Saudi Arabia, to the great displeasure of the head of the corporate machine Mr. Jenson (Ned Beatty). He is summonsed into the grand boardroom of CCS and stands before Jenson who, in the most memorable section of the film, sells his philosphy. In explaining to Howard that there are no peoples, there are no freedoms, there are no democracies, there is only a system of businesses and money that unite the world, he foretells the future of both television and delivers a pointed warning to politics that it is corporations not elected officials that control our lives and, far from informing us, television is there to insulate and alienate us from the machinations of a world we don't understand.

The philosophy of Jenson is where the film is at it's most terrifyingly prophetic. The financial crisis gave us an insight into how faceless banks and corporations affect us, right down to our jobs, our food and shelter and our health, yet we were totally unaware. As television news struggled to explain the intricacies of how this all worked, to a public starved of transparency for so long, we can see how ill-equiped the instrument of television is to inform us. Its forgotten how to.

Where Network fails is that there are so many targets, so many sub-plots, so many issues to uncover. The danger with this is, although all are valid, the arrows of satire can sometimes miss the mark, simply because there are too many to hit such a small bullseye, perhaps a reason Sidney Lumet missed out on the Best Director Academy Award that year, as he struggled to reign in the strands of the film.

However, this is a minor issue that should not distract from the importance of this film as a prophetic and satirical miracle that is so relevant today, it actually makes you wonder just how many of the problems we have could have been avoided if Hollywood, TV and our media could only continue to be so brave.

And it's bloody entertaining. The greatest show on Earth.

Sametimenextweeksamebattimesamebatchannel.

Past Perfect (and) Tense

The blogtown rat...

Never let it be said that I don't move with the times (for if thou shalt besmirch me so, I shall offer you out on the cobbles for a darn good thrashing with a rolled up newspaper and mine butler's heel) as here at Reservation Towers we are constantly striving for new and modern living. Our sound system, RoBono, pipes bland, self important muzak into my brainspace 28 hours a day. I get world information through News Internanal, a continual news feed that keeps me up to date on current events through the medium of my own colonic irrigation detritus being spread onto the bathroom window whilst my personal psychic steals the spirit of Rupert Murdoch from his own weakling frame long enough for a ghostly forefinger to smear cryptic messages into the grizzly mess outlining the current status of the Levinson enquiry. Our big screen entertainment is obtained entirely out of my newly installed 4D Tellysaurus which allows you to wallow in the self satisfied smell of Jamie Oliver's farts as he squirts the recipe for plastic olives out of his pudgy jowls.

Not every mansion (everyone has one of those, right?) can be as rad as that though. Apart from looters with a local Curry's and a handy homemade cosh, most people have to pay for such sublime entertainment and surprisingly choose to prioritise food, shelter and paying off leg breaking debt collectors over obtaining tedious gaudy techno arsewipe. Not that this has led to a revival in sitting around playing Mousetrap, Connect 4 or actually conversing with real people, as we remain distracted and bored in equal measures by the technological what-nots we retain or failed to trade in for porridge.

As we reject those outmoded forms of pleasure, I've noticed strange ghosts from the past cropping up on TV. Just recently I've been feeling like I'm watching a continual re-run, seemingly descending into a personal "I love 1984". Last weekend I finally caught up with Sherlock, the latest in the BBC dramas trying to tap into the mystique of icons who have fallen out of fashion (Robin Hood, Dr. Who, Merlin, Charlie Brooker's hair) and been rebooted, saucified, cult-ificated and thrust, genitals forward, into the prime time.

The trend of updating a previously bankable gimmick by furnishing it with some heavyweight writing talent (Steven Moffat, Russell T Davies, Dominic Minghella) and a budget that would make Fred Goodwin cough up his swan fritter, has enabled these writers to grasp the mandate to enliven TV schedules and breathe life into dead corpses. A hard hitting Paul Abbot re-imagining of He-Man as a urban terrorist battling a disenfranchised, youth culture Skeletor (he's a hoodie, after all) can only be days away.

This has extended into light entertainment, with the One Show starting the trend for providing retro style 'naf' TV, gaining a following based partly on it's own whimsy. The success of the televised village fete The Great British Bake Off, provided a sunny hearted alternative to sneering, hard nosed, Cowell based cluster fucks that continually barked at feeble willed contestants while press ganging the audience into dialling premium rate phone numbers to whittle the saps down to the least offensive. The embracing of more traditional, revivalist programming harks back to a time when TV laughed with, rather than at, the general public.

This all feels rather nice, especially as all the above mentioned shows are generally exciting or compelling. But, although each is individually good, they only exist on a platform of nostalgic understanding and complicity. Take the names Sherlock or Dr. Who out of the title and the knowing, nodding references to well known baddies such as Moriarty or the Daleks, but keep the exact same scripts and acting and I wonder if they would have been made at all? Would the BBC have had the guts to chuck a disturbed detective or a psychopathic face changing alien onto the screen at all? They did once, of course, but does the same sympathy for something totally new exist? It seems that the new can only be experimented with on the outskirts of BBC 8 at 9pm every other Wednesday to see if it catches on.

The fear seemingly filters down into all areas, where people trying to create original concepts are frustrated by a cultural aversion to anything which steps outside of the comfort zone of instant cool provided by the past. Amy Winehouse's soulful singing sounded like something half remembered, which was then followed by Adele's post Springfield warbling. Folk and 80's revivalist bands add to the mix of Hollywood's love for remakes and biographies until, suddenly, popular culture feels like it's riding on the back of a one legged duck in ever decreasing circles. It's also increasingly difficult to take financial risks on totally original work thanks to the world apparently being in so much debt we owe Mars a fiver for red soil and eggs.

The purse strings are pulled tighter than Victoria Beckham's butt cheeks and the effect is to cut the UK Film Council and restrict access to grants and support from public money. I feel that we are stuck inside a continual mash up, DJ'd by a retro mafia of angular haircutted Tweeters not concerned with creation but a preoccupation with a new kind of Anxiety of Influence; not an anxiety born out of doing justice to the old masters, but the anxiety of being seen to be influenced; to be better read, better watched, better than you.

I long for a backlash of neo-punks, ready to take control of the cultural landscape, armed not with a showy offy desire to inform me how much they can quote, but an iconoclast spirit which says; 'I've read nothing, but look what I made'.

In the meantime, I'm going to stick the telly on. It's pretty good, but not as good as the first one...

EverythingIdoIdoitforyouandyouandbahbabahbabahba