I am feeling rather proud of myself, having just reduced my seven-year-old niece to tears on Easter Sunday. There is, you see, a ban on High School Musical/Hannah Montana bullshit in the house. This ban was my idea, and indeed the condition on which I came home for Easter. After this Christmas, when I very nearly drowned in sentimental bollocks from the Disney Corporation, I flatly refuse to go through that again. I police this very strictly, and have just confiscated a High School Musical soundtrack which was deafening us all. "It's for your own good," I informed the howling spoilt brat. Which indeed it is, as both shows put across an extremely warped and unnatural vision of the world, in which boys are so weirdly asexual that you feel if you pulled down their trousers they'd have no genitals and girls are pretty innocents only concerned with true love. Both demand conformity and condemn imagination. "One day you'll be very embarrassed, and in the meantime if I hear When There Was Me and You one more time I'm going to implode in on myself." I have lost some superiority though having eaten so much chocolate and drunk so much wine I now have such a bad stomach ache I'm lying on the floor in my bedroom, my mother's cat slumbering against me. My niece has recovered sufficiently to be massacring the Harry Potter theme tune on her recorder. Unfortunately there is nothing in the House Constitution which can lead me to ban this too, but something will be figured out before Christmas.
The niece taken care of thusly, it's only fair to point out that the riot shields were out yesterday for the nephews over Doctor Who. Opinion was divided over the quality of the show, an interesting exploration of a bus trip gone very badly, involving flying metallic stingrays, as far as I could tell. I don't know why bus trips must always end up with the flying metallic stingrays, but indeed they must. Is it worth pointing out that the 200 bus doesn't go anywhere near Victoria? It probably isn't. But it doesn't. Welshmen, what can you do. Anyway, aside from a rather confusing change to advertised bus routes and a cavalier attitude to law and order, I didn't think it was at all bad. Lee Evans was a revelation as a nerdy scientist, and wholly balanced out a slightly underwhelming Michelle Ryan who had a thankless character in Lady Christina. It was a jolly adventure, in happy contrast to most of Doctor Who these days, although ended up with a portent of DOOOOM from a psychic lady. "You'll knock four times," she warned the Doctor, which set me and my oldest brother (father of nephews) off on what we considered to be quite an entertaining re-imagining of The Postman Always Rings Twice.
My youngest nephew lapped up the Doctor Who, but the oldest nephew has, since the last time I saw him, morphed into a terrifyingly accurate version of Armstrong and Miller's RAF pilots. My nephew is 11 and goes to a highly respected public school, and consequently has the most cringingly plummy accent you can imagine but has, from influences unclear, picked up extraordinary lingo. "I has parsnips though, innit?" He remarked to my befuddled mother when she tried to give him another roast potato. "Can't have no more carbs though, it's like bad for you innit?" His reaction to Doctor Who was succinctly put: "The effects are totally sick, but it's like, all that exoskeleton shit, what?" No one had the least idea what he was on about, but we all understood the full meaning of "shit" and he was told off accordingly.
Anyway, said nephew poured the most extreme scorn on me when I elected (post-Doctor Who) to watch Primeval. It's worth noting I am a much-youngest child in the family, and consequently have enjoyed until recently far more "one of the gang" relationship with my nephews and nieces than their parents, but finally the generation gap is yawning before me. The contempt doled out by my nephew was astonishing. "It's like a kid's programme," he remarked. "I'm too old for it now, you know?" I'm not. I quite liked it, and truly didn't see the twist (such as it was) coming. I didn't think Primeval had the capacity to surprise. I am now quite intrigued to see a post-Cutter series. This could be the shot in the arm required to boost it somewhere into a dimension where Nephew A could acknowledge its existence.
In the meantime, me and my youngest brother are doing our best impressions of Sir Digby Chicken Caesar and Ginger in our capacity as the setters of good examples to our errant young relative. WINE!
