Look Into My Eye

On dancing

2012-01-30T10:55:00.001Z

Last night, I dreamed about attending a dance. It was a ballroom dance on a wooden floor where the dancers wore woodskates and were followed by a gliding child with a brush, who removed all the wood shavings as they were created. In the dream, I was eventually asked by the assembled company to dance. When I politely demurred, they cajoled me. When I still refused, they insisted. When they physically laid hands on me and pulled me across the room, I extricated myself and left the room - making people angry, embarrassing myself and others, spoiling everyone's good time.

Woodskating aside, everything in that dream has actually happened to me on numerous occasions in real life.

I hate dancing. Or is that the right word? It might be more accurate to say that I have no interest in dancing. I don't understand it, I can't do it, I don't care that I can't do it, and I don't want to learn how to do it. I'm happy to watch other people doing it, but I won't be joining in. And this is something that seems to affront people. It's like I'm personally insulting them. The last time I danced was at a friend's wedding, after an entire room of people - friends and strangers, one of the latter group an announcer with a microphone - shamed me in unison. I was drunk, I eventually went along with it after holding out for as long as I could, but it tarnished the evening for me because I was publicly embarrassed into doing it.

The range of reactions to my reticence to dance has been wide - from concern ("Are you feeling ok?") through bewilderment ("What, do you hate music or something?") and pity ("It makes me sad that you're missing out.") to growing anger accompanied by a vicelike gripping of my wrist ("You will dance with my daughter and you will do it right now because that is the tradition and I won't have you humiliate her.").

I don't think I've ever been peer-pressured into doing something against my will in my adult life. Except dancing. But there seems to be a social convention, and that convention is: dancing is fun, everyone dances, come on, dance. So if I feel pressured, I'll generally make my excuses and leave the room. That's how uncomfortable it makes me. Being made to feel that way is what I hate about dancing.

And now, horror of horrors, my brain has - out of nowhere - created a whole anxiety dream out of this feeling, a nightmare which has lingered and is being replayed in my head long after I woke up. I thought I'd write about it here as a form of exorcism. I'm sure it's of little interest to anyone else, like so much on this blog.

So, with apologies:

I feel fine.

I like all kinds of music.

I don't think I'm missing out on anything. Don't feel bad for me - just go and dance.

I'm sorry, but your daughter is just going to have to get over it.

Street Trash

2011-07-14T11:38:00.000+01:00

As livetweeted on 13.07.2011. I had very high hopes for this splatter film. As will become clear, it could have done with a lot more of the splat, and a lot less of the comedy. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of juvenile inanity. I just wanted more of the excellent melting/exploding scenes. Warning: spoilers follow.

'Street Trash' screenwriter, Roy Frumkes, once said: "I wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet". Promising...

We open on a liquor store. A bum sneaks inside behind the owner. On all fours.

Instant LOLs: the owner cuts a huge fart in the guy's face. The bum steals a bottle of booze and legs it, the owner in hot pursuit.

The bum runs out in to the street, and causes a traffic pile up. There is quite clearly no one in the fast moving car. Awesome.

The bum thieves some money from another homeless guy as he rushes past him. So now there are several people chasing him.

He gets into a building via the fire escape. Unfortunately the place is on fire. He runs interrupts a couple mid-coitus!

Then all the NUDE occupants of the building run downstairs. As @injculbard just commented, this is very Benny Hill indeed.

Long story short: the bum loses his booze after some comedy involving a rubbish truck.

Cut to a different liquor store owner, who discovers a crate of old booze sealed up in the basement. It's called "Viper".

The street trash are generally played for laughs here. Apart from one big dude, who's some kind of badass boss.

His name appears to be Bronson. He drags a nerd out of a car and puts his head through the windscreen. Like I said, BADASS.

Oh, and btw the bum from the start got given a bottle of Viper while in the liquor store. But some other guy steals it off him.

So the dude who nicked the booze skulks off and finds somewhere quiet to drink. He chooses an old toilet in a wrecked building.

He takes a swig. Turns out Viper is bright blue.

Almost instantly he dissolves in garish blue and green. Some neat splatter effects. He melts down the toilet. HAHA!

Cut to a chick with a mullet (Wendy) waking up some homeless kid in a tyre yard. Her boss is an angry fat dude.

Basically she lets the street trash stay in the yard. She cares for runaways.

So it seems the liquor store guy is selling the Viper cheap to all the crazy winos, including one old mental case in particular.

He, in turn, comes across a cop investigating the nerd murder. He gives up Bronson and then retreats up a fire escape for a drink...

...at which point, he melts in dayglo yellow, dripping through the fire escape to splat onto the street.

And onto a passerby's face. He stumbles out in front of the cop from before, and then his face melts off.

So that's the cop involved. Haha, and when a woman complains to him, he accuses her of having a dick. LOL.

Cut back to Bronson, who seems to spend a lot of time molesting a homeless lady in her underwear. Seems he's a Nam vet.

He also has his eye on mulleted Wendy. Homeless lady isn't happy. She gets a punching.

Next up, we're treated to some comedic shoplifting from a black guy who sometimes wears a gas mask.

He fills his trousers up with food, then gets busted by a little old lady, who goes off to tell the manager.

He calls her an "old, wrinkled honky motherfucker". She's about 80. This has tickled me more than I can explain.

It's either the deadpan delivery or the vodka that I'm drinking.

Anyway, by now the cops have found the melted bums from before. They decide to go and have a word with Bronson the next day.

Meanwhile, Bronson is ranting about Nam to all the other street trash. He's a section 8.

I'd prefer a bit more melting and a bit less rambling at this point, if I'm being honest.

Now Bronson's having a flashback to the war. It features a lot of blue light and some Vietnamese vampires.

He wakes up and throws a hand grenade across the tyre yard. Meanwhile, our original bum, Fred, hooks up with a wrecked prostitute. [EDITORIAL NOTE: It turns out that she's not actually a prostitute. She's a drunk woman vomiting in an alleyway wearing slutty 80s clothes. She stops spewing long enough to tell Fred to stick it in her deep. So that's where that confusion arose.]

He takes her back to the tyre yard. Where disturbingly it looks like everyone else is planning to get in on the action.

The sex-crazed winos drag her outside for a really bad end to the evening. This sits very uncomfortably with the general comedy feel.

Meanwhile, the cops penalise one wino who refuses to give up Bronson by forcing him to shower and giving him clean clothes. Nice.

Cut to Wendy being sexually assaulted by her big fat boss. No one's face has melted off for ages. Then a dog licks his nuts.

The boss discovers the presumably dead body of the woman that all the bums attacked last night.

And then we get an amazing scene where Bronson cuts a dude's dick off and all the winos play catch with it. Yes, really.

Cue about 5 mins of slow motion cock flying through the air while everyone laughs and the owner tries to get it back.

Back to the cop. He has all the best lines: "Hey, come on. I read like old people fuck."

There's some awesome tough talking in the police station.

So it turns out the woman who got gang raped to death was a gangster's moll. The gangster sends a goon to kill Fred.

The main cop intervenes and there's a laughably bad fight scene involving possibly the funniest headbutt ever.

Then the cop puts the goon's head in a urinal AND MAKES HIMSELF PUKE UP ON THE GUY'S HEAD.

Hold on a sec, I need to get some more vodka.

So it looks like the cop is about to try and take on Bronson single-handed.

Btw the gangster is played by Tony Darrow, who was Sonny in 'Goodfellas'. The guy who owned the Bamboo Lounge.

He's the best actor in this by quite a long way.

Anyway, back to our cop. He's investigating the junk yard. He gets shanked up by Bronson. They have a fight.

Which the cop loses. It's unclear whether he's dead at this point. Whatever. Bronson pisses on his body.

Cut to Fred, who's back at the liquor store. "Fuck you," he says. "Gimme a bottle of booze, here's my dollar, suck my dick." Class.

To which the owner replies, "Here's your booze. Suck your own dick, you schmuck." Haha!

Fred's parting shot: "Go fuck your dog, Ed." He leaves with a bottle of Viper. Bring on the meltdown.

Fred's about to take a drink of the deadly booze, but gets distracted by a big, fat bum doing the same...

The big, fat bum swells up and explodes. It's the best effect so far. Lots of blood and guts everywhere, lots of slow motion.

So Fred now realises that Viper kills you real bad, and runs to tell Ed.

But on his way, Fred lets himself get mugged by one of his wino enemies, who steals the Viper and takes a swig of his prize...

...and then melts in bright purple and orange. Hilariously gloopy effects.

Back at the liquor store, Ed decides to take a taste. He melts in brilliant orange splatter.

Now this is what the last hour should have been like.

Anyway, back to Bronson. As the winos bury the dead cop, he has some more flashbacks about Nam.

One of the winos gives him a bottle of Viper... Looks like Bronson's going to get it!

No! His crazy homeless girlfriend snatches it and takes a drink. She melts out of her boobs in green and yellow. It's amazing.

Meanwhile, it looks like Wendy's about to give up the goods to her young homeless friend, Fred's brother.

Or she would have done if Bronson hadn't smashed in the door and gone postal.

Btw, did I mention that Bronson's weapon of choice is a knife made from the leg bone of one of his buddies in Nam?

No? Well, I should have.

Bronson chases the kid around the junk yard for what seems like ages, but is probably only a few mins.

Fred suddenly pops up and lobs a bottle of Viper into Bronsons's face. Bronson calls him - and I quote - a "fuckworm".

Must remember to use that sometime soon.

So Bronson starts strangling Fred, while Fred's brother (who I think is called Kevin) lines up a gas cylinder and knocks the end off.

The cylinder goes flying at Bronson, and SMASHES OUT HIS HEAD, NECK AND CHEST. It's surprisingly well done.

Wendy comforts Kevin. Credits.

Haha! And among the credits we get a scene of Tony Darrow menacing a doorman who called him "Nick the Dick" earlier.

His goons find a bottle of Viper in his pocket, and the gangster takes a drink.

And then, as the main credits roll, we get an awesome comedy/threatening song from the now-dead gangster in character.

What a weird, weird film.

I think it could have done with some serious trimming in the very baggy middle section, but the start and end were great.

In conclusion, I'd recommend this to... you know, I'm not really sure. It's offbeat, funny, tiresome, low budget fun. You decide.

Some good effects, some good gags. You've just got to wade through a lot of increasingly dumb japes to get to them.

Hellraiser: Hellworld (aka Hellraiser VIII)

2011-07-12T17:01:00.001+01:00

As livetweeted on 23.06.11. Surprising as it may seem, 'Hellraiser: Hellworld' was an absolute stinker. And while it turned out that I was wrong about a few things, the film receives 0% kudos due to the appallingly bad ending which eventually (after a lot of stupid bullshit) materialised. Warning: spoilers follow. Spoilers in which I get more and more enraged with this sloppy nonsense.

Full disclosure: I love the 1st and 2nd films. The 3rd was ok. The 4th was crap (despite featuring Pinhead in space). And then I gave up.

I'll tag everything with #hellwo. Beer prep almost complete. [EDITORIAL NOTE: I wasn't quite as prepared as I thought. I actually went to the shop to buy more beer about halfway through. As will become obvious, I ended up getting very drunk before the end.]

Right, so we start off with some ominous music. Some topless guy is digging in a basement. The he screams for no apparent reason.

It's like that bit at the end of 'The Rock' where Nic Cage has those green flares. But shirtless and in a cellar.

Credits. Wait a minute, Lance Henriksen's in this? And so's Henry Cavill, the new Superman. And a bunch of people I haven't heard of.

It's a funeral. There are some nuns. Lots of slow motion weeping.

Portentous shots of the inside of the church. Some extremely shonky acting from some mourners.

They're a group of young friends. The dead guy topped himself. Apparently they were all addicted to playing a game... 'Hellworld'.

Urgh, they're appalling. If only there were some way that they could all be ripped to pieces with hooks by some kind of demon.

This blonde chick from the group goes up and opens the coffin for some reason. There's something weird in there. It grabs her!

OH THANK GOD IT WAS ALL A DREAM

So she wakes up, there's a knocking at the door. She looks through the spyhole... no one's there. Then there's more knocking.

This time, instead of looking through the spyhole, she just unchains the door. She opens it to reveal...

The chattering cenobite! Oh, except it's just one of her dull friends wearing a chatterer mask.

So these jerks are all playing 'Hellworld', despite the death of their pal. I'm going on record right now - it wasn't "suicide".

They've all reached a level where you solve the puzzle box and then get invited to a secret Hellraiser party. At Leviathan House.

This is all so meta. WHY DOES EVERYONE STILL HAVE THEIR SKINS ON?

Despite the fact that they've all "given up" playing the game, they've all now individually solved the box online and got invites.

They drive to the party. It's in a big mansion. "This is soooo rad!" one of them proclaims.

Ok, shit just got real: Lance Henricksen is the host of the party.

His office is like a Hellraiser museum. But he's definitely not at all sinister, and is totally on the level.

Ok, big chunk of exposition about the mansion being a convent. Eventually the last nun "went to pieces" *trombone noise*

In the basement, there are a load of jars filled with dead babies and weird specimens. Also a giant hook. For some reason.

Lance suddenly jabs the blonde girl (Chelsea. Of course.) with a pin, and she starts hallucinating Pinhead all up in her grille.

And then everyone immediately forgets about this. Not in a plot point sort of way. Just in a poor filmmaking kind of way.

So Lance gives everyone a mask with a 4-digit number and a cell phone, so they can anonymously engage in the pleasures of the flesh.

Say what you will about this film (all the main characters are hateful, it's full of cheap jumps), but Lance adds instant class.

The English member of the group sees a sign saying "KEEP OUT" on a door. Guess what she does instead.

She finds a weird chair with hand clasps. And of course she sits down in it. Oops. Now she's trapped.

Spinning blades start whizzing at her neck while Lance hams in her face. She gets bled out, and Pinhead laughs behind her.

Chelsea thinks she sees her dead mate, Adam. She follows, but gets locked in an empty room.

I like how Lance Henriksen keeps popping up. He really is 100% awesome. Meanwhile, more "imagined" scares, which are just annoying.

Jake, the miserable one of the group, goes into a room where everyone ignores him. Truly, HELL ON EARTH

Uh oh. The asthmatic one of the group just dropped his inhaler. Noooooo! (except quieter, and more gaspy).

Chelsea's still locked in a room, and Mike's getting an anonymous blowie. This is a lot less interesting than you might think.

Hilariously, the asthma guy is having to run down about 30 flights of stairs to find his inhaler.

And when he gets there, it's behind a vent, which he has to unscrew... Phew, he got it!

He decides to have a little lie down on what looks suspiciously like a surgical table while he gets his breath back.

And then Pinhead whacks his head off with a cleaver. Ok, I'm down with that. But there's just no tension at all.

Meanwhile, Lance appears to be digging graves outside, and Jake's following some nun (DEFINITELY NOT THE DEAD ONE) around.

If it turns out that the whole mansion is one big puzzle box, this shit's getting turned off.

Now Jake's screwing some nude woman, who definitely isn't a dead nun. Then he has a dream about dead Adam.

Chelsea rings the cops. They turn up. They can't see her through the window. It's annoying.

Next up, Mike's blowjob woman takes him down to the evil basement so he can "return the favour". I really hope she has a helldick.

Oh, instead she just locks him inside and runs off. Boooooring.

Of course, he find headless asthmatic Derrick. Then... well, you all remember the big hook from earlier, right?

Yeah, the hook which Lance said to watch out for. It hooks him through the back.

Chelsea's managed to get outside, but her car won't start. Inside, Jake's somehow remembering what happened to dead Adam.

Which is that he covered himself in petrol and burned himself to death, having dug himself a grave in his basement.

Chelsea finds a cop, who's just about to radio for help when Pinhead pops up and runs a stake through his face.

"You still don't understand," he says. "There's no escape for you, Chelsea."

So she runs back inside. All the partiers have vanished. There's a lot of pointless running around.

Lance is somehow able to monkey around with the phones, so he can pretend to be other people. It's like he's some kind of demon.

"It's this house", someone says, "It's like it's playing with us." Huh. Like it's some kind of PUZZLE BOX?

So now Chelsea's being chased around by her dead mates, who are like superlame part-cenobites.

Lance calls her up and ominously drops a pretty big hint that the house is a puzzle box. It turns out I'M the one in Hellworld.

