That's the century!

Finally, with that last entry I have hit 100 posts. Hopefully it's been at least mildly diverting. Big thank you to my post 'Castles' for being by far my most trafficked post with 1.1k views (out of 7.4k). Also big thank you to February 2011 for roping in a record high 820 views.

And of course, the select group of 30 or so Facebook friends that regularly follow the links that I dump on their newsfeeds every few weeks or so.

Women's Sport Is Not Under-represented in the Media

Women don’t get much coverage in sports, and apparently lots of people, not just women, are miffed by this. Sexism may be a factor, but it is far from the most dominant. There are two big factors that ensure that women’s sport has far smaller viewing figures than male sport: firstly, women are really bad at sports compared to men, and as a consequence there is less skill on show; secondly women are far less interested in sports than men and like to watch women’s sport just as much as men, i.e. not at all.

Women are bad at sports in comparison with men. This sounds damning, and it is, but not because the sentence is constructed in an uncompromising way; no, it’s damning because it’s true. Women are equals in terms of intelligence, ambition, artistic ability and a million other things, but not when it comes to sport. No one feels the need to defend the male Black Widow spider because he’s so inferior in size and strength to the female, and it’s the same situation in humans, albeit in a less exaggerated scale.  Women’s sport  is a poorer product. Wimbledon is an excellent point of comparison. The women are athletic, talented and committed, and their games do have drama. Yet, the men’s tournament is even more dramatic. They play for longer; the extra length means fatigue and fitness plays a bigger role, allowing for bigger swings in momentum. They hit harder and more accurately, and run faster for longer. Hence, bigger viewing figures. This is the case in all sport, but is most clearly outlined in tennis, in which men and women both receive equal billing.  

This is a legitimate case for preferring men’s sport, and there is no reason to feel guilty about it. There is no obligation to like or to pretend to like something that we don’t, or can’t be bothered with. There’s no expectation that we give bad films a fair shout (although, worryingly, bad films often dominate the box office so maybe that isn’t the best example). The under-16 age group is even more unfairly represented in the media than women’s sport. The England U-16 boys football team would beat the senior women’s team, and sometimes do well internationally, yet they get zero airtime. Where’s the fairness in that? No one complains about that, even though all the arguments for the increase in airtime for women’s sports could be copy and pasted into an argument supporting the increase in airtime for U-16 sports.

The amount of coverage designated to news outlets is in line with the popularity of the sport: the Premier League has the highest viewing figures in terms of live and television audiences; Ultimate Frisbee gets no attention because no one watches it. Television figures are the important numbers (because they’re higher) but the popularity of a sport stems from the size of the live audience. At Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, the best men’s team in the country, the weekly 75 000 strong audience dictates that football gets a lot of coverage. At Meadow Park, the 4 502-person capacity stadium that is home of Arsenal Ladies F.C, the best women’s team in the country that can boast Kelly Smith, the world’s best player, ‘attendances for most home matches are in the hundreds’ (