If this isn't what Jesus intended for Easter, I don't know what he was on about.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Boat that Rocked: Carry on drowning
Richard Curtis is an undeniably talented storyteller. They may not be the most complicated or original of stories, but he can spin them. But The Boat that Rocked is a horrible mess. The idea is a good one - pirate radio, pop music bursting into the uptight 60s society. The actors are superb - Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy, Chris O'Dowd and Philip Seymour Hoffman especially, and the soundtrack is basically the pulse of the film. But there are major, insurmontable problems. There is no narrative. There is no characterization, beyond the crudest possible cardboard-cutout. There is no point - you can't score political or social satire within the context of a Curtis-ized, fantasy England. It is way too long and halfway through you are lost in meandering nothingness, not sure where you are going or why. None of those observations mean that it would necessarily be an unpleasant experience to watch - God knows, worse sins have been committed to celluloid.
But there is something even more serious than that. Misogyny is a strong word, but frankly it can be applied to this film. I am in no way a miltant feminist, and initially was embarrassed by the fact I was even taking offensive. "It's a Richard Curtis film," I thought. "Can I really be turning all bra-burning over a Richard Curtis film? It's only a bit of fun." As has been spelled out above, it isn't much fun, but after all that was the intention. I tried to think I was being overly sensitive - I hate all this "taking offence" business, this outrage-for-the-sake-of-it. Well, fuck intentions. This film was misogynistic. Not to say that the men emerge brilliantly - but at least they are supposed to be funny. I'm not outraged or baying for blood, it is only my opinion.
There are basically three women in the film - spoilers be ahead. Not that they're really spoiling anything, as mentioned, there is no plot. One is called Marianne. Marianne is a pretty eighteen-year-old girl, the niece of Bill Nighy's character Quentin. Quentin invites Marianne onboard, then invites his randy eighteen-year-old godson Carl to have dinner with her, promising him "a good time" - essentially pimping his teenage niece. But she's well up for it anyway, as it transpires. Carl takes one look at her (literally - no words are exchanged) and borrows a condom from his friend. After pretend mock-outrage, Marianne promises to sleep with Carl that night, only to leap into bed with a DJ played by Nick Frost having exchanged no words at all with him. She turns up later and shows Carl the promised good time. That's it. Pretty, nubile teenage girl, pimped by one elderly man to a teenage boy, shagging a middle-aged man on the way. She only appears on screen to be screwed, she has no interior life or characterisation beyond that purpose. She has more lays than lines.
OK. Let's move onto Elenore. Elenore is played by the stunning beautiful, and really quite talented, January Jones from Mad Men, who has the good grace to look completely ill at ease and nauseated throughout. A DJ, Simon, announces he's marrying a girl he met two weeks previously. She turns up, is said Elenore. After being leched over revoltingly by all onboard, she has what her new husband says was a "disappointing" shag on the wedding night. She then tells Simon that actually she is in love with his colleague, played by Rhys Ifans, who she met before she met Simon. Rhys Ifans wouldn't marry her (the only way she's allowed on board), so she decided to marry Simon instead, but having fulfilled her wedding night obligations she would now would be moving in with Ifans' character next door. Simon is naturally distressed, especially when Elenore thoughtfully points out he'll be able to hear them having sex. Elenore, having been in two scenes (the wedding, the post-wedding night) is despatched, after sleeping with Ifans' character three times. Her behaviour is completely fucking insane, and I'm not leaving out some aspect of the situation which renders it in any way either believable or tolerable, it is what it is. Women are so up for it with Ifans' character, they'll marry and shag anyone.
So then we have the others. Carl's mother, bafflingly played by Emma Thompson, who is a slut and has slept with most of the characters in the past and notches up another one in her brief appearance. The female fans who turn up on the boat, strip off and have an orgy with one of the DJs. The two lesbians, who are basically nothing but the butt of lecherous jokes.
Every woman in the film is driven by one factor - sex, and the wilful determination to shag anyone who stands still long enough. None of them have any characterisation or depth. They just fuck. I know it's a comedy, and I know sex is funny, but there are a hundred ways of doing it that don't hold all women of all ages in utter contempt. But no one comes out of this well - the men are horrible, the women are whores and by the end of it you want them all to drown. I felt grubby just watching it. The Carry Ons were forty years ago, and even then they weren't exactly sophisticated humour. Grow the fuck up.