Jake's gone to Lance's creepy office. There's a chattering cenobite behind him, reflected in a window. He grabs a dagger...

Turns around... and shanks Chelsea in the neck. His phone starts ringing... it's Chelsea.

And now the body is gone from the office. "Maybe we're already dead," Chelsea opines. Sigh...

"Maybe we're in hell, where we belong, for not saving Adam from 'Hellworld'". You fucking bunch of douches.

In the attic, Chelsea finds a file with a big group photo of the douche brigade, all hugging like idiots.

Now Jake has a new theory - it's all in their heads, it's not real. Solution: don't be afraid.

Ok, and the big reveal is that Lance is dead Adam's mysterious missing dad. I really want to hurt someone.

He pops up, and Chelsea ROUNDHOUSE KICKS him off a balcony. But then, impossibly, he's in front of them outside the house.

They run off and stumble across a row of graves. "It's us," says Jake.

In an insulting twist, it turns out that they've all been buried alive, with breathing pipes, since near the start of the party.

They were all drugged with a brutal hallucinogen. The phones were in there with them so he could give them subliminal suggestion.

Their own imaginations did the rest. Or something.

And then the police rescue her. All the others actually died in their coffins - one of asthma, one of sheer fright, etc

Oh, Jake survived, too. Booo.

And THE GHOST OF DEAD ADAM CALLED THE POLICE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

Cut to Lance, swigging vodka in a hotel room, his revenge foiled.

But what's this he's found in his suitcase? It's a puzzle box. Oops, probably shouldn't have played with it...

Pinhead et al turn up with some large blades. They chop him up.

Cut to Chelsea and Jake driving off into the sunset. But guess who's in the back seat of the car? Lance fucking Henricksen.

Cut to the police finding Lance's hotel room. It's covered in blood, and the puzzle box is on the floor.

Cut back to Jake and Chelsea. Lance grabs the wheel and tries to swerve them off the road.

They're both like "What?" As am I. I mean, it's just an insultingly bad ending.

I don't... I just can't... There are no words to express how cheated I feel by that film.

No atmosphere, totally tacked on Hellraiser theme, lame deaths, underuse of cenobites, and used every crappy horror trick...

...without ever being remotely scary. Or interesting. Or worthwhile. Seriously, fuck this film.

In conclusion, I would recommend this film to no one. And that's the first time I've had to write that at the end of a livetweet.

And I've livetweeted some truly horrible films. Still, at least I got drunk. That's something, I suppose.

Thanks for putting up with all that. I can't apologise enough. I feel like I might have ruined your night by association.

I appear to have lost 1 follower. I don't blame them, whoever they were. I thought it would be more, to be honest.

Lifeforce

2011-04-12T10:31:00.000+01:00

As livetweeted on 08.04.2011. I'm not sure what is more surprising: that I had somehow never got around to watching 'Lifeforce' or that I actually enjoyed it. As soon as I tweeted that I was planning to watch it, I started getting replies stating that (a) it wasn't really very good, and (b) it featured some classic gratuitous nudity. Both of those points are valid, but I liked it nonetheless. I mean, I don't think I'll be rushing to watch it again. But I don't regret the experience, which is more than I can say about many of the films I've livetweeted. Warning: spoilers follow. Spoilers about space vampires.

The film starts promisingly with a rousing Henry Mancini score and the title whizzing right up into my grill.

So we're on board the Churchill space shuttle as it goes to study Halley's Comet. At some point in the future.

Btw the Churchill is like a normal space shuttle, but with ridiculously long satellite mirror-things stuck on the sides.

What's that? A 150-mile long alien craft hiding at the front of the comet? I think it's definitely a good idea to investigate.

4 crew members go out in spacesuits to check the ship out. There's some amusing zooming about.

Now they're flying down the inside of what looks suspiciously like a bowel.

Further in, they discover hundreds of floating bat-like aliens. "I hope they're dead," says one goon.

While they bag the body for further study, a big space umbrella opens on the outside of the alien ship. Uh oh.

Snapping an alien's finger off is presumably considered a breach of space etiquette.

Oh, this is no way to run an exploratory mission inside an alien vessel. For shame, commander, for shame.

Don't just blithely float into that mysterious light... Wait a minute, perfectly preserved space nudists!

Two are male, one female. The crew seem to be having trouble with some kind of nudity hypnosis. Erotic!

Of course you'd take the mysterious naked people (plus one hideous bat-alien) back to the shuttle. Good luck with that, morons.

I need more coffee.

I just found a beer in the fridge! I'm draining its lifeforce as I type these words.

So, cut to 30 days later, and the shuttle is approaching Earth. But there's no radio contact and it's out of control.

The dude in mission control is that Bond villain with the octagonal glasses. "I said a nose, Q, not a banana." That guy.

They're sending another shuttle up to intercept. They "soft dock".

The crew are all corpses! Apart from the naked space people, who are still in their weird glass coffins.

That security guard seems to be coming down with a bad case of sexy hypnosis. He touches the lady...

...and she opens her eyes! And sits up, revealing that she has a smoking hot rack.

She kisses the guard, and crazy lightning effects appear in the air above them. It's like she's draining his lifeforce.

She's escaped! "Don't worry - a naked girl is not going to get out of this complex." That's some good old British pluck.

Not only is she naked, she's also got electric special powers which can blow up windows.

The SAS liaison who's just arrived is pretty no-nonsense. But also kind of a dick.

There's a lot of talking explaining that the girl is basically a space vampire and therefore "totally dangerous".

Awesome, now the two male nudes are awake and everything's blowing up!

Next, the dead guard's autopsy takes a turn for the surprising when he wakes up and drains the doctor's lifeforce.

There are some fun special effects. And then the newly alive guard is taken away to an isolation chamber.

Ok, so the general idea is that every person who gets drained will then wake up as a space vampire and drain someone else, etc.

And if they don't get to feed on lifeforce within 2hrs, they crumble to death. I'm really enjoying the stupid make-up and models.

The Churchill's escape pod has now crashlanded in Texas.

Inside is the commander of the shuttle, Tom Carlson. He's got some explaining to do, I'm guessing.

We get a flashback to what happened on the Churchill. Everyone got drained. Everyone died.

Tom was the last one left, and tried to stop the space vampires getting to Earth. He burned everything and used the escape pod.

But obviously it didn't work, because the glass coffins weren't destroyed.

And guess what? The alien ship is now HEADING TO EARTH. Doooom! Doooom, I say!

Meanwhile, Tom is having a lengthy sex dream. The naked lady got naked again. She's draining him remotely in his sleep!

Now the scientists are hypnotising Tom to track her down using their mental link. She's using a new body (booo) to hide in.

They've tracked this woman, Ellen, to Thurlstone Hospital, a hospital for the criminally insane.

The director of said hospital is one Jean Luc Picard. Ah, Beverley, won't you join me for a glass of synthohol?

Anyway, so they find this woman, she doesn't know what they're talking about, Tom slaps her around a bit and shouts at her.

After all this, Tom gets a mental picture of the current host body - a child murderer who's in solitary confinement.

In a surprise twist, it turns out that Jean Luc is actually the host body. They inject him with some drugs and he flips out.

They hypnotise him. Cue some impressive overacting and bellowing from Patrick Stewart.

The lady space vampire explains that she took her form from the feminine in Carlson's mind when the shuttle approached.

Meanwhile, back in London, the supposedly dead male space vampires are still at large. But one's been killed. With a lead sword.

The current working theory is that vampires of legend sprang from these space bastards in past ages.

Now all the blood in Jean Luc's body has gushed out into the air and reconstituted itself into the naked lady.

Then she disappears back to her original body somewhere in London. Oh get on with it.

Carlson reveals that he was the one who originally let her out of her coffin back on the shuttle because of sex hypnosis.

It's another excuse to show her being all naked again.

Oh good, London's full of space vampires and the whole city's exploding with special effects.

Hold on a second, the PM's acting pretty shifty. And sweating a lot. HE'S A SPACE VAMPIRE!

All the top brass are SPACE VAMPIRES!

Luckily, they've got a back-up plan to deal with the vampire plague: nuke London. Foolproof.

Now the alien ship is collecting all the human lifeforce in London. Carlson has to track down his mental sex partner.

London under the yoke of the space vampire plague is actually pretty well done. Lots of twitching corpses everywhere.

SAS man dispatches a bunch of vampires with his big lead sword, then runs of to St Paul's Cathedral to deal with the bad lady.

Meanwhile, Carlson is already there. I wonder if she'll pop her clothes off again. I'm going to guess... yes.

SAS man's being chased by a huge mob of space dorks as London burns.

There's a mad light show going on, and lots of explosions and people on fire.

SAS man nails the last male vampire with the lead sword. It turns into a bat-alien, then explodes. Job done.

Ah, there we go. She's naked again. Told you.

The SAS man throws Carlson his sword. Carlson then impales himself and his evil girlfriend right through with it.

But it doesn't really matter, because the alien spaceship is fully powered up, and just flies off into space. The end.

Ok, well that was fun in a very silly sort of way. Some strong effects work and incredibly hammy acting.

I don't have a problem with the lead vampire constantly being a hot naked chick. I'm just stating that for the record.

It becomes more and more amusing to see how they're next going to shoehorn her chest into a scene.

But I think overall the film gets a bit bogged down in trying to explain the space vampires. Those parts really drag.

And there's a bit right at the end where she explains to Carlson that he was also a space vampire which didn't make any sense.

I mean, it made LESS sense than any of the other stupid crap.

In conclusion, 'Lifeforce' was a dumb, mostly fun watch. I'd recommend it to fans of nudity and 80s FX. That's everyone, right?

Grotesque

2011-03-21T17:11:00.000Z

As livetweeted on 18.03.11. Wow. This certainly was a disturbing piece of work. I mean, say what you like about the film, it achieves its aim. Which I'm assuming was to be deliberately provocative. I guess the main point which the film makes is that people can be seriously warped by loneliness (which is contrasted with the unfortunate Aki and Kazuo managing to fall in love while being horribly tortured). I'm not sure that necessarily justifies the extreme punishment we're treated to. But still, it's effective on its own terms, I guess. The following contains spoilers of a graphic nature.

We open on a van in some kind of underpass. A guy's sitting at the wheel. A couple approach from behind. The guy hefts a sledgehammer.

As the couple walk by, he jumps out behind them. THUNK.

Amusingly jaunty piano music plays during a credit sequence where the van moves through traffic.

The couple wake up secured to rather nifty rotating platforms. The baddie turns them so they're facing each other, standing up.

The ball gags and plastic sheeting walls suggest that this guy has very fixed ideas about how he wants his place to look.

Almost immediately, there's some... unpleasantness with a skewer, which makes the male victim (Kazuo) pass out.

The psycho asks the girl (Aki) if she would die to save Kazuo. She shakes her head, crying.

I imagine that would really dent Kazuo's ego if he wasn't being tortured by a blank-eyed sadist.

We cut back to the couple just before they got kidnapped, in an awkward and really quite sweet scene showing their first date.

Meanwhile, back in the torture chamber, our psycho is having cake and tea, listening to 'The Blue Danube'. Delightful!

He explains to them that if they sexually excite him with their will to live, he'll let them go. Otherwise they're going to die. Hmm.

So, he cuts most of their clothes off, and then sexually humiliates Aki in front of Kazuo. It goes on for AGES. Uncomfortable viewing.

Then he forcefully whacks Kazuo off. It's been a sad and terrible time for both of them. And for me. And by extension, for you.

Worst first date ever.

It's a weird sequence. I mean, obviously wretched and degrading. But also strangely elegiac. Very unsettling and kind of haunting.

I'm guessing it's not a good sign that the psycho is now wearing surgical greens.

Hello chainsaw! Goodbye fingers!

If there's one thing I hate more than having all my fingers chopped off, it's my new girlfriend having to wear them as a necklace.

So the name of the game is not to speak unless asked a question, even while being chopped up. There's some more chainsawing.

The necklace exchange is completed.

He proposes a deal - he'll spare Aki if Kazuo agrees to be tortured to death without making too much of a fuss. Decisions, decisions.

Kazuo takes the deal. To be fair, the alternative was that they both die. But still, a pretty ballsy move from Kazuo here.

Next line: "First, I will hammer some nails into your nuts." He's not joking, and those are some big fucking nails.

So, if Kazuo cracks, Senor Nutjob will move on to Aki instead.

Oof. That certainly made me squirm in my seat.

As did phase 2: dis-"member"-ment. Yipes.

Luckily, at this point the psycho is all like, "I feel the sexual stimulation! You've won!"

They wake up, bandaged and clean, in a nice, bright hospital-style room. Kazuo proclaims himself "glad to be alive".

The guys comes in and is calm and nice to them. He says, "Thanks for the excitement. Once you're better, I'll take you to the police."

"But for now I have to keep you shackled to the bed, so you don't hurt yourselves trying to escape." Yeah, just chill out, guys.

He also says that they'll get a 700,000 yen pay-out from his insurance once he turns himself in.

This experience has brought them together, just like you'd all been hoping. They falteringly suggest staying together if they survive.

It's a sweet little moment, like their first date. Except now Aki's missing an arm, and Kazuo has no genitals. Textbook romance.

They also vaguely mention finding it funny how weird their psychopathic carer smells all the time, despite hints of soap. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Healing montage! I tell you what, Kazuo's downstairs area is a right old mess.

"Your will to live is really amazing! You'll be free in 2 or 3 days. Now, don't forget to take your medicine..."

Oh, they're really in love with each other now. It's lovely, especially when they hold thumbs.

They take their pills...

...and wake up on the rotatey platforms. Nooooooooooo!

Psycho's back in his surgical greens. He explains that they excited him so much, he wants another taste. But of course.

Looks like poor old Kazuo's going to have to prove that he really is willing to die for Aki.

This sadist is displaying a most grotesque lack of fair play. I assume that's how the title came about. Not the cock-chopping.

"I'll make a clean cut and pull out your rectum." I'd laugh, except I'm pretty sure I'm about to have to watch that happening.

So here's the scenario: Kazuo's guts are going to be looped over a hook. Then he's free to walk over and release Aki.

But to reach her, he'll have to cut his intestine off with a pair of scissors. Then release her. And presumably then die.

As the psycho explains: "It's romantic, right?"

That, as they say, is a serious bummer.

And so, after Kazuo has been challenged to "make me horny" with his will to survive, 'Operation Gutwrenching Nightmare' begins.

To clarify, the psycho wants Kazuo to make HIM horny. Not me.

And now the long, painfully slow crawl across the floor to get the scissors.

Go Kazuo! Up on your feet! No, you idiot, don't pass out.

Guts cut. Now he sloooowly drags himself up to cut through the cloth tying Aki's remaining hand to the platform. Inch... by... inch.

He cuts halfway through it. But doesn't have the strength in his thumbs to get all the way through. Then he collapses again.

Looks like he's died. Which I assume means that Aki's about to reap the fucking whirlwind...

...to 'Land of Hope and Glory'! LOL. Oh, there's the chainsaw again. Not LOL.

Once again, he tells her to show him her will to live. And then an excellent thing happens.

Aki spits in his face. And then starts laughing at him. She says that she fucked his mother, a moronic stinking whore.

She says that she's figured out why he tortures people - he's alone. And he's alone because he stinks like a skunk.

And he's never realised that this is the reason, because she guesses that he has no sense of smell. Like his reeking mother.

And then she laughs and laughs in his face, having cracked him psychologically.

She stops laughing when she shoves the chainsaw in her guts. Then he chops her head off with an axe. It flies up in the air...

...and lands on his neck, biting a chunk out of it. Then Kazuo comes to long enough to slash the guy's achilles tendon up.

Then our young lovers finally die, face to face.

Cut to a woodland graveyard, filled with the guy's victims, each grave marked with a post. He does a little prayer over 2 new ones.

Final scene: a lone woman walks towards his van in a street somewhere. He sprays on some deodorant, sniffs his armpits...

...smiles happily and then jumps out. THUNK. The end.

Wow. Ok. Um.

That was a pretty gruelling watch. I found the sexual humiliation stuff really creepy, and the torture stuff pushed the envelope.

The last 10 minutes became so overwrought that I couldn't stop laughing by the time her head was chomping his neck.

It was certainly an effective bit of film making. And if nothing else, it was every bit as grotesque as promised.

It's weird, though - there's a sweet, shy mini-film in there about Aki and Kazuo, but you have to wade through all the yuck to see it.

Probably not worth that wading, though, to be honest...

In conclusion, I would recommend this film to sadists, psychopaths and torturers, but probably not anyone else.

Although if you feel like you want to test yourself, this and 'A Serbian Film' would make a killer double bill.

I feel giddy, haunted, a bit sick and like laughing all at the same time. Happy Red Nose Day.

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor

2011-03-15T13:40:00.001Z

As livetweeted on 11.03.11. This is the film that made me think I should probably stop livetweeting films. About halfway through, I suddenly realised that I must be infuriating at least some of my 100+ followers, especially when my tweets concern a film this tiresome. So maybe I should just liveblog them and put a link on Twitter to refer people here. I'm still undecided, though, so please do let me know your thoughts. My goal with these things is to suffer through films you wouldn't want to watch in a vaguely amusing way - not to bore or irritate you. Anyway, for the masochists among you, sit back and "enjoy" my thoughts on the second (and thankfully final) Ewok film. As usual, spoilers etc.

We open on another great bit of matte background, a planet hanging in the sky above the forest moon of Endor.

The credit sequence follows adorable poppet Cindel and Ewok hero Wicket as they skip across a meadow, picking flowers. No joke.

So, it seems this follows on directly from the events of 'Caravan of Courage'. Looks like the starcruiser's all fixed up.

The actor playing the father has been replaced with Paul Gleason! ("Don't mess with the bull, young man. You'll get the horns" ).

Cindel explains that they've got to go home. Wicket's level of English has improved significantly.

They get back to the Ewok village, only to find that it's being torched by a bunch of wonky-faced alien goons.

Said goons have some very unconvincing stop motion giant lizards. A bit like those ones Lucas added into his revamp of 'Star Wars'.

Only really crappy.

There's a pitched battle in the village. Wicket and Cindel hide under a cart. Oh dear, Cindel's mother is dead.

Hey, remember Mace, the wretched dickhole who ruined the first Ewok film? Well, hold on to your socks, he's back.

And almost instantly gets killed! HOORAY!

Cut back to the father. He's being menaced by some goons, who are tearing his ship to bits.

Also menacing him is Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam from 'Dune'. She seems to be second-in-command to a dude called Terak.

Terak's a real hardass. He takes the ship's powercore or something. Dad and Cindel run off into the woods.

The lady from 'Dune' turns into a crow. She's a sorceress called Charal, and has a magical red ring. She finds them. Jeremitt dies.

Cindel gets taken prisoner, along with Wicket.

A bunch of other Ewoks have been captured, too. They're all put into prison wagons. It's a caravan of calamity.

The Ewoks adopt Cindel. Then Wicket and Cindel escape. Alien goons give chase, repeatedly shooting at trees all around them.

Our heroes get trapped in a cave by a blaster-related landslide.

In an impressive show of ingenuity, Wicket knocks up a glider from a load of bones and skins in the cave. Wait, BONES?

Yeah, so it turns out there's a giant stop motion winged dinosaur which lives in the cave. It flies off with Cindel.

Wicket gives chase on the glider, rescues her, does a crash landing, escapes the dinosaur. In less than 30 seconds. Mad skills yo.

The next morning, they meet a high-speed, grinning little monkeyman. If you think Ewoks are annoying, this bastard will ENRAGE you.

The speedmonkey (Teek) takes them to a house belonging to Wilfred Brimley (Blair in 'The Thing', horror fans). He kicks them out.

Wicket sets fire to his bottom. And then pratfalls off his seat. Textbook Ewok.

Teek sneaks them some food. Then the old man, Noah, relents and lets them inside. They go to sleep. I might do the same.

Cindel has a bad dream about Terak's alien goons. In the morning, Noah tells them to go home and then wanders off into the woods.

Cut to Goon Castle. Charal and Terak are trying to crack the "magic" of the powercore. They decide to send their army after Cindel.

Cut back to Noah. He's made our heroes a couple of sleeping bags. Then they all sit down to eat pie. Pie made of flowers.

Noah pretends to be a crotchety old man, but he's a good sort really. But where does he go every day? Oh, I do hope we find out!

So obviously they follow him through the woods to... Noah's massive crashed starcruiser. Seems he and his buddy crashed ages ago.

Cut to musical soiree back at Noah's place. Toity toity tradalee-doo.

Cindel gets lured out into the woods by a spooky voice. The others go after her. Too late! She's been captured by Charal.

Cindel ends up in Terak's throne room. He gives her until dawn to make the powercore work, or she and her Ewok friends are DOOOMED.

Anyway, she and the witch end up in the dungeon, where they find Noah's buddy from all those years ago. He's a shackled skeleton.

Turns out Terak has been searching for the powercore to Noah's ship all along. This is what passes for a plot twist.

Noah, Wicket and Teek reach the alien castle. The moat is full of monsters. Luckily they brought a grappling hook. As you do.

There's some skulking about in the castle. Terak and his goons are having a party and laughing interminably.

There's some stupid comedy, the jailers shoot each other by mistake, and Wicket rescues Cindel and the adult Ewoks.

Unfortunately, due to all the Ewok-related pratfalls which follow, the alarm is raised. Noah takes the powercore and they all flee.

There's some shooting and a death slide involved in the escape. Terak releases the witch and she turns into a crow again.

The goon army chases after our heroes. I'm not entirely sure how you get outrun by tiny teddy bears, but that's what's happening.

Noah races to get the powercore working in his ship while the Ewoks make a last stand. This is less exciting that you might think.

Although it admittedly improves once the traditional Ewok battle plan goes into effect.

By which I mean tripping people up, rolling logs onto them, comically falling over. Now THIS is an Ewok film.

Just as the freakazoid army gets the upper hand, Noah gets his ship working. Including its guns. Much bloodless carnage ensues.

The goons are routed! Apart from Terak, who takes Cindel hostage like the noseless asshole that he is.

Noah and Terak have a big swordfight. Wicket saves the day using the witch's ring to transform Terak into a smoking corpse. Awesome.

Everyone hugs each other goodbye. Wicket's all like "Best friend! Best friend!" There's some sobbing. Then Cindel and Noah fly off.

At which point, Wicket and the other Ewoks presumably forget English and what humans look like in preparation for 'Jedi'. The end.

Wilfred Brimley turns in a good performance here, as does Sian Phillips. But overall, 'Ewoks: The Battle for Endor' is pretty poor.

In conclusion, I'd only recommend this film to very small children who absolutely loved 'Caravan of Courage'.

I hereby apologise to all of my followers for putting you through that livetweet. At least I had the images to look at.

Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure

2011-02-23T10:12:00.004Z

As livetweeted on 22.02.11. I should probably explain upfront that I have never fully understood the hatred that people direct towards the Ewoks in 'Return of the Jedi'. It seems to me that they're present to provide a child-friendly comedic counterbalance to the incredibly dark scenes of torture and death occurring at the same time on the Death Star. Yes, yes, they're a little too cutesy, but there's something strangely satisfying about a bunch of bumbling rustics taking out an army of evil (compare and contrast the Ewoks with the woefully unfunny Jar Jar Binks. Meesa know which ones Isa prefers!). All that being said, this film was awful - low production values, episodic and boring plot, a rubbish villain, and appalling child acting. But at the same time, it was still strangely watchable for some reason. I've already got hold of the sequel, so watch this space... Oh, and in case anyone would actually care, the following contains spoilers.

I last saw 'Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure' on video at a friend's house when I was about 8. I remember LOVING it.

Unsurprisingly, we open on the forest moon of Endor. A couple are searching for their kids, Mace and Cindel, near a crashed ship.

When I say "ship", I mean "spaceship". Obviously.

So it seems like the whole family crashlanded on Endor. The parents went to search for a transmitter or something.

When they came back, the kids were gone. Oh, and the parents appear to be called Jeremit and Cathreen.

What's this? "Cindel's jacket. I hope she's kept her life monitor on..." Me too.

Holy shit! A giant hairy monster with an axe!

Wow, already they've really gone to town with the matte paintings. I love matte painting in films.

We've cut to a typical Ewok village. The old-sounding narrator explains that a couple of Ewok kids have gone missing.

Their father, who is called Deej or something, blows a horn and chatters away incomprehensibly with what I assume is his wife.

In the foreground, an Ewok pratfalls off a rope swing. Yep, we're on Endor all right.

The pratfalling Ewok is Wicket (played by Warwick Davis). You know, the nice one from 'Return of the Jedi' who befriends Leah.

Turns out he's the youngest son, so he's got to stay behind while Deej goes off on his skin glider to search for the missing Ewoks.

A dejected Wicket says "Fitch" in exactly the way you would say "Fuck" if you were really disappointed. Subversive.

A goat chews through an important rope, and Deej and the skin glider are prematurely launched into the sky.

He flies off across California. I mean, Endor. Within minutes, he finds his missing offspring. There's some more pratfalling.

The downfall of using a glider as a search and rescue vehicle is that you have to walk the whole way home after you land.

Luckily, their stroll takes them past "the strange object Deej spotted from the sky". That's the crashed human spaceship.

Inside, it's empty. Apart from a loveable little tyke hiding in a cupboard, coughing and sad. They take her out and give her a hug.

Her brother (Mace) confronts the Ewoks with a blaster. He flips out and starts acting like a total douche. They overpower him.

Cindel's response: "I fink they wanna be our fwiends." Oh, she's just adorable. I hope they feast on her flesh.

The lower production values are highlighted by the fact that Ewoks apparently farm goats and llamas instead of alien beasts.

Back at Deej's farm, we discover that Cindel's coughing might mean that she's a bit ill. No, Mace, not just hungry. ILL.

Communication problems abound. Then Cindel passes out. The Ewoks give her some freaky alien medicine.

Yay! She woke up. In a rather cloying exchange, we're told that they don't know where their parents are.

Wicket's brothers are the kings of Three Stooges-style dicking around. Meanwhile, Wicket is bringing Cindel flowers. I'm serious.

The Ewoks have run out of medicine. But they DO have a big rabbit in the corner. Weird bit of directing there.

Right, so they're off to collect more medicine from some tree in the woods, leaving Cindel behind to malinger in bed.

Mace sees something moving around inside a hole in a tree. He goes off to investigate...

He sees a little fluffy creature which keeps hiding. this really seems to piss him off. He aggressively reaches in to grab it.

Oh no! His whole arm is trapped! It's being eaten by a sort of giant sockpuppet which uses a fluffy creature as a lure!

Luckily, the Ewoks have a big stick which they use to hit the monster. Close shave there, but apparently no damage done.

Plant rendered into medicine, Cindel treated and asleep, Wicket starting to pick up the odd word of English. I demand some action!

"Furries? Furries?" "Starcruiser? Starcruiser? Ooh, gunda!"

Mace is still being a real dick around the Ewoks. He's all like, "They're just animals." They just saved your sister's life, jerk.

Night. A stop motion dinosaur of some kind roars into the night. Awesome! Cut to Ewoks sleeping. Damn.

That baby Ewok sleeping in a crib is the cutest thing I've possibly ever seen. Like a furry baby Jesus.

So Mace is making Cindel creep off in the night without saying goodbye. Ungrateful little shit.

Mace gets his blaster back, wants to go and find Mom and Dad. They instantly get lost in the dark forest. Mace, you CRETIN.

Lots of stilted talk about missing their parents. "I wish I had been the best kid there ever was." Neither child can act, sadly.

Uh oh! The giant stop motion dinosaur monster wants to eat them!

After a lot of ineffectual missing with the blaster, they decide to hide in a hole in a tree.

It gives up after a bit. They go to sleep in the tree.

They wake up to the Ewoks battling the monster with spears! Wicket hits it with a blowdart and it collapses. Go Wicket!

Weirdly, the monster has some kind of collar on. Attached to it is Jeremitt's life monitor.

So the monster is some kind of giant attack dinosaur. They need to find its master to find their parents. Or something.

Ewoks also keep chickens and ferrets.

They all go off to see Logray, who's like the Ewok version of a mystic or medicine man.

Logray does some crazy shit with a magical dreidel, which shows them that their parents are prisoners of the dreaded Gorax.

"The giant Gorax lives in a land from which no Ewok has ever returned," says the narrator.

The narration keeps telling us info that the kids in the film could never find out due to insurmountable language difficulties.

They're now loading up horses for their dangerous journey. I'm assuming this is where the caravan comes in.

Logray bestows some mystic totems before they set off. "Wicket receives a magic walking stick," says the narrator. LOL

Mace just gets a rock. He chucks it away. Because why stop being a dickend now? Luckily Wicket picks it up for him.

And so, FINALLY, the caravan of courage sets off amid lots of Ewok cheering.

They meet an Ewok woodcutter, who fells a tree on top of them. Mace gets into an axe-throwing competition with him.

They swiftly become friends, and the woodcutter joins the fellowship. I mean, caravan.

Then they pick up an Ewok priestess, who does a magic test on them. Mace fails it (obviously), but Cindel steps up and passes.

Later. The caravan stops for a rest. Wicket and Cindel play what looks like French cricket with his magical walking stick.

In a surprisingly cool sequence, Mace touches his reflection in a river, and gets zapped under the water.

The Ewok rescue attempt is total shit. Until Wicket uses his magic walking stick. Yay Wicket!

Oh. Then some typical Ewok gimping around leads to Cindel's horse running off out of control. Bad Wicket.

Luckily the woodcutter Ewok chases her down straight away. What a tedious, pointless scene.

Guess what's magic about Cindel's magic candle?

It never burns down. Yawn. Hold up, now Mace has discovered a swarm of annoying fairies.

The magic candle seems to have chilled them out. Apart from one particular irritating fairy, who I'm guessing is joining the team.

The fairy... eats... giggles.

Cue much "hilarity".

Then we're treated to another cool bit of matte background work.

They trek across a desert and up into the mountains. These vistas are lovely.

Ah, they've arrived at "the forbidden fortress of the giant Gorax".

Hmm, how to get in? "Nothing here but rocks," says Mace...

The priestess reminds him that he once possessed a rock. "Oh, my rock!" he says, before remembering that he's a complete moron.

Wicket steps up once again. A true hero of Endor.

There's an arrowhead inside the rock that points to the doorway. Mace blasts a rock out of the way, and they find a cave.

They leave the younglings here for safety, and the rest carry on until they find a big spiderweb stretching across a chasm.

Meanwhile, Wicket keeps Cindel amused by standing on his head and then falling over.

A big spider tries to eat Deej. The priestess hypnotises it into shutting the hell up.

The big spider decides to go back the other way and tries to eat Wicket. He shanks it with terminal intensity. Go Wicket!

The main party climbs up some giant steps, and are confronted by... the giant Gorax. He's basically a hairy ogre.

Gorax has the parents kept in a cage in his cave. An Ewok does that thing where they throw rocks and then run away.

It's day 1, lesson 1 of Ewok fighting: throw a rock, run away, confuse your stupid enemies.

Mace and the Ewoks try to bust the parents out of their cage using the Gorax's cage as a springboard.

Meanwhile, the Gorax is still chasing the same Ewok round and round in circles.

Uh oh, the Gorax has realised it's all a ruse. Luckily about 10 mins of screentime have allowed everyone to escape.

Now the fairy that eats giggles is getting all up in the Gorax's grill.

An angry Gorax kills the woodcutter Ewok with a rockfall. Mace attempts to emote. It's... truly awful.

So they trip the Gorax up with a rope, and the priestess magics a stalactite to fall on its head.

Catarine shoots it with the last of the blaster's energy and it falls into the chasm.

Just when they think they're all safe, the Gorax climbs up the other side of the chasm and tries to eat the younglings!

Fortunately, Mace's axe-throwing contest earlier in the film pays off, and he manages to hit the Gorax in the arm. It falls & dies.

They swing across the chasm, and the giggle fairly leads them out of the caves.

Cut back to the Ewok village. Mace says goodbye to his fairy friend.

Then everyone has a traditional Ewok party! Gunda!

Moral: "Courage, loyalty and love are the strongest forces in the universe."

The end. Ooh, the narrator was Burl Ives.

Ok, so I wasn't really expecting this to live up to my childhood experience of watching it. But still, it totally didn't.

Although I can completely see why I liked it at the time. I'm sure little kids would love it today, too.

I see from Wikipedia that 'COC:AEA' was set between 'Empire' and 'Jedi', which leads me into a major gripe...