But there is something even more serious than that. Misogyny is a strong word, but frankly it can be applied to this film. I am in no way a miltant feminist, and initially was embarrassed by the fact I was even taking offensive. "It's a Richard Curtis film," I thought. "Can I really be turning all bra-burning over a Richard Curtis film? It's only a bit of fun." As has been spelled out above, it isn't much fun, but after all that was the intention. I tried to think I was being overly sensitive - I hate all this "taking offence" business, this outrage-for-the-sake-of-it. Well, fuck intentions. This film was misogynistic. Not to say that the men emerge brilliantly - but at least they are supposed to be funny. I'm not outraged or baying for blood, it is only my opinion.
There are basically three women in the film - spoilers be ahead. Not that they're really spoiling anything, as mentioned, there is no plot. One is called Marianne. Marianne is a pretty eighteen-year-old girl, the niece of Bill Nighy's character Quentin. Quentin invites Marianne onboard, then invites his randy eighteen-year-old godson Carl to have dinner with her, promising him "a good time" - essentially pimping his teenage niece. But she's well up for it anyway, as it transpires. Carl takes one look at her (literally - no words are exchanged) and borrows a condom from his friend. After pretend mock-outrage, Marianne promises to sleep with Carl that night, only to leap into bed with a DJ played by Nick Frost having exchanged no words at all with him. She turns up later and shows Carl the promised good time. That's it. Pretty, nubile teenage girl, pimped by one elderly man to a teenage boy, shagging a middle-aged man on the way. She only appears on screen to be screwed, she has no interior life or characterisation beyond that purpose. She has more lays than lines.
OK. Let's move onto Elenore. Elenore is played by the stunning beautiful, and really quite talented, January Jones from Mad Men, who has the good grace to look completely ill at ease and nauseated throughout. A DJ, Simon, announces he's marrying a girl he met two weeks previously. She turns up, is said Elenore. After being leched over revoltingly by all onboard, she has what her new husband says was a "disappointing" shag on the wedding night. She then tells Simon that actually she is in love with his colleague, played by Rhys Ifans, who she met before she met Simon. Rhys Ifans wouldn't marry her (the only way she's allowed on board), so she decided to marry Simon instead, but having fulfilled her wedding night obligations she would now would be moving in with Ifans' character next door. Simon is naturally distressed, especially when Elenore thoughtfully points out he'll be able to hear them having sex. Elenore, having been in two scenes (the wedding, the post-wedding night) is despatched, after sleeping with Ifans' character three times. Her behaviour is completely fucking insane, and I'm not leaving out some aspect of the situation which renders it in any way either believable or tolerable, it is what it is. Women are so up for it with Ifans' character, they'll marry and shag anyone.
So then we have the others. Carl's mother, bafflingly played by Emma Thompson, who is a slut and has slept with most of the characters in the past and notches up another one in her brief appearance. The female fans who turn up on the boat, strip off and have an orgy with one of the DJs. The two lesbians, who are basically nothing but the butt of lecherous jokes.
Every woman in the film is driven by one factor - sex, and the wilful determination to shag anyone who stands still long enough. None of them have any characterisation or depth. They just fuck. I know it's a comedy, and I know sex is funny, but there are a hundred ways of doing it that don't hold all women of all ages in utter contempt. But no one comes out of this well - the men are horrible, the women are whores and by the end of it you want them all to drown. I felt grubby just watching it. The Carry Ons were forty years ago, and even then they weren't exactly sophisticated humour. Grow the fuck up.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Wheel Update: Still turning
Alright, so a week on. What has happened?
1) Guitar Hero 3
Well, still haven't conquered Hard, but have finished off all songs on Easy at 100% and am galloping through Medium on 100%, so not despairing yet.
2) Twitter-izing self
Gone very badly and have committed Twitter suicide. Sick of watching other people's lives passing before my bored eyes. Maybe will return to the fold when I have something to Tweet about.
3) Searching for free stuff in London
The weather's been nicer, so parks have been of more use, but other wise an EPIC FAIL.
4) Mentally cleaning
Still in the theoretical sphere, I fear. Although I did take out the recycling, which has to count for something, somewhere.