Given that the Ewoks went on a legendary quest with humans and learned to speak rudimentary English in this film...

...how come they forgot it all and were freaked out when they met humans in 'Jedi'?

Anyway, in conclusion, this is for small kids only. Not sure whether I can face the sequel 'Ewoks: The Battle for Endor' quite yet.

Oh, and if it wasn't clear enough already, Wicket is by far the best character and actor in this film. Kudos to Warwick Davis!

Antichrist

2011-02-21T16:10:00.002Z

As livetweeted on 18.02.11. You can probably tell that I started losing patience with 'Antichrist' after about 30 minutes. To be honest, I'm still unsure whether there's a message behind the film, or whether the whole thing is just an irritating provocation. Whatever. Warning: contains spoilers (some gross).

Ok, a slow-mo prologue featuring Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. They are hardcore boning in the bathroom. Sexy.

A window's open, it's all very arty b&w.

A toddler is wandering around. I have a premonition someone's going to regret leaving that baby gate open.

Heartbreakingly beautiful footage of the baby falling out of a window into the snowy night and slamming into the ground.

Cut to the funeral. Father crying, mother collapses as they follow the hearse.

Cut to a month later. She's now in hospital, heavily medicated. He's some kind of therapist who thinks she's on too many drugs.

Seems Defoe is planning to treat her grief himself, despite knowing it's not a good idea.

Something tells me this is going to be a truly miserable filmic experience.

Defoe is creepily in control of his own grief. His wife comments: "You're indifferent to whether your child is alive or dead."

So, there's a lot of recrimination, nightmares, panic attacks and breathing systems.

So far, my favourite bits of this film are the various cutaways to weirdly lit woodland scenes with Lynch-style background noise.

So, it seems the therapy isn't going very well. She's headbutting the toilet bowl at the moment.

Defoe's therapy involves exposure theory. She can't tell him what she's afraid of, only that she'd be most afraid in the woods.

"What scares you about the woods?" "Everything."

Ok, she's most scared of this place called Eden, which formerly was the place she liked most.

Defoe keeps denying her sex with the excuse that he's her therapist. Then he relents. They play fight. She bites him.

Next, he sort of hypnotherapies her on a train. She imagines she's walking through the woods to Eden. A foxhole unsettles her.

Lots of slow-mo and mist. She passes a tree which she's always felt had "a strange kind of personality".

So far, the film seems static and quite dreamlike. No sign of the antichrist yet.

Now she's heading for a cabin. Defoe tells her to lie down on the grass. She does. Slowly.

Following Defoe's instructions, she melts into the grass and turns green.

"Let fear come if it likes," he tells her. "Remember, what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." I dislike him.

Ominous pounding as they head into the woods...

She takes her shoe off. "The ground is burning", she says. Turns out she has blisters. They keep walking.

They stop for a rest and lie down. She has a nap, he wanders off into the woods and creeps up on a deer.

Hmm. The deer runs off and we see that it's in the middle of giving birth. In slow-mo, of course.

They reach a little bridge. She struggles to cross it. It would seem to represent some kind of transition. She runs off.

Defoe passes the foxhole and the tree with a personality. He gets to the cabin, where Gainsbourg's napping again.

He looks at polaroids of her and their child from when she was last up here, trying (and failing) to complete her thesis.

They're awoken in the night by acorns falling on the cabin's roof.

Defoe wakes up in the morning with his hand dangling out of the open window. It's covered in what look like ticks.

It turns out that she ran the day before because she was scared of the grass. Maybe the grass is the antichrist.

Anyway, the morning's activity is walking from stone A to stone B across the grass. But first he has to carry her to stone A.

She made it! She walked 10 feet! Yay!

Unfortunately all her progress is instantly undone when an eagle chick plummets out of a tree into an ant nest.

The eagle parent then eats its young. Gainsbourg returns to bed for a good cry.

I know how she feels. There's only so much symbolism a person can take.

We get a glimpse of the nebulous thing that scared her last time she was up here. A child crying.

She thought her toddler had run off, but he hadn't. It was something else crying like a child. The woods? Quite creepy.

Defoe analyses this all away, so she physically attacks him.

Guess what, falling acorns are a metaphor. Again, Defoe is totally dismissive.

"Nature is Satan's church," Gainsboug says. Defoe puts Satan to the top of his drawing of a pyramid of anxiety. Above Eden.

Defoe opens and reads some medical results he hid in his pocket before they set off into the woods.

Then acorns fall on his head in slow-mo. I'm getting a bit tired of this.

Defoe's been having bad dreams. They go for a walk. She is apparently cured - not scared of grass or bridges or foxholes at all.

He's sceptical. She runs off. He sees something in the bracken. It's a fox. It seems to be eating itself.

The fox turns to Defoe and says, "Chaos reigns". This is much more unsettling than it looks written down.

It starts raining. Cut back to the cabin. Defoe climbs up into the attic space with a lantern.

The walls are covered with pictures of what look like witches. Defoe finds Gainsboug's thesis (called 'Gynocide') up there too.

As he flicks through, her handwriting degenerates into weird scrawls. On a diagram, a fox is labelled as 'Pan'.

A tree falls down in the woods. Defoe has another fun exercise about fear to put his wife through.

He takes on the role of Nature. He says he wants to hurt her as much as he can. He says he wants to kill her.

She suggests that he's the type of Nature that causes people to do evil things to women. He agrees.

Guess what, that was the subject of her thesis. Defoe thinks she's misunderstood the material.

The literature she was reading was about evil committed against women, but she read it as proof of the evil of women.

They have sex, she's sobbing. She begs him to hit her "so it hurts". He won't, which proves to her that he doesn't love her.

She walks off into the woods and violently fingers herself among some tree roots. Defoe turns up, slaps her in the face. O...kay.

They have sex. We pull back to reveal a whole load of arms and hands poking out of the root system. Freaky.

Later. They debate good and evil. She's obsessed with evil, he says. "Obsession never materialises. It's a scientific fact."

Oops, this can't be good news. She finds the medical records on the floor, which turn out to be the autopsy results on their son.

The results show that the boy had slightly deformed feet.

Defoe realises that she'd been putting the boy's shoes on the wrong feet - knowingly or unknowingly?

She suddenly runs in and attacks him, convinced that he's going to leave her. They have more frantic, desperate sex.

"I love you," he says. "I don't fucking believe you," she screams. And then grabs a big log and smashes it into his groin. Ouch.

Yeah, I think I'd be unconscious after that, too. My eyes are watering in sympathy.

While Defoe's unconscious, she decides to graphically whack him off. Happily this doesn't last too long...

...because pretty swiftly he cums blood.

Jesus Christ. Then she drills a hole through his leg, pokes a finger through and bolts a knife-sharpening wheel onto his leg.

Defoe wakes up. He can't undo the nut, and she's chucked the wrench under the cabin where he'll presumably never find it.

Turns out her scheme for keeping him around has backfired a little, as he's dragged himself off into the misty woods.

She's trying to find him. "Where are you, you bastard?" she screams over and over again. "How dare you leave me!"

He's hiding in the sinister foxhole. He lights a match, sees something weird in the earth.

He digs it up. Turns out it's a live crow! I didn't see that coming.

The crow starts cawing, giving away Defoe's position. He smashes its head in with a rock.

It comes back to life again and starts making a racket. Uh oh, Gainsbourg's found him!

She digs him out with a spade from above in a frenzy. Has she killed him?

No, he was just a bit buried. She's back to normal now, it seems, and doesn't remember throwing the wrench away.

"When the three beggars arrive, someone must die," she says cryptically back at the cabin. But they're not here yet. Phew!

She lies down next to him on the floor with a pair of scissors, and tries to get sexy. But it's not working.

It's not working because she keeps flashing back to their child dying. Also Defoe is unconscious again.

Her flashbacks seem to suggest that she saw what was happening, but did nothing to save him, just kept screwing Defoe.

"Hold me," she says. And then chops off her clitoris with those scissors I mentioned just now.

Defoe looks out the window at the stars, and that weird diagram from the attic is laid over them. I was wrong before...

A fox is labelled 'Pain', a crow is 'Despair' and a deer is 'Grief'. These were the 3 chapter titles up to this point.

There's a big hail storm, during which the actual deer, fox and crow turn up. They all lie next to Gainsbourg.

The crow was under the floor, and Defoe lets it out by smashing a floorboard. Underneath was the wrench.

I'm guessing they're the three beggars. Anyway, he starts undoing the weight bolted to his leg.

Gainsbourg stabs him a bit with the scissors. He manages to pull the bolt out of his leg.

He strangles her against the wall. For ages.

She's dead. Then he burns her body on a big bonfire. Toasty.

Now he walks in slow-mo back past the personality tree, and we briefly see a load of white bodies fade in, lying in clumps.

Oh good, an epilogue. Defoe in b&w eating berries by the path.

He sees ghostly fox, deer and crow watching him. Like at the end of 'Return of the Jedi'.

Now the whole hillside is swarming with ghostly people, all walking up past him. The end.

I guess this is some kind of dark, personal odyssey for Lars Von Trier. Or else it's a big load of psychosexual bollocks.

Witchcraft, women, nature, evil, chaos... Your guess is as good as mine as to what this is all supposed to mean.

There's a lot of symbolism and pat analysis, but I'm not sure it tells us much beyond the fact that guilt and grief unhinge you.

On the positive side, though, there are moments of real freakiness and some startling imagery. And the fox was great.

Strong performances as well, which obviously carry the whole film along.

But who was the antichrist? Him, her, their child, nature, the woods, man, woman, everyone, no one? Unfortunately, I don't care.

In conclusion, I'd recommend this film for people who love elliptical, frustrating art films. But it left me mostly unsatisfied.

A Serbian Film

2011-02-18T14:09:00.002Z

As livetweeted on 14.02.11. 'A Serbian Film' was a pretty tough watch in places, and I deliberately didn't go into detail about a couple of the more disturbing scenes to spare innocent people on Twitter. If you want further info, ask me in the comments section. Warning: contains spoilers. Secondary warning: the comments may contain some bad shit.

Ok, time to begin what is surely the perfect Valentine's Day viewing experience, 'A Serbian Film'.

We open on a seedy alleyway. 45 seconds in, two people start having sex up against a wall.

We pull out (so to speak) to reveal that a child is watching this film (called "Milosh the Filthy Stud") on a TV screen.

Then Milosh and his wife come into the room. The small child is their son. They turn off the DVD. Cue awkwardness.

Milosh is checking out his jazz collection (including 'Top Crotch'. LOL). Seems he's some kind of washed-up porn star.

He's meeting some lady from the old days. She tells him that "artistic pornography of the highest level" is about to be filmed.

It's a job offer. And now Milosh's brother (who's a cop) has popped up to deliver some sleazy lines and pay for lunch.

So the set-up is: Milosh and family need money, he's being invited back for one last job, he pulls amusing sex faces.

He decides to take the job (of course) and goes to meet this dude called Vukmir who's setting the whole thing up.

LOL Vukmir calls Milosh "an artist of fuck". Best subtitle ever.

The idea seems to be that he has to sign up to a project without knowing what it involves. And that will make it "artistic"...

Ok, the contract is signed. I assume things will be getting horrible pretty soon.

LOL Training montage of jogging and nude meditation.

The cop brother is obviously a bad egg. Currently sleazing all over Milosh's wife while she tries to eat an apple.

And nothing says 'bad cop' like breaking off a chat with your sister-in-law to whack off while staring angrily at yourself in the mirror.

I'm guessing that everyone in this film who has a shaved head and wears sunglasses (3 people so far) is evil. Let's find out.

Right, so the new job starts. Milosh has an earpiece which directs him into an abandoned orphanage followed by cameraman.

Incidentally, the cameraman is wearing some kind of military/police gear. I assume this is building to some kind of allegory.

The "scene" is confusing both for Milosh and for me. Some kind of acting about "villains" from a woman and her (?) daughter.

Oh, I get it. You think they're acting, but actually the woman is having her child taken away from her on film. Classy.

A lady leads him into a darkened room. She orally pleasures him in front of projected footage of the "orphan" eating a lolly.

For some reason, Milosh finds this a bit disturbing and gets his brother to run a background check on Vukmir. Smart thinking.

In a shocking twist, his brother has impotence problems. Especially when watching home movies of Milosh and his family. Weird.

So, back to the film Milosh is appearing in. He's been blindfolded and put in a room where woman gets beaten up.

She's scared. She starts to give him oral. Then he realises the orphan girl is calmly watching from a chair across the room.

Hoo boy. That scene got disturbing in a hurry.

He gets put in a headlock, the woman starts biting him in the downstairs area, the orphan tells him to punch the woman. Urgh.

Oh, did I mention that the woman is the orphan girl's mother?

So the background check comes back - Vukmir Vukmir is a child psychologist who also worked for state security. Not sinister then.

Milosh is understandably having bad dreams.

Milosh makes the very wise decision to back out of the project, only for Vukmir to go into a big rant about Serbia.

"I can see that you're insane", Milosh replies. Yes, that's been obvious for a while now, but good call nonetheless.

So Vukmir's film is about the life of the victim, is it? Run for it, Milosh!

In an effort to explain his point, Vukmir shows Milosh a scene from one of his other films. I'm not going to describe it here.

Let's just say that it involves a man with a shaved head and sunglasses (I TOLD YOU) doing something really awful.

Milosh quite rightly walks out. But he's been drugged...

...and wakes up, a week later, at home. There's blood on the bed and on him. Disturbing glimpses of flashbacks.

Oof. Turns out they slipped him "cattle aphrodisiac".

Which turned him into a psychotic rapist. The woman from earlier met a nasty end at Milosh's hands (and a machete).

Basically, Milosh is now trying to piece together what happened in his missing week. He's at Vukmir's place, which is deserted.

He finds a stack of tapes (some featuring him) and leaves. For some reason, he can't get hold of his wife on the phone. Uh oh.

So he's now sitting in the woods, running through all the tapes.

So after Milosh snuff-filmed the blond lady with a machete mid-coitus, it turns out that he was raped by the guards. On film.

This is like 'The Hangover' if it were made by Hieronymous Bosch.

I notice some people have started following me during this livetweet. Hello! I profoundly apologise for my timeline this afternoon.

So Lejla (the girl who suggested this project at the beginning of the film) tried to help him. She had all her teeth pulled out.

Oh dear. Then she was killed really horribly.

On another tape, drugged Milosh was almost coerced into having sex with the orphan girl, but rebelled and jumped out a window.

Plus he threatened to cut his penis off with a kitchen knife. Good old Milosh.

So, long story short, he got away, called his brother, whacked off in an alley, got recaptured...

He's retraced his steps to a warehouse somewhere.

Where he had previously been dosed up on the old cattle viagra before stabbing the evil doctor lady to death in a frenzy.

So he's lead into a room. There are two people wearing hoods, and he's set loose on one of them.

The masked figure who horribly killed Lejla goes to work on the second person.

Vukmir removes all the hoods and masks to reveal that the masked killer is Milosh's cop brother...

Who is having sex with Milosh's drugged wife. I knew he was a bad egg.

Eww. It turns out that Milosh is having sex with his own son, who appears to have overdosed.

Milosh and his wife kill all the men with shaved heads and sunglasses. The main one is ocularly penetrated to death by Milosh.

The brother cop and Vukmir get their heads smashed in. Then Milosh kills his wife when she tries to stab him.

Then we see him taking his family's bodies home and trying to shoot himself with an empty gun before passing out in bed.

Which is where he woke up. Now he goes home to find that he'd locked his wife and son in the basement.

Oh, his wife is actually alive, as is the son. They're obvious catatonic and disturbed.

They all climb into bed and hug, and then Milosh kills the whole family with his gun, including himself.

And the film ends with a film crew looking at them, and a young man being told to "start with the little one". The end.

Poor old Milosh. He was actually quite a likeable chap until they injected him with cattle aphrodisiac.

So I'm sure the director would claim some deeper message about the horrors of the Balkan conflict...

...but it's deeply muddled and extremely flawed if it's there at all.

In conclusion, I would recommend this film to psychopaths and desensitised war rapists, but not to anyone else.

The version I watched was cut by 6 minutes. I'm actually pretty happy about that right now.

Afterword: after a bit of investigation, it seems like I might have actually watched an uncut version (although I'm still not entirely sure). Either way, it was pretty gruelling.

The Human Centipede: First Sequence

2011-02-18T13:31:00.002Z

As livetweeted on 04.02.11. Just thought I'd collect my comments into a single post here, mostly so that I have a permanent record to remind me to never bother watching this nonsense again. Although I can't really see that being a problem. Warning: contains spoilers.

First actor in the credits: Dieter Laser.

He's a sinister-looking fellow, slowly caressing photos of dogs.

So, plot set-up: two vapid morons are in Germany. They're going to a party in their car. Now they're lost. Oops, puncture!

Guess what, there's no signal on their phones. Neither of these ladies know how to change a tyre.

"Are those headlights?" Yes. Yes, they are.

Sweaty old German sexpest pulls up, leers. Wow, this is like the worst night of their lives.

Time to walk for help. They set off down the road. Cut to them lost in the woods. Ooh look, a house.

V.poor acting so far. And that gravemarker for "My dear 3-dog" is classic foreshadowing.

The sinister doctor who takes them in is drugging their water. He's acting ludicrously evil. Luckily, these girls are idiots.

LOL "I don't like human beings!"

They're both getting sleepy. The evil doctor explains how he's rohypnolled them. Uh oh.

They wake up chained to hospital beds. Then Doktor Psycho kidnaps a Japanese dude.

Ok, he's just explained his plan to make them all into a 'Siamese Triplet' aka 'Human Centipede'. Worst Powerpoint show ever.

So one of the girls manages to get free while the other two are being sedated for surgery.

LOL she fell in the swimming pool.

"Please let us go", she says, treading water in front of the doctor. Then tries to hide underwater. Genius.

As punishment for trying to escape, she gets to be "the middle piece". Unlucky.

For some reason, the electrics go out and he wanders off. She goes to get her unconscious friend and drags her outside.

It's raining, so she falls over a lot.

LOL shot in the back with a tranquilizer gun. And now... surgery time!

Ok, that was a particularly horrible couple of minutes. Doktor Nutjob does a lot of heavy breathing and eye rolling too.

Cut to the 'Human Centipede' lying unconscious on his living room floor sometime later. "Oh my sweet centipede," he croons.

So he wakes them up and takes some photos. These actors might not be very good, but they're certainly committed.

Doktor Dumkopf keeps them in a cage. There's a lot of crying. Which is understandable, I guess.

Now he's trying to train them like a dog. His motivations (other than being obviously crazy) have never been explained.

Ok, I won't describe that bit. Let's just say that eating has repercussions.

Medical check-up reveals that the girl at the back isn't doing very well for some reason.

The police are at the door, but don't instantly spot that the doctor is nuts despite his face being set in a rictus of evil.

So his plan is now to replace the dying back-end with the two cops. Who he's trying to rohypnol at the moment.

Meanwhile, the human centipede is trying to reach a scalpel down in the soundproofed basement.

Wow, these cops are totally unbelievable cretins. Doc freaks out and even drops a needle in front of them.

They go to get a search warrant despite the fact that he's basically admitted to abducting people. Sigh.

Back downstairs, the human centipede manages to stab the doctor up and bite a chunk out of his neck.

They're running into a spot of bother on the spiral staircase.

The doctor is crawling after them. Back-end lady isn't looking good. And they're trapped in a dead-end.

Japanese guy at front kills himself with a shard of glass to spite the doctor. Oh, who's that at the door? The police again.

Police are now in the house, but one of them is lapsing into unconsciousness from the rohypnol.

Both cops get shot. As does the doctor.

The back-end girl dies, leaving middle girl surgically attached to two corpses. Fun times. The end.

In conclusion, this film is highly recommended for fans of unnecessary surgery and crazy doctors. But not for anyone else.

Value for money

2010-09-18T14:41:00.004+01:00

I thought I'd look into responsibly recycling my trusty old Nokia now that I no longer carry it around in a rucksack. Googling "phone recycling" sent me to Mazuma, where I received the following competitive quote for the most reliable piece of technology I have ever owned:

(click to enlarge)

Spiderman

2010-07-13T16:56:00.004+01:00

When I was down in Devizes at the start of the month, Will very kindly allowed me to attach a temporary Spiderman tattoo to his face. He sported it for the rest of the day, much to Kate's consternation. Personally, I think it's a strong look. And it never fails to make me laugh.

Microscopy

2010-07-02T14:14:00.002+01:00

My parents quite randomly decided to get me a late additional birthday present (after their sterling gift of series 2 of Twin Peaks). It arrived this morning. It was a USB microscope.

I'm not sure where they got the idea from (I'm not, and never have been, a scientific person), but it's successfully eaten into my day. I find it surprisingly fascinating being able to examine ordinary objects at 400x magnification - I'm now disturbed by the state of my skin, for example, and by the residue left on a "clean" teaspoon. Urgh. Anyway, my test photos are here.

Next up, capturing some tiny insects and spiders. Be afraid.

Pembrokeshire

2010-07-02T14:07:00.002+01:00

A bunch of us spent a lovely week in Pembrokeshire recently. It's not a part of Wales that I was familiar with previously, but I'd highly recommend it - especially if you can coincide your visit with the hottest week of the year, like we managed to. Lots of coastal walking and nice food, with the benefits of not having the internet or even phone reception. I'd have preferred not to have smashed my head against low door frames every couple of hours, but you can't have everything.

Anyway, my photos of the week are here.

I miss being on holiday.

The House of the Devil (2009)

2010-04-28T23:07:00.002+01:00

★★★★☆
An agreeably retro chiller, aided by a slow build of tension and some suitably creepy performances from Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov. I really liked it.

Aeon Flux (2005)

2010-04-28T09:33:00.003+01:00

★☆☆☆☆
This film is cock.

The Cove (2009)

2010-04-28T09:30:00.002+01:00

★★★★☆
Guerilla documentary following activists as they investigate the needless slaughter of dolphins in a fishing village in Japan. An absorbing, unsettling and moving piece of work.

Avatar (2009)

2010-04-28T09:28:00.001+01:00

★★★☆☆
I'd definitely recommend seeing this in 3D at the IMAX, because the visuals are the important thing here. It's like a mash-up of various earlier Cameron films, and the plotting and dialogue are throwaway and often cliched. But it's undeniably a feast for the eyes.

A few things which are really starting to fucking irritate me

2010-04-27T00:21:00.004+01:00

(1) TV ads for Bing.com
Q: "What has information overload done to us?"
A: Nothing. And certainly nothing like Bing's adverts, which feature a bewilderingly unfunny, stupid, pointless and nonsensical range of wretched fucking idiots spouting shit like it's going out of style. In an attempt to distinguish Bing.com from the likes of Google, Microsoft have additionally made the mistake of referring to their search engine as a "decision engine", which (a) it isn't and (b) assumes that users of the internet are somehow unable to make a decision when presented with search results. This not only insults the cognitive abilities of Microsoft's intended audience, but also inadvertently highlights the lack of difference between Bing.com and any other search engine, in that Bing.com provides no greater facility for making a decision when faced with results than Bing's competitors. The whole ad campaign is woefully wrongheaded, ensuring that I will deliberately never use this service.

(2) Simpsons sponsorship by Bing.com
Which consists of a pair of smug douchebags smirking their way through a series of domestic moments in which using Bing.com somehow keeps them from slashing each other's throats, despite the fact that this married couple are repeatedly shown to be vacuous, shallow and thoughtless. And - as if to purposefully confirm my previous issues with the service itself - we are treated to scenes showing the actors searching for things in a completely standard way. Grrr.

(3) Windows 7 ads, 7 second demos
As an extension of the basic Windows 7 "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea" awfulness, I suppose these mini ads make sense. But from a consumer point of view, I'm not sure who they're supposed to appeal to. I suppose they manage to showcase a few minor features, but, from the one where a chubby dude talks about browsing in private (while shopping for his wife, and definitely not surfing for child porn) to the one where a ditzy woman knocks a load of shit onto the floor, the adverts seem tailor-made to inflict maximum irritation in only 7 seconds - a problem which is compounded by the fact that most ad breaks now seem to start with one of these ads and end with different one.

I honestly didn't mean to fill this post with anti-Microsoft venting, but their overarching campaign strategy seems to have driven all the other things I was going to mention out of my mind for the time being. Ho hum. At least it makes a change from the film reviews, right?

Rogue (2007)

2010-03-30T08:12:00.003+01:00

★★★☆☆
If you like killer crocodile films, this is probably for you. The CGI doesn't quite work in a few places, but for the most part it's a fairly suspenseful hour and a half. Good use of some beautiful landscapes, and putting 'Never Smile At A Crocodile' over the end credits was a nice touch.

Katalin Varga (2009)

2010-03-30T08:09:00.002+01:00

★★★★☆
A sad and eerie revenge story, which benefits from a strong central performance and a haunting soundtrack. I'd recommend it.

Paranormal Activity (2009)

2010-03-30T08:06:00.004+01:00

★★★☆☆
Effective low budget horror which makes good use of its limited locations, but which is slightly let down by some unlikely decisions from its protagonists. Still, it has its moments.

Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A Leuchter, Jr (1999)

2010-03-30T07:59:00.002+01:00

★★★★☆
This was the first Errol Morris film I saw, and it remains one of my favourites. As we follow Leuchter's transition from execution engineer to Holocaust denier, he emerges as a misguided, potentially dangerous fool with delusions of scientific competence. An unsettling portrait of a strange man.

I'm Here (2010)

2010-03-24T15:36:00.006Z

★★★★☆
A lovely 30-minute short from Spike Jonze - well realised, beautiful and strangely affecting. I really liked it. The film is available to watch for free here.

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

2010-03-23T16:41:00.003Z

★★★☆☆
A surprisingly fun film, and one which is the same age as me. Shatner proves himself capable of delivering quite a lot of smutty innuendo, and any film is improved by the addition of a plainly genuinely scared child being menaced by a bed full of tarantulas...

In The Loop (2009)

2010-03-23T16:35:00.001Z

★★★☆☆
A good extension of The Thick Of It, although personally I found it depressing for the most part rather than funny. Good to see Malcolm Tucker out of his depth, though.

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

2010-03-23T16:30:00.000Z

★★☆☆☆
An anthology of varying quality. The John Lithgow segment is by far the most effective.

Wrong Turn (2003)

2010-03-23T16:29:00.002Z

★★☆☆☆
Fairly generic horror in which inbred cannibal mountain men kill a bunch of largely uninteresting characters in West Virginia.

The Curse (1987)

2010-03-23T16:27:00.002Z

★★☆☆☆
A low budget reworking of H P Lovecraft's 'The Colour out of Space', which manages a few good scenes in and around the blighted farm. Unfortunately, the acting is fairly suspect for the most part, and it gets actively stupid by the end.

Storytelling (2001)

2010-03-23T16:24:00.001Z

★★★☆☆
Another Solondz exercise in awkward awfulness. Concise, wry and grim. I'm not sure I liked it, but I thought it was pretty good.

Q, The Winged Serpent (1982)

2010-03-04T23:59:00.002Z

★★☆☆☆
This cult monster movie contains a few strong scenes and several amusing lines, but I don't really understand why it's (supposedly) so fondly remembered. The monster is rendered in rather clunky stop animation, which I don't really have a problem with; more disappointing is the generally sluggish pace. In summary, I was fairly underwhelmed.

Zombieland (2009)

2010-03-04T22:01:00.002Z

★★★☆☆
An entertaining zombie film which manages to be funny and quite sweet without overstepping the line and becoming annoying.

Next (2007)

2010-03-04T00:29:00.002Z

★★★☆☆
I was expecting this Nic Cage film about a man with bad hair who can see two minutes into his own future and somehow has to stop a nuke going off on US soil to be appalling. But actually it was quite enjoyable. It's obviously bobbins, but it kept me entertained for the duration.

Shoot 'Em Up (2007)

2010-03-03T00:12:00.003Z

★★☆☆☆
The makers of this film were obviously hoping to create a thrilling action movie, but have instead made something weirdly uninvolving (despite some admittedly slick set pieces). This is not helped by flat one-liners, the fact that literally no-one can shoot straight, or the painful miscasting of Paul Giamatti, who mugs his way through an unconvincing bad guy routine. Still, some of the gunplay was fun.

Project X (1987)

2010-02-28T11:56:00.002Z

★★★☆☆
Chimps overthrow the military science lab where they're being experimented on, helped by deaf-signing Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt. Undemanding ape thriller.

Urban Menace (1999)

2010-02-28T11:42:00.003Z

☆☆☆☆☆
This is some soft focus, appallingly scripted and acted, low budget, illogical, idiotic, poorly directed, nonsensically weak ass shit right here, booooy. Essentially an hour-long video to accompany Ice T's 7th Deadly Sin album (which was rubbish in the first place). If the thought of seeing Snoop Dogg with glowing red eyes seems intriguing, you'll be pleased to learn that that is probably the high point of this awful piece of shit.

Sleepwalkers (1992)

2010-02-28T11:34:00.004Z

★☆☆☆☆
A really dumb combination of vampires and cats from screenwriter Stephen King, this film manages to waste several good character actors (and cameos from various horror directors) without delivering any kind of pay-off. And the monsters are wank.

Hard To Kill (1990)

2010-02-28T11:31:00.003Z

★☆☆☆☆
A lot of people think that Seagal can't act. I would direct these fools to the scene in this film where he wakes up from a seven-year coma - truly a masterclass in eye-rolling and twitching fingers. Fortunately, in 'Hard to Kill', ace director Bruce Malmuth pairs Seagal up with Kelly LeBrock, an actress of consummate ability. Their sex scene is powerfully erotic, as is Seagal's penchant for breaking people's wrists while squinting like a blind man. This may be the greatest action film ever made. Some or all of the preceding review is not true.

Timecrimes (2007)

2010-02-28T11:20:00.003Z

★★★★☆
I really enjoyed the sinister exploration of the central paradox in this twisty time travel film, which benefits from taut direction and a dry performance from Karra Elejalde.

Dreamcatcher (2003)

2010-02-28T11:17:00.001Z

★★★☆☆
Surprisingly enjoyable considering its reputation. I mean, there's no denying that it's stupid. But if you watch it with that expectation, you won't be disappointed. Or you'll still be disappointed, but at least you'll have seen some shit weasels.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

2010-02-28T11:16:00.002Z

★★☆☆☆
If you pretend you haven't seen the original one and just watch this film on its own terms, it manages to come off as pretty much ok. I liked the fact that the world was saved thanks to the interaction between a child and his stepmother as they struggled to reconcile their emotional baggage and to finally bond in the face of adversity. That was an amazingly positive and hopeful message. I am weeping as I type this.

Religulous (2008)

2010-02-28T11:12:00.001Z

★★★☆☆
Although I agree with the general sentiments behind much of this film, I'm not sure that Maher goes about proving his thesis of doubt in an especially convincing way. By choosing relatively soft targets, he encourages us to mock and sneer, rather than actively engaging people in serious discussion. This isn't helped by the choppy editing, which often provides laughs, but isn't always particularly fair. And while he raises some thought-provoking (and sometimes just provocative) points, I thought he could have delved deeper instead of cutting his subjects off. Overall, though, I enjoyed it, especially when Maher puts his browbeating to one side and gets into comparative theology

C.H.U.D. (1984)

2010-02-27T23:04:00.002Z

★★★☆☆
I like this film. There, I said it.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

2010-02-27T22:36:00.005Z

★★★☆☆
Ridiculous Japanese mutant gore movie. If you like extreme, cartoonish bloodletting and a lot of shrieking, I'd say give it a go. Weird and inventive. I also watched a film called Tokyo Gore School, which was a far tamer affair (about a teen 'game' which involves beating each other up and exposing shameful secrets, good ending but not particularly involving).

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)

2010-02-25T19:46:00.002Z

★☆☆☆☆
A sequel so bad that Christophe Lambert wouldn't reprise his role. And the first Mortal Kombat film was no great shakes to start with. And Christophe Lambert will do almost any film, no matter how crappy. Truly, this is balls.

My Name Is Bruce (2007)

2010-02-25T19:39:00.001Z

★★☆☆☆
Meta Bruce Campbell film which is funny in places and a bit crap in others, with an over-reliance on Ted Raimi cameos.

The Wicker Man (2006)

2010-02-25T19:37:00.001Z

☆☆☆☆☆
What on earth was the point of this terrible remake? Pretty much everything that made the original so original is lost, leaving Nicolas Cage to run about punching and kicking his way towards the wicker man itself. I was disappointed that the version shown on TV didn't feature the infamous headcage of bees - despite the fact that Cage's face is clearly shown as having been stung. Anyway, the resulting film manages to be both uninvolving and awful. Avoid.