5) Watching television to remind self of outside world
Sadly, Assumpta died on Ballykissangel on Friday (Monkey was touchingly concerned for the distraught Father Peter, and when the bereaved priest wandered distractedly onto the bridge after his lady love's demise, Monkey shrieked in an extraordinarily anguished tone: "Shit, is he going to jump?!"). It was very sad. Meanwhile (as predicted) I have given into the allure of Cash in the Attic. Can anyone explain why it is so damn difficult to turn that thing off halfway through? Even if I try to walk away I only make it to the kettle before I find myself dying to know whether that candlestick made the £100 needed to pay for the contributor's scooter, or whatever. Hours and hours and hours of television watching, although strangely the outside world seems to be slipping away from me rather than retaining any sort of clarity.
New:
Enjoying fame karma
James Corden is depressed, Mathew Horne is exhausted. Considering their relentless PR offensive for their lamentable comedy and film efforts have left the entire nation both depressed and exhausted, I feel this is only fair.
Spider Solitaire
Either this has got harder since I was at university, or I have got stupider. I spent almost two hours playing it yesterday afternoon, and only won one game (although I think another was pointlessly thrown away by a premature movement of a 7 of Spades, but once I realised the drastic consequences of it I couldn’t be bothered to go back and change it). My Win Percentage is the grand total of 8%. To be fair, I haven’t played much for three years but in the four years I squandered cheerfully at university I played it daily and I’m sure it was easier to win the bloody thing then. Or have I lost my Spider Solitaire-orientated brain cells? Is it another Windows Vista plot to create insecurity about your intelligence (like the conspiracy to hide Select All so intricately that it takes a full 25 minutes to find the first time)? I also don’t much care for the weird slurpy noise it makes nowadays when you drag a card. When I eventually won, it was a pyrrhic victory as I realised it was dark outside, dinnertime and I had achieved NOTHING. Apart from some CGI fireworks going off on my laptop and perhaps a measly addition to my pathetic record against what is, after all, a reasonably basic Artificial Intelligence. What will happen when the actual robots come? How massively talented at Spider Solitaire will they be? Combine that knowledge with the superheroic intelligence (some may say sabotage) displayed by Super Mario Kart when it notes you are about to win a 150cc circuit, and they will be unstoppable.
Pointless nostalgia
Alright, so I am now incapable of playing Spider Solitaire. That’s okay, it wasn’t a skill I’d put on my CV anyway. Now I’ve won one I can hopefully move on and accept it is just another door closing between the husk of a human being I now am and the gambolling innocent who used to lope around quiet quads in dappled summery afternoon sunlight, which is how I now picture I was at university. At that time, I never believed anyone when they informed me those would be the best days of my life. “Jesus,” I’d say, looking around me. “There must be something better than this.” Well, you would think, wouldn’t you? But it’s not true. Immensely talented people talking to you about immensely interesting things for just four hours a week in an immensely beautiful place surrounded by other immensely young and energetic people is, as it turns out, quite the highlight. I want to back to my university town and thump every navel-gazing student there, the self-centred bastards.
Along with the expiry of my Young Person’s Railcard and the infrequency these days of being ID’d when buying alcohol the latter two factors are perhaps just signs of my creeping age and not an electronic conspiracy after all. Like the disbelief I maintain that a DJ on Capital FM is actually called The Baseman, making me sound extraordinarily like my beloved mother as I exclaim: "He's a grown man called what?".
Perhaps an upside of this advancing age is that I no longer have the self-confidence/arrogance/flagrant idiocy to believe that I can, on some basic level, work every piece of equipment I come across by turning it off, unplugging it, smacking it or just playing randomly in the Menu screen. Oh no, those days are well gone, and disasters resulting thereof have been chalked up to experience. Our DVD player’s warp core has been damaged, or similar, and I’m waiting for Monkey to come home so he can magic it better. In the meantime I’m typing this, drinking tea and taking perverse pleasure in listening to the travel news. Mwahaha no tube travel for me, oh no. (No money, you see.)
If I hear “Broken Strings” by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado on the radio one more time, either me or the Freeview box is going out the window. Argh! Shut! Up!
1) Guitar Hero 3
Well, still haven't conquered Hard, but have finished off all songs on Easy at 100% and am galloping through Medium on 100%, so not despairing yet.
2) Twitter-izing self
Gone very badly and have committed Twitter suicide. Sick of watching other people's lives passing before my bored eyes. Maybe will return to the fold when I have something to Tweet about.
3) Searching for free stuff in London
The weather's been nicer, so parks have been of more use, but other wise an EPIC FAIL.