Déjà Vu (2006)

2010-02-25T19:25:00.004Z

★★★☆☆
As long as you buy into the ludicrous central macguffin, this is a pretty entertaining thriller. Even so, it's almost unbearably stupid.

Phase IV (1974)

2010-02-25T19:19:00.002Z

★★★★☆
Enjoyably arthouse killer ant film. Ace music and sound effects, and some memorable ant sequences.

Google Buzz

2010-02-25T16:08:00.003Z

I've just removed myself from Google Buzz. It's annoying and is wasting far too much of my time. And removing it appears to have wiped a load of my Reader following/followed by settings at the same time, which is a helpful touch.

The Suckling, aka Sewage Baby (1989)

2010-02-25T15:48:00.005Z

☆☆☆☆☆
This is officially the worst film I've ever seen. Apart from the sequence where the aborted foetus starts mutating in toxic waste, the whole thing was dreadful - appalling script, terrible acting, nonsensical direction. Which is a shame, because I've wanted to see it for over 15 years.

Radio On (1979)

2010-02-25T15:45:00.002Z

★★★☆☆
Great soundtrack, not so sure about the film itself, which is vague and frustrating at times. Still, it stands as an interesting record of the 1970s landscape.

Thirst (2009)

2010-02-25T15:41:00.004Z

★★★★☆
An absorbing mash-up of tortured vampiric priest action and Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin (which luckily I had to read for A-level French). I liked it a lot.

Mutant Chronicles (2009)

2010-02-25T15:22:00.006Z

★★☆☆☆
I'm getting a bit tired of films which feature craptacular CGI - see almost every single wound inflicted on anyone in this movie. Although to be honest I'm not sure why I thought that this film merited watching. It doesn't really.

UN resolutions

2010-01-29T13:38:00.000Z

I've currently got Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq inquiry playing in the background, and there's been a lot of back and forth about the UN resolutions which Iraq breached. Given that Blair is using this as the main justification for the war, I'm struck by the unspoken double standard which underlies the whole thing. Many nations - off the top of my head, Russia, Israel and North Korea - have breached UN resolutions in the recent past without provoking a unilateral, non-UN military response. Which begs the question: why Iraq?

Blair suggested this morning that there was a security threat to the UK from the Iraqi regime. I'm not sure that this has ever been satisfactorily explained - how was Iraq going to attack us? While I don't doubt the veracity of the claims that Saddam Hussein had long range ballistic missiles, their range would appear to have been limited to 150km. This would be enough to hit Israel or Iran (to my mind, much more 'natural' targets for the regime), but not the UK. Blair further claimed that there were worries over a "porous" Iraq allowing for the build up of terrorist cells, which could presumably then be directed against the UK (or at least that appears to be the assumption). This latter idea, however, is true of numerous troubled states in the world. So again, why Iraq?

The justification for singling Iraq out returns again to the UN resolutions with which Iraq failed to comply. As Menzies Campbell pointed out this morning, Blair has ignored the UN's own charter, which specifically prohibits regime change. To use an organisation's resolutions to justify doing something which is not permitted by that very organisation seems to me to be totally reprehensible. It is not so much the legality of the war (as drunkenly discussed with Neil and Simon in the pub on Wednesday) that is on display during this inquiry, but the morality of the thing.

Blair's statements today that Hussein was "wicked" and possibly "psychopathic" may be true (although, again, I'm not sure that necessarily singles him out as hugely different from various other state leaders). But the other side of the coin is that we (the alliance) have lost any moral high ground we might once have been able to claim. Our actions - leading to the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and the destabilisation of an already fragile region - mean that we risk being labelled as "wicked" ourselves by the people we claim to be helping.

And while I am completely willing to accept that I may be guilty of oversimplifying the situation, I think the Iraq inquiry will ultimately be a test of the nation's morality. To his credit, Blair has always maintained that the decision to invade Iraq was his, and that he will stand by it and be accountable for it. These events were decided in our name by our representatives, after all, so that's how it should be. But by the same token, he is ultimately responsible for spending billions of pounds of taxpayer money on a war, instead of, say, clearing the NHS of its debts.

Anyway, I know none of this is news exactly, but it's pissing me off and I just felt like a rant. Thanks for your time.

New Year's resolutions

2010-01-04T16:12:00.004Z

This year I have resolved to:

(1) Update this blog more often. Every now and then, I find myself looking at this blog and thinking, "Fuck, I haven't posted anything for ages." I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that I don't post anything regularly, or the fact that I only realise this fact at increasingly wider intervals. One of the things I find most irritating about the blogosphere is the frequency with which I read posts bemoaning the author's own lack of posting. And now it has come to pass that I, too, am one of those very people. Before I spiral down into a deep depression at that thought - a depression which might easily prevent me from being able to face the idea of looking at my blog for the next three months - I will quickly note my other three resolutions.

(2) Stop promising to deliver further Stephen King reviews while not actually getting around to finishing any of the many which are half-completed. This effectively boils down to me actually writing the reviews for this project in a timely and comprehensive fashion, but I have finally realised that my occasional posts about them don't seem to be having the desired result, i.e. provoking me to finish the fucking things. I hope this clear enough.

(3) Transfer my film reviews from Facebook (which I have almost completely had enough of) to Blogger, more for myself than because I think other people will want to read them. Marvel at how many shit films I watch! Gasp in astonishment at my pedestrian reviews, many of which are also perfunctory! Eventually, I hope to leave Facebook forever, at which point this blog will be the sole repository for these useless and semi-formed opinions for all time. Or until the internet ends. Either is fine with me.

(4) Buy an Xbox 360. This will occur when it turns out I can actually afford it.

Happy New Year!

Meg

2009-12-22T17:09:00.004Z

Meg was finally put to sleep yesterday after months of gamely soldiering on through a variety of illnesses. I wish I'd been able to get home in time to see her one last time, but it wasn't to be. At least I got to spend some quality time with her over the summer, when she seemed to be on the mend. I miss her.

Good dog.

In pain, a trip, reading, watching

2009-10-20T16:12:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I last posted anything, thanks to a combination of factors, not least among them the stubbing and snapping of an ingrown big toenail which necessitated a painful medical procedure and around a week of throbbing pain, ranging from mild to agonising. Despite this, I managed to hobble onto a train and down to Devizes this weekend with Ali, and am pleased to say that Will and Kate are doing a great job with Tom (despite extreme sleep deprivation). He was generally in a good mood all weekend, and is smiling and focusing on things regularly. I can also report that he is capable of delivering a sturdy headbutt to the unwary, as he proved while repeatedly trying to smash all of the teeth out of my head.

Those of you who read my Stephen King blog will have noticed yet another lapse into silence. I'm aiming to get something finished fairly soon, having got too wrapped up in reading the books themselves to actually bother reviewing them. Anyway, five new reviews will follow at some point in the coming days (weeks?). In an attempt to catch up, I'm taking a break from King, which has allowed me to work my way through some unread fixtures in my bookcase, including Chuck Palahniuk's Rant and Snuff (both good, although not up there with his best work, in my opinion) and J G Ballard's Crash (which I am slightly struggling with, as I slightly struggle with everything of his that I read. Honestly, how many times can you use the words 'pubis' and 'mucosa' in a 185-page book? Answer: a lot).

Finally, I've also been catching up with various TV series, including the current Channel 4 runs of True Blood (enjoyable bayou Gothic) and Generation Kill (depressing and funny from moment to moment). However, due thanks must also go to Dan Cuthill for completely hooking me on Battlestar Galactica (mini series and season 1 completed), which I am really enjoying and cannot wait to continue with.

Anyway, my toe is now well on its way to healing up, so I can actually sit at my computer for longer than five minutes without needing painkillers. Happy days.

Yay!

2009-08-28T13:16:00.000+01:00

Let me be the first to congratulate Will and Kate on their baby boy, as yet unnamed, via the medium of the blog. Yay!

Update: Thomas (Tom) James Griffiths, welcome!

A Saturday well spent

2009-08-15T22:52:00.002+01:00

I just finished reading It, spending most of today racing through the final 319 pages. I chose... wisely.

Holiday

2009-07-12T13:45:00.001+01:00

I'm off on holiday until the end of the month in sunny, cosmopolitan Andover. Have a good July!

Psychoville

2009-07-09T23:04:00.002+01:00

I hope all regular readers are watching Psychoville, the murder-mystery evil stepchild of The League of Gentlemen. Today's episode abandoned the established format (switching between multiple characters to gradually build a picture of the greater mystery), instead treating the viewer to a 'one take' homage to Hitchcock's wonderful Rope. Yay!

Nick Griffin

2009-07-08T22:23:00.005+01:00

I am currently watching the BBC News, and have been stunned into total stupefaction by Nick Griffin's first statement of European intent. And also amused at the thought of where the News International scandal might end up in these witch-hunt days of media scrutiny and outrage. The destruction of Rupert Murdoch by the rest of the media would be quite something to watch.

Expenses

2009-06-23T16:14:00.002+01:00

Does anyone know whether it's possible to find out what Prince Charles claims as expenses during the year? In the current climate of enforced transparency provoked by the furore over MPs' expenses, I DEMAND to know! If this information is not INSTANTLY made public, we should just SACK the whole BLOODY lot of them!1! iTs POLITICLE CORECTNESS GONE MAD¬!!! KNOW WONDER EVERY1's VOTIN FOR the BNP!!! LOL

Remind me never to read the comments section of any online newspaper ever again.

Hatespew

2009-06-17T13:54:00.003+01:00

Is it wrong that whenever I see one of those T-Mobile adverts with all the people bellowing along to songs in Trafalgar Square or dancing in Liverpool St station, I want to find some kind of heavy duty weaponry and just start executing every single fucking one of the people involved at extreme speed?

Fuck T-Mobile. And if you like those adverts, fuck you too.

In dreams...

2009-03-11T17:24:00.003Z

Last night, after getting an early night for the first time in about six months, I had the most vivid dream I can remember in recent times. It revolved around everyone in the world who had a guitar being requested to come to this huge stadium to play a benefit gig. I realised after a while that I couldn't really play the part I'd been given, so I showed the music to this rocker with a flying V and asked him how to play it. He immediately broke into the most intricate and high-speed solo, playing really aggressively for about ten minutes while roaring with laughter. At which point, Neil leaned over his shoulder and started singing lyrics: "Sucker... sucker... BLOODSUCKER!" Then the guitarist highfived me and I woke up laughing aloud at 7.30, an hour before my alarm was due to go off. I was working by 7.45 and I have remained cheery and upbeat all day, despite having spent the last eight hours correcting Powerpoint slides and finding out that I haven't been paid the money that was supposed to be in my account today. And Swine Fever now have a new song (or at least a new title, which is in many respects the same thing, given our output so far). Yay!

The Wire

2009-02-25T23:46:00.003Z

After a day spent nursing a mixture of hangover and illness (or possibly actual alcohol poisoning; I'm not sure), I have just this moment finished watching the fifth series of The Wire in its entirety, all in one sitting. Without wanting to give anything away to those who are yet to see it, I thought it was excellent (although with a minor reservation, which I will put in the comments - consider this a warning not to read them if you want to avoid spoilers). Really engaging, as always, with a satisfying conclusion. And now I'm going to bed.

Non-fiction

2009-02-19T00:03:00.002Z

As those of you who follow my Stephen King blog will doubtless be aware, I've been fairly lax in posting reviews of late (two months and counting...). This is partly due to the large amounts of work I'm trying to fit in to balance out the pain of having to pay tax, but mostly because I have had something of a non-fiction break.

Despite my best efforts to secure the complete boxset of The Wire for Christmas, my parents stubbornly suggested that I choose something else instead, preferably something without all the street executions, drug dealing and bad language of that most excellent of series (thanks a lot, Amazon and its customers' helpful reviews). This post covers the results, three books which I have been meaning to get hold of for some time, all of which (unbeknownst to my parents) contain violence, pain and swearing. More importantly, all three are great.

The first, Joe Sacco's Palestine, is the only one I had read before. A comic book record of two months in Gaza and the West Bank in 1991-2, Palestine is journalism of the highest order. Sacco draws his interview subjects and their surroundings in a way that is somehow more accessible than TV news or "proper" journalism. This conflict started long before I was born, and has been reported on throughout my life, both in print and on TV. As a result, I often find that I've practically forgotten that it's still going on. I'd recommend this book to anyone who finds themselves in a similar desensitised position.

As Sacco travels from town to town, he meets a wide cross-section of Palestinians (and some Israelis), ranging from the resigned to the militant. Their stories illustrate time and again the frustrations, dangers and humiliations of daily life. He investigates refugee camps, hospitals, prisons and schools, interspersing their stories with visits to ordinary people in their homes. Sacco walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy, stopping occasionally to poke holes in his own preconceptions and opinions. He also manages the difficult task of laying out a balanced, historical background to the modern situation, explaining the key political movers and shakers and Israel's settlement scheme. Sacco's detailed artwork and wry observations make him an endearing guide to the region - I'd be interested to see what he might produce today, 17 years later. I'm guessing it might not be that different a story.

The second book, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, collects the author's two memoirs together in one volume. I can't quite remember when I first became aware of Persepolis; it just seemed to seep into my mind at some point as one of those books which I always meant to read but never did.

The first part, 'The Story of a Childhood', opens on Marjane as a girl in Iran, coming to terms with wearing a veil at school, while her parents protest against the Shah. Her transition from cheeky innocent to propaganda-spouting teenager takes place against the backdrop of the Islamic Revolution, and the subsequent war between Iran and Iraq. Marjane's experiences throughout this turbulent period are sometimes comic, sometimes sad. She witnesses repression and sudden violence for the first time, and is bundled off to Vienna by her concerned parents. This is where the second volume, 'The Story of a Return', takes up the narrative.

There's something I really like about Satrapi's drawing style, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It's deceptively simple, making the book instantly readable. The facial expressions, although minimal in many cases, combine with the text to convey deeper meanings. Or maybe I just imagined that. Anyway, the second part sees Marjane growing up away from her family and friends. She feels the keen isolation of the outsider, the foreigner, but gradually makes some friends. Her teenage years take in broken relationships, a period as a student drug dealer, and another sleeping rough. Her eventual return home to Iran isn't necessarily what she thought it would be, either. Satrapi's troubled youth is balanced by the more extreme hardships endured by friends and relatives during the war. It's an interesting and well observed read. I'm looking forward to seeing the animated film version.

The final book on my post-Christmas odyssey of non-fiction is Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Regular readers will already know about (if not own) this account of a year spent following the homicide detectives of the Baltimore police department.

Having been granted unprecedented access, Simon is able to report in great detail the routines of a detective's life, from the initial treatment of a body through autopsies and interrogations to the suspect's days in court. He follows cases both intensely difficult (a child murder) and ridiculously easy (a suspect taking detectives to reclaim the jewellery he'd stolen and sold, completely oblivious to the fact that he was providing the police with the only concrete evidence of his crime), while we gradually get to know the detectives.

Simon touches on many of the themes which so shape The Wire: politics, violence, procedure and, inevitably, drugs, which lurk in the background in a large number of cases. We follow the various career trajectories of the detectives, gradually coming to realise how entirely arbitrary the homicide system is - it's pot luck as to which detective gets which murder; some murders are never going to be solved, due to lack of evidence and/or suspects; one detective may be lucky enough to get a run of "slamdunkers".

Simon slowly focuses in on a number of the detectives, but it's obvious that he has a deep affection for these men and their rough, occasionally very dark, humour. This is a committed and serious examination of the people who have to deal with the consequences of human rage, fear and insanity, and it's ace: informative, bleak, funny and gripping. There's also a fun sideline for Wire fans, who can play the 'Spot the Wire anecdote which is actually a true story' game like I did. Awesome. Now I want to get The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighbourhood. But first I need to read a whole lot of Stephen King...

A few things...

2009-02-05T11:04:00.003Z

After a couple of months of not blogging, I now have a couple of posts lined up. But before I get into them, I just wanted to get a few things off my chest. I have recently found myself being irritated by: too much work, my tax return, the poet who delivered that interminable poem at Obama's coronation, the children who pour out of the school up the road every afternoon and shriek in the street for about an hour, people complaining about the fact that everything shuts down in the snow, the backed up sewer which filled our garden with human waste over the weekend, my inability to remember various songs on the guitar, my ability to timewaste on the internet without even doing something constructive like finishing a Stephen King review, having no money, falling asleep on the sofa and waking up at about 3am at least once every two or three days.

I could go on, but I should really get back to work.

Control EP - Ecce

2008-12-03T15:18:00.000Z

Can I just take a moment of your time to recommend the excellent Control EP by Ecce? Every track's a winner (although personally I prefer the original 'Control' to the remix - but that's gradually growing on me, too). Anyway, buy it. Then he might be able to release more. Then you can buy that. And so on.

Available digitally on iTunes here or, if you prefer a more tangible medium, on 12" from the August Day label.

Songs That Provoke A Response

2008-11-27T12:58:00.002Z

Yesterday, while trudging my way through the piece of shit book I'm currently editing, I realised that I'd run out of ways to procrastinate. This might sound ridiculous, given the wealth of pointless crap on the internet, but there's only so much comment I can read in a day (informed or otherwise). What I really should have done at that point was finish two King reviews which have been mouldering away in draft for a couple of weeks, but this seemed a little bit too much like work to count as a proper distraction. And suddenly a particularly nice Dusty Springfield song poured mournfully out of my speakers, and I understood what I needed to do.

I've started an occasional music blog.

Cue the dejected sighs of my regular readership... Anyway, the concept is simple: when I'm wallowing in the depths of tedium, I will share any song which provokes a response, in the hope that the process will serve to wake me up enough to press on with work. I suppose it will also act as a barometer to gauge my moods; in which case, here's hoping the results are not quite as depressingly obvious as I suspect they might be.

Barnardo's

2008-11-17T12:05:00.002Z

Barnardo's have put out an excellent little film highlighting the current demonisation of children in this country. Watch it on their website.

Obama

2008-11-06T16:59:00.003Z

Obviously, much has been written about the American elections and their results, which I don't think I can add much to, except to be generally pleased. And it's to be hoped that this will have a positive effect on the rest of the world (on some level or other).

I've also seen quite a few articles and blog posts recently looking back at Bush's legacy, some pointing out that 9/11 set the course on which we still find ourselves - fighting on two fronts in effectively unwinnable wars. I started wondering about the figures involved this afternoon. They're infuriatingly nebulous, so apologies if what follows is contradicted by material elsewhere...

9/11

Dead: 2,974 (excluding 19 hijackers)
Missing: 24

(source: wikipedia)

Afghanistan campaign

Americans dead: 626
British dead: 122
Civilians dead: 3,485

(sources: icasualties.org, bbc.co.uk, unknownnews.org)

Iraq conflict

Americans dead: 4,191
British dead: 176
Civilians dead: 638,579
Americans injured: 30,774 (official); 100,000+ (estimated)

(sources: antiwar.com, bbc.co.uk, unknownnews.org)

Attempting to reconcile the various estimated totals of deaths, it looks like around 225 times more people have so far died in these conflicts than died on 9/11. I'm not sure it's all been worth it, to be honest. I don't understand how killing this many people helps. And while I understand that Afghanistan at least was a response to the horror of 9/11, I'm still outraged and scared by the thought processes which tied Iraq into all of this. Anyway, apologies for the serious post - I was just surprised by the extent to which I have begun to ignore the whole mess on a day-to-day level; sometimes it's good to remind oneself of these things.

Here's to Obama and the global opportunities his election might represent. Please don't fuck it all up.

They're coming to get you, Barbara

2008-11-02T15:07:00.007Z

Reporter: Are they slow-moving, Chief?
Chief McLellan: Yeah, they're dead. They're... all messed up.

Night of the Living Dead

Dan J, Neil, Jim and I spent a long, long Halloween night watching Romero's classic zombie trilogy at the Screen on the Green in Angel. Starting at midnight and running through until 6am, the films were preceded by trailers for a number of entertainingly stupid exploitation movies - including, among many others, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Dr Black and Mr Hyde (which features an excellent rhyming narration), and the self-explanatory Don't Open The Window. As for the main features, I was a little disappointed that the cinema was showing DVD versions of the films, as this especially affected Night of the Living Dead - it's some kind of shoddy print where the contrast is all out of whack. That said, it's been a while since I've seen the trilogy, and I'd almost forgotten how much I love them. I'm not sure how convinced everyone else was, but I really enjoyed myself - despite the fact that I looked and felt like a zombie when I stumbled home in the morning...

In further undead-related news, I also watched Charlie Brooker's Dead Set all last week - presumably the most gory program ever made for TV. The Big Brother setting was well realised and it was a treat to see so many entrails on show. Suitably bleak and worth a watch.

ATP Release The Bats

2008-11-02T14:36:00.003Z

...was ace! Seeing as most of the people who read this were probably there, I won't go into much detail - but Les Savy Fav and Shellac were great, and I think Wooden Shjips probably merit a further listen, too. I was a bit less convinced by Om, although that might have been because of Dan and Nick's splendid wrong-genre dancing and subsequent headbutting of the bar. Anyway, thanks to Nick for getting me a ticket and insisting that I go along! It was well worth the crippling all-day hangover I suffered on Friday.

Badminton

2008-10-27T10:02:00.004Z

Yesterday, Neil and Jude managed to persuade me to go to a sports centre for the first time in about 13 years to play badminton. Despite overheating and turning a disturbing scarlet colour, I really enjoyed it. Although - rather predictably - I now have a sore neck, aching legs and a trembling left arm. Living the sporting dream, in other words... Highlights included hitting my own ankle while chasing a drop shot, which caused the racquet to fly out of my hand and spin wildly through the air until it hit the wall. But at least I was facing away from the family with a small child on the adjacent court. Sport may inherently hold the potential for injury, but no-one wants to see their daughter being decapitated as a result of badminton.

Update: We played again last night (29 October). I am happy to report that I don't really ache at all today. Next stop, World's Strongest Man!

Chinese Democracy

2008-10-23T09:08:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Nick for sending me a link to the (potentially) final version of Axl Rose's long-gestating Chinese Democracy. Let's see... extended synth intro: check. Nonsensical and/or trite lyrics: check. Disappointing solo: check. Fade-out ending following massive explosion: check. I have to say, I'm also not particularly convinced by the fuzz-heavy guitaring, and although Axl's voice seems strong, it's far too low, which gives the whole thing a fairly generic feel.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this song is that it looks like it might be released before China actually becomes a democracy.* Unfortunately (and almost inevitably) it seems pretty underwhelming for around 16 years of work.

That being said, I love it when a song ends with an explosion.

* Zing.

'S' is for 'Song'

2008-10-11T15:44:00.003+01:00

Neil has tagged me into another meme, namely composing a list of five favourite songs by artists starting with the letter 'S'. And so, in alphabetical order:

Sirius Mo - Meine Welt
I find it quite hard to think of any song which can instantly put me in as good a mood as this piece of German pop. It's like being hit over the head with a bottle full of optimism.

Skid Row - 18 And Life
Naysayers aside, Skid Row are great. This song instantly recalls many drunken rock-huddles with Will and others. And the tale it tells is deeply affecting on an emotional level.*

The Smiths - Girlfriend In A Coma
If I had to pick a favourite Smiths song, this one would probably be it. Although obviously that decision only applies until the next time I have to properly think about it, when I expect I will pick a different one. Still, I think this song encapsulates everything good about The Smiths.

Steinski - It's Up To You
A great piece about the first war in Iraq and the media's response. Manages to make a good point with intelligence and humour, while being musically engaging and fun.

Suede - Sleeping Pills
Just a really lovely song musically, accompanied by simple, repeating lyrics. It makes me think of looking out of the windows on a long car journey, for some reason.

I now pass this to Kate, Scott, Alex and Emma. Let's see who can be bothered.

* This is obviously not true. But the plot is fist-clenchingly awesome!

Busy weekend, painful week

2008-09-29T17:13:00.003+01:00

After the excitement of the last few days, I think this week is going to be a bit of a struggle... But, once again, happy birthday to Kate (photos here) and congratulations to Tom and Emma!

Bleh, I think an early night is called for.

P.S: For those wondering what the hell is going on with my lack of Stephen King posts (which I'm guessing is about 4 people), I've got three almost ready to go - just need to knuckle down and finish them all...

France, etc

2008-09-18T09:52:00.002+01:00

Yo. I would blog about the two Robertson-Jones weddings and my subsequent week in France, except that most of the people who read this were there. Suffice it to say, the weddings went well (in the end), and I read a couple more Stephen King books, and now have three to write up. Also, I've done no work this week - finding it a bit tricky to get back into the swing of sitting behind a computer again. I think I might have relaxed a little too much over the last week.

Anyway, France pictures are here.

The Unit

2008-08-16T01:05:00.003+01:00

I don't know anyone who watches The Unit. But anyone who watches enough Virgin 1 will have seen the trailers for the current series. "Who has targeted my unit?" asks one character. I can't help but laugh. I'm really juvenile, big wows.

Sick

2008-07-17T09:53:00.004+01:00

As you may already know, I've spent the last couple of days performing alternating purges between opposite ends of my digestive system (for which I believe a boycott of the Happy Valley Chinese takeaway is probably in order). And while I'm very glad that I was alone in the flat during the worst of it - seriously, the noises and unholy stench were not for others to behold - it would have probably been a bit easier to deal with had the toilet paper not run out at 5 a.m. when all the shops around here were shut.

Still, swings and roundabouts, I suppose: I had to put back a work deadline, but I got to read plenty of Stephen King. And also watched (and highly enjoyed) Rambo, the latest Rambo film, in which Rambo reluctantly goes upriver into Burma and fucks up a whole lot of people. Especially when he gets behind a mounted machinegun. But they totally deserve it. Especially all the rapist-torturer-executioners. Spectacularly bloody, lots of glowering looks and tough talking, and all in under 90 minutes: the only thing this was really missing was a camp lead baddie (you know, like Steven Berkoff). Recommended for those who have a spare hour and a half and already enjoy Rambo films. You (probably) won't be (too) disappointed.

Oh, and I also spent some time playing Pandemic II, a web-based plague game. What could be more satisfying while being ill than infecting and killing the entire population of the world?

Iron Maiden

2008-07-08T12:53:00.002+01:00

Neil and I went to see Iron Maiden at Twickenham on Saturday, and spent a fun afternoon drinking in the street with hundreds of metal fans. The gig was by far the largest I've ever been to - something upwards of 80,000 people - and was awesome. Here's a little taster for those who are interested (which should be everyone):

Abandon hope, all who enter here...

2008-07-04T16:55:00.004+01:00

I've finally started a much-delayed project: re-reading all of Stephen King's books in order (and potentially in a row - I haven't quite decided yet). You can read my introduction to it here. I've almost finished Carrie, and will be posting my thoughts on it soon.

Update: Carrie is now complete, and I'm powering through 'Salem's Lot. If only I didn't have to work...

Stan Winston, R.I.P.

2008-06-17T12:23:00.007+01:00

Stan Winston, one of the masters of non-CGI special effects, has died in his 60s. Here are just a few of the iconic characters he's worked on over the years:

Kudos.

Note to self

2008-06-10T12:28:00.002+01:00

Never attempt to point out to a drunk girl on the 73 bus that she's been showing her vagina to everyone on the bus for the last thirty minutes and might want to adjust her skimpy dress to compensate.

Book meme

2008-05-16T13:50:00.006+01:00

Further to Neil and Tom's book memes, here's my version. I don't really have time to go into the Blogger post coding to add underlining or strike-throughs, so have coloured those books I want to read at some point in red. And those in red italics are books I sort of drifted away from, but fully intend to reread at some point (as Neil said, it's not through lack of ability or necessarily interest). Books in yellow represent the ones that I disliked. I basically have issues with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. I was tempted to add opinions, as Tom has - there are plenty of things I would like to write about many of these books - but I definitely won't meet my work deadline if I get into that. But if you're interested enough, feel free to request my opinion in comments on anything I've read. Anyway:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22*
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula*
A Clockwork Orange*
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984*
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbevilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels*
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five*
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood*
White Teeth
Treasure Island*
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Jesus Christ Almighty

2008-03-25T00:47:00.003Z

As a catchily bombastic theme tune plays over the end credits of The Passion of the Christ, I cannot help but mention a few reservations I had with the film.

To start with, I slightly take issue with Gibson's portrayal of the Romans. I'm not sure exactly what grade of soldier would be given the duties of handling (by which I mean whipping and crucifying) condemned men. But they certainly seem a happy bunch. The morning starts with some moderate to extreme scourging of Jesus: they're laughing, they take pleasure in their work, no-one can fault them for that. Next, they're taking Jesus off to be crucified. For some reason - after being brutalised in lovingly slow motion, and then having a crown of thorns crushed onto his head, and then just being punched about a bit for good measure, and then being made to carry a heavy wooden cross - he's not being as co-operative as our Roman friends would like. After thrashing him for about 20 minutes of screen time, he's still slumping into the dust every few seconds, while that music from Gladiator (you know, the interminable bits where he's wandering through a corn field, and the film's tinted blue for artistic effect, and just maybe he's going to rejoin his dead wife and child, remember that music?) warbles on and on and endlessly on in the background. I can see how the whole scene would be frustrating for your averagely sadistic Roman soldier, but still, even a particularly moronic member of the legion would realise that all the continual whipping wasn't helping. And then they arrive at Mount Golgotha, where all the Romans can kick back and have a good long laugh. They laugh while they're nailing him onto the cross, they laugh as they flip the cross over and then back again, and they're still laughing some time later when Jesus finally does the sensible thing and dies. But I tell you what, nothing wipes the smile off a Roman's face than when a big earthquake from God rumbles underfoot. In their hurry to get away, the Romans stab the crucifiees in the side to finish them off. Jesus is already dead, but orders are orders, so this one Roman shanks Jesus, and then falls to his knees, bathing in his blood with a look of stunned awe on his face.

I was also curious as to how the Jews would be portrayed, especially given Gibson's bizarre alcoholic rantings about the subject to that cop with sugared tits who pulled him over for erratic driving. Let's start with Herod, a foppish, drunken man-child with a court made up almost entirely of grotesques. He's a silly man, isn't he? Look, his wig's on crooked and he can't be bothered. He really is silly. Wait a moment, was this the same Herod who had all the newborns slaughtered to remove the threat of the holy man now standing right in front of him? "This guy's crazy!" says Herod, before getting back to the party. I would have assumed Herod wasn't a total dunce, but hey, what do I know? The only other major Jewish group we see (apart from all the people baying for Jesus's blood all the way through the film) are the Pharisees, led by a rather nasty fellow called Caiphas. These guys really hate Jesus, and are basically responsible for his death.* But they don't really have grounds for his crucifixion, and they keep pushing the point until Pilate washes his hands of the whole dirty mess. Anyway, the big earthquake at the end of the film totally destroys their temple, as Caiphas sinks to his knees with a "what-have-I-done" look on his face. Take that, you fucking Jews.

Happy Easter!

* This is something I've never really understood: Christians who are anti-semitic will often bang on about how "the Jews killed Christ", using this as the basis of their bigotry. But Jesus had to die to fulfil God's plan and take away the sins of the world. Therefore, these same people should be thanking the Jews for killing their Messiah - by doing so, the Jews have allowed Christians a fresh slate and eternal life in the hereafter.**

** Of course, not all Christians use this fresh slate to be racist, homophobic and generally reactionary. Only the really devout ones. Apparently.

BBC3

2008-03-08T12:08:00.004Z

Dear Sir,

To whoever is in charge of the current rebranding of BBC3. Moving the channel away from amusing orange slugs and towards introductions "performed" by cretinous members of the public in all their embarrassing glory does not make it more "youth-orientated", it just annoys everyone (at least, it annoys me, and I assume I'm not completely alone in this). You are idiots. And don't even get me started on Lily Allen.

Yours,

Enraged of N16.