4) Mentally cleaning
Still in the theoretical sphere, I fear. Although I did take out the recycling, which has to count for something, somewhere.
5) Watching television to remind self of outside world
Sadly, Assumpta died on Ballykissangel on Friday (Monkey was touchingly concerned for the distraught Father Peter, and when the bereaved priest wandered distractedly onto the bridge after his lady love's demise, Monkey shrieked in an extraordinarily anguished tone: "Shit, is he going to jump?!"). It was very sad. Meanwhile (as predicted) I have given into the allure of Cash in the Attic. Can anyone explain why it is so damn difficult to turn that thing off halfway through? Even if I try to walk away I only make it to the kettle before I find myself dying to know whether that candlestick made the £100 needed to pay for the contributor's scooter, or whatever. Hours and hours and hours of television watching, although strangely the outside world seems to be slipping away from me rather than retaining any sort of clarity.
New:
Enjoying fame karma
James Corden is depressed, Mathew Horne is exhausted. Considering their relentless PR offensive for their lamentable comedy and film efforts have left the entire nation both depressed and exhausted, I feel this is only fair.
Spider Solitaire
Either this has got harder since I was at university, or I have got stupider. I spent almost two hours playing it yesterday afternoon, and only won one game (although I think another was pointlessly thrown away by a premature movement of a 7 of Spades, but once I realised the drastic consequences of it I couldn’t be bothered to go back and change it). My Win Percentage is the grand total of 8%. To be fair, I haven’t played much for three years but in the four years I squandered cheerfully at university I played it daily and I’m sure it was easier to win the bloody thing then. Or have I lost my Spider Solitaire-orientated brain cells? Is it another Windows Vista plot to create insecurity about your intelligence (like the conspiracy to hide Select All so intricately that it takes a full 25 minutes to find the first time)? I also don’t much care for the weird slurpy noise it makes nowadays when you drag a card. When I eventually won, it was a pyrrhic victory as I realised it was dark outside, dinnertime and I had achieved NOTHING. Apart from some CGI fireworks going off on my laptop and perhaps a measly addition to my pathetic record against what is, after all, a reasonably basic Artificial Intelligence. What will happen when the actual robots come? How massively talented at Spider Solitaire will they be? Combine that knowledge with the superheroic intelligence (some may say sabotage) displayed by Super Mario Kart when it notes you are about to win a 150cc circuit, and they will be unstoppable.
Pointless nostalgia
Alright, so I am now incapable of playing Spider Solitaire. That’s okay, it wasn’t a skill I’d put on my CV anyway. Now I’ve won one I can hopefully move on and accept it is just another door closing between the husk of a human being I now am and the gambolling innocent who used to lope around quiet quads in dappled summery afternoon sunlight, which is how I now picture I was at university. At that time, I never believed anyone when they informed me those would be the best days of my life. “Jesus,” I’d say, looking around me. “There must be something better than this.” Well, you would think, wouldn’t you? But it’s not true. Immensely talented people talking to you about immensely interesting things for just four hours a week in an immensely beautiful place surrounded by other immensely young and energetic people is, as it turns out, quite the highlight. I want to back to my university town and thump every navel-gazing student there, the self-centred bastards.
Along with the expiry of my Young Person’s Railcard and the infrequency these days of being ID’d when buying alcohol the latter two factors are perhaps just signs of my creeping age and not an electronic conspiracy after all. Like the disbelief I maintain that a DJ on Capital FM is actually called The Baseman, making me sound extraordinarily like my beloved mother as I exclaim: "He's a grown man called what?".
Perhaps an upside of this advancing age is that I no longer have the self-confidence/arrogance/flagrant idiocy to believe that I can, on some basic level, work every piece of equipment I come across by turning it off, unplugging it, smacking it or just playing randomly in the Menu screen. Oh no, those days are well gone, and disasters resulting thereof have been chalked up to experience. Our DVD player’s warp core has been damaged, or similar, and I’m waiting for Monkey to come home so he can magic it better. In the meantime I’m typing this, drinking tea and taking perverse pleasure in listening to the travel news. Mwahaha no tube travel for me, oh no. (No money, you see.)
If I hear “Broken Strings” by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado on the radio one more time, either me or the Freeview box is going out the window. Argh! Shut! Up!
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