TV at my desk is a bad thing

2008-03-07T15:01:00.003Z

Having missed some of The Art of Spain last month, I decided to investigate the BBC iPlayer, settling on the downloadable version after getting impatient at the sluggish speed of the online one. And generally I like it: it means I'm not tied down to the BBC schedule, thus freeing up a lot more of my (of course) valuable time to watch stuff on other channels. And it gives me something to watch during my lunch break. My only real gripe concerns the BBC stings, over which a TV announcer would normally be saying, "In half an hour, Newsnight. But first..." These are, as far as I can tell, some of the permanent files initially downloaded to your computer, and are selected automatically depending which channel the program you're about to watch was originally on. But the image frequently jams, the sound still running on in the background, before the images suddenly blur past at high speed as the file catches up with itself. I don't think this feature has worked properly once for me, which seems pretty stupid given that it advertises the BBC to the viewer. But maybe this is some kind of Vista glitch - has anyone else tried the iPlayer yet?

Anyway, as a result of all this, I've been watching a lot of quality output from the BBC, including:

The Art of Spain: Well, this was excellent. Andrew Graham-Dixon was engaging and informative as usual, and it was nice to see various buildings and works of art which I've actually seen in Spain. I think this has been the best of BBC4's numerous art programs (at least that I've seen). I particularly enjoyed the few instances where Graham-Dixon managed to look as if his sardonic quipping had completely caught him unawares, like it had just slipped out without his permission. Fact: I once saw him near our old flat, walking down the street opposite Morrisons, but was too chicken to say hello. Anyway, a really great series.

Tropic of Capricorn: Join Simon Reeve, surely the definition of affable everyman, as he goes around the world once again, but a bit lower down than before when he was on the equator in his previous series Equator. Another informative show, which made me really want to go on an extended holiday somewhere unexpected. But I can't afford it. Oh well. A mixture of obsessive GPS-checking and sensitive explorations of the issues affecting some of the people he meets: deforestation, land mines, Chinese investment, drought. You get the idea. I liked it; it's undemanding and occasionally quite touching.

Wonderland: A varied documentary strand on BBC2, which I genuinely manage to miss every single time it's on, so it's perfect for the iPlayer. A couple of stand-out shows: The End of the World Bus Tour, which was about a bunch of Christians going on holiday to the valley of Armageddon to see where The Final Battle is going to be fought, you know, after they've all been whisked up to heaven, and around the same time that we all start burning for eternity in hellfire. Uncovering the various reasons why some of the tourists had such a devout belief in (or need for) God - abusive father, dead daughter,etc - the film-maker managed to walk a very fine line between empathy and skepticism. The other film, The 92-Year-Old Danger Junkie, was a sweet portrayal of (as he insisted on referring to himself) "the oldest stuntman in the world", the Great Omani from Brighton. His chipper manner and insistence on continuing to be set on fire while in handcuffs (the final escape attempt failing in front of local journalist, and resulting in some presumably quite nasty burns) was contrasted with his swift decline into illness and death, and his son's reluctance to help him to keep performing in the face of the fact that he was quite obviously too old and sick to do it safely any more. The program developed into a lovely tribute to a British eccentric as it was being made.

The Last Enemy: A Sunday night surveillance/paranoia/conspiracy series, which I again failed to ever watch when it was on TV, this posits a large terrorist bomb in Victoria Station leading to a plausible(ish) future state/alternative present. Taking in ID cards and the omnipresent CCTV camera, this spun a government cover-up about state-sponsored "wet ops" and some virus in a refugee camp and the mother of all Orwellian nightmares: a computer system, TIA, which could track you and anyone you met with anywhere EVER!!! And bug you, and then get you killed. I only started watching it because the main character has something very weird going on with his face (you might see what I mean here). He appears to have a chin, but it's like in a fourth dimension or something. I don't get it. But the program was pretty exciting in places. Except that they might have spent a bit too much time making the setting convincing, without worrying enough about the endless string of unlikely decisions and events which all seemed to happen to one man in a couple of days. I still haven't watched the last episode, though, so maybe I'm wrong, and it was all a dream.

Jesus, is that the time? I really must get back to work. Books on Canadian socialism don't correct themselves, you know...

US election warning

2008-02-13T10:33:00.003Z

Here.

A few things

2008-02-11T10:31:00.000Z

It's been a while, but I now have a home and the internet is flowing over the components in my computer again (or however it works). Many thanks to Neil and Jude for putting up with having a tramp on their futon for three weeks. Hopefully you have now managed to clear away all the beer cans and air out the room...

Thanks also to Dan Jones for inviting me along to a wine tasting with the Lishers last week at The Fox Reformed. While I was initially nervous about showing myself up as an obvious amateur, it only took a few varieties of wine for us to realise that no-one really cared if you spoke or not. Hats off to Woman A, who downed every sample immediately before squawking out some banal observation at top volume ("ELDERBERRY!"), which was usually met by approval from the other regulars ("Oh yes, elderberry, of course!"). Also, kudos to the woman who made the same "we swallow rather than spit" blowjob joke three or four times, while giving Nick the eye. I suspect we won't be going back for the Chablis sex-swapper evening. And although I may have made it seem like quite the reverse, it was a fun night. However, I did feel bad that - in my capacity as Dan's replacement date (after Kelli was unable to make it) - I was compelled to deny Dan any post-booze hanky panky, especially after he'd put in so much groundwork. But what kind of man do you take me for?

In other news, I stayed in on Saturday night and made the mistake of watching the remade Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Where to even begin explaining what's wrong with this film? I think "completely unnecessary" is probably a good place to start. Lifting various set-pieces from the (obviously far superior) original, the film-makers at least tried to inject a modicum of originality into things - for example, the family were expanded to include at least three new members - and yet there was nothing to rival, say, the dinner scene in the original. In fact, the main problem was the complete lack of tension throughout. But perhaps I'm being naive to expect a horror film to actually be scary.

I have a few questions, though:

(1) Did the traumatised hitch-hiker they picked up at the beginning have the gun she used to blow her brains out hidden inside her vagina for the first five minutes of the film? This seemed to be what was implied by both the blood on her legs and the lack of places to conceal said gun in her small dress. No wonder she was traumatised. And why? Was it put there by the family, or was she hiding it for some unknown reason?

(2) How many strikes with a cleaver would it take to chop cleanly through someone's upper arm if you were a girl and the chopee was Leatherface? I'm guessing you might be there for a while. Also, this scene essentially removed the threat of Leatherface from the remainder of the film (although he did pop up again briefly), perhaps contributing to the overall lack of a harrowing denouement.

(3) Is it actually possible to waste the talents of R Lee Ermey more than this film does?

(4) If you were the person making this film, would you continually search for ways to make Jessica Biel's top wet, as was the case here? I mean, the obvious answer is probably "yes". Ok, it's raining and she's running about in terror. We can effectively see her admittedly excellent breasts. Ev-ery-bod-y happy! Ten minutes later, her top's dry again, and she's in a basement which - for reasons that are never made clear - continually drips with water and is actually shin-deep in places. She falls down the stairs and into the water. Ev-ery-bod-y happy! Oh, she's dried off again, it's raining again, etc. You get the idea. And while I don't necessarily object to this in principle, it just gradually became more and more obvious that they were engineering these situations at the expense of actually sitting down and coming up with anything even remotely scary.

A quick search online has revealed this quote (from an interview here):

"What was your most difficult stunt?"

"I don’t know, I think the stuff in the rain. The stuff we had to do in the rain was really hard. I mean, being wet in jeans and having to maintain this intensity, this emotion, with chaos going on around you. It was really difficult to not be uncomfortable and miserable, and to focus on everything that you needed to focus on."

Note to self: avoid all Michael Bay-produced horror remakes throughout rest of lifetime.

Pranks

2008-01-04T14:02:00.000Z

aka Death Dorm, aka The Dorm That Dripped Blood.

Another little treat from Tom for Christmas, Pranks is a low/no-budget affair from Vipco about a bunch of college kids emptying out an old dorm building during the holidays. From the outset - featuring the unexplained strangling of a completely random person hiding in a bush - it's clear that this isn't going to be in any way a classy production. But then it sort of picks up steam. I'm not really sure why, but I actively enjoyed this film - despite the shoddy acting, mostly poor effects and general idiocy of every single character.

The responsible older student repeatedly tells everyone to split up ("Let's split up and search for this lunatic individually - we'll cover more ground that way.") In a shocking twist that not even a genius could have spotted, the main suspect (the crazy loner hanging around the building) turns out to be... NOT THE KILLER! The most annoying character - the one who plays the most practical jokes on the others - turns out to be... THE KILLER! The police, though well-meaning, turn out to be... CRETINS!

Anyway, here's a breakdown of the death toll:

1 strangulation
1 spiked bat to the head
1 garotting
1 head run over by a car
1 electric drill
1 machete
1 industrial kitchen boiler
1 shooting
1 love interest chucked unconscious into an incinerator, despite being the motivating factor behind the killer's spree and the entire film. Bleak ending, eh?

In conclusion, probably not one to bother seeking out. But I enjoyed it anyway.

The trailers on the DVD included Cannibal Holocaust and Mountain of the Cannibal God, but I think my favourite (although the film itself looks shit) was Psychic Killer: "Meet Arnold Masters... Arnold is very imaginative. He can think of a millions ways... to murder. And he might just try them all." It really was very Scary Door.

Demons/Demons 2

2008-01-02T19:48:00.001Z

I know what you're thinking: "Cool poster! This looks like a great film." That's exactly what I thought between the ages of 10 and 29. Then I was given the video of Demons by my old friend Tom Bristow, and all of my preconceptions were shattered in one viewing. The plot makes no sense, even for the genre - I'm not going into it in much detail here as a result. All you need to know is that a load of people get trapped in a cinema where the film they watch turns them all into toothy demons who spread themselves by scratching people with sharp claws. And there's some kind of futuristic robot who hands flyers out to this event. And a mystic sword in the foyer for some reason. Anyway, beyond the film itself, this was a particularly unsatisfying viewing experience because - just before the heavily-signposted shock ending - the tape on the video ran out. Cocks.

Imagine my joy, therefore, when Tom gave me a DVD copy of the sequel for Christmas this year (on the same night that (a) I first came down with a brutal fever which has crippled me for the last week, and (b) I passed this same illness on to Tom, Will and Kate in the pub in Salisbury, leading to wretched New Year's Eves for all; apologies). I watched it this evening, and it's basically the same film, but transposed into an apartment complex where the demons are broadcast through the TV. Equally shit, but making slightly more sense (this is relative, of course), Demons 2 technically qualifies as 'poor'.

Do yourself a real favour and avoid both. And if you're ever tempted, just look at the poster for the first film and then smash your head against the wall until you slump into unconsciousness.

Sci-fi round-up

2007-12-11T22:32:00.002Z

Welcome to the first of a couple of sci-fi write-ups that have been gestating since October, when we were on holiday in Egypt. I've decided to start with a couple of books I borrowed from my dad (who was a sci-fi buff from his teenage years onward, until I gave him Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series one at a time for consecutive birthdays during the 90s). He still has a wide range of 50s and 60s paperbacks slowly going yellow on the bookshelf in the spare room, which I tend to thieve (temporarily) whenever I go to stay.

The first of my recent borrowings is The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson (1963). I couldn't find the abstract psychedelic green cover from my copy, but I think this one successfully captures the spirit of the tale:

Humanity is ruled by the Plan of Man, a system of government run by the Machine, which gives orders for almost every action - from the most mundane to matters of great import - overseen by the top human, the Planner. The story follows a scientist prisoner, wearing an explosive collar to keep him in line, as he tries to unravel the mysterious blanks in his memory and make the scientific breakthrough necessary to keep his head on his shoulders: a jetless (or reactionless) drive. Positing the existence of life in the emptiness of space - based around the reefs of the title - Pohl and Williamson weave an interesting, pulpy story around some fun bad science (part one of a trilogy). Worth a read, if only for the sinister idea of a body bank called Heaven, where those who have contravened the Plan of Man are kept in a drugged idyll, their organs and limbs being harvested for spares one at a time.

Next up, Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick (1955). Dick's first published novel, this reflects his later style very well, in that it's a mixture of choppy action and vaguely hipsterish futurespeak, daddio.

Actually, this works as a good companion piece to The Reefs of Space - both deal with future systems of governance, in which a seemingly helpless man turns out to be pretty much vital to everyone's continued existence. In the case of Solar Lottery, mankind is ruled by a Quizmaster, appointed by random lottery. Theoretically, this allows for anyone within the system to suddenly rise to the top "at the twitch of the bottle". Unfortunately, new arrivals are immediately subject to multiple assassination attempts on behalf of the previous Quizmaster, to whom the title may revert. But what connection does the new Quizmaster have to the quasi-religious expedition beyond known space, and what will be the end result for everyman employee Ted Benteley? Another enjoyable read; not as polished as (some of) Dick's later work, but containing the usual tropes of disorientation and paranoia even at this early stage.

I plan to plough through some more of these crumbling pulp masterpieces over Christmas - stay tuned... There's something simultaneously satisfying and frustrating about them - I guess this is perhaps the result of publishers' attempts to keep the popular pulp element, while occasionally cutting down the more original ideas that authors were trying to explore (this was certainly something that Dick experienced).

Anyway, look out for part two of this series sometime soonish.

Your friendly neighbourhood murderer

2007-12-03T18:41:00.001Z

This was a slightly disturbing discovery...

Oh dear...

2007-11-14T16:47:00.000Z

I have become addicted to a game called 'Momentum Missile Mayhem: Ultimate Edition', available here. There's something inherently satisfying about blowing stuff up. I started playing this in an effort to dodge work on a soul-destroyingly awful book (which I won't describe here, for fear of it somehow getting back to the publisher*). Anyway, that's all finally completed now, so I can waste a bit more of my time pinging energy balls at spaceships - hooray!

* However, my favourite line - just to give you a sample - reads as follows: "Ana walked naked from the shower, dripping water like a svelte, brown seal." Sexy, no?

Charitable vocab building

2007-11-12T13:42:00.000Z

Someone's just sent me a link to the worthwhile Free Rice website, where you can improve your vocabulary and contribute rice to UN food programs. The whole thing is based on generating advertising revenue, which is then donated to the programs in question. Although I don't agree with some of the word definitions used - but that's a minor quibble, I guess, mostly based on me getting annoyed when I (supposedly) get the answer wrong.

Tom's stag

2007-10-29T10:04:00.000Z

I think this photo pretty much captures the essence of the day...

A further photographic record is here.

Refreshed but burnt

2007-10-15T12:27:00.000+01:00

Well, we're now back from possibly the weirdest holiday we've ever been on: a week in an Egyptian hotel resort. Given that we arranged it the day before we left, and that our specifications were for sunshine and a beach, it was a success. But from almost any other viewpoint, it was strangely unsettling.

Arriving in the evening, we checked into the hotel and were surprised by how quiet everything seemed. We got up the next morning and headed down to the beach after a distinctly average buffet breakfast. By the end of the day, I had managed to pull off the classic Lockwood-on-holiday look - burnt shoulders and collarbone - which was to remain with me for the duration. The hotel remained steadfastly empty for most of our stay, as a result of it being Ramadan. I'm assuming that most of their business comes from Egyptians - the few other tourists we saw seemed equally bemused by the Marie Celeste feel to the place. It's disconcerting to be eating in a large room by yourself, while five or six waiters stand around in the corner, waiting for any excuse to come over and ask you if they can do anything.

The wretched cold I've been carrying around for the last few months gradually lifted in the baking heat, just in time for the inset of some "stomach tenderness" (the result, I assume, of the uninspiring food). Having mostly shaken that off, we plunged into the sea one morning only to be stung by a flotilla of baby jellyfish, which left welts wherever they touched. Happy day. With only a day or so to go, we suncreamed up and tried to top up our final (and only) tans of the year. A few hours later, Rachel was browning up a treat, while I had managed to somehow burn the entire front of my body. Luckily, air conditioning on the plane home and the cooler weather here has reduced my radioactive frontage to an acceptable brown, except for my upper arms, which are still a bit sore to the touch. But at least the infernal glow has left my forehead, which is something.

Anyway, our last couple of days coincided with Eid, at which point the whole place was overrun by Egyptian families, most of whom (adults and children) were overweight and pushy. It's quite upsetting to see what you think is Andre the Giant, and then realise that it's actually just a monstrously obese child.

I realise that I've made the whole experience out to be a catalogue of woe (in my usual style - apologies), but actually it was a very relaxing week, during which I got to read some good books (more about which sometime soon) and generally just lie about. I think next time we go away, we'll have to actually plan it properly - something we have always avoided, due to (a) laziness, (b) ineptitude, and (c) an unwillingness to allow for the fact that we're adults with jobs and responsibilities (or at least commitments).

You can see photos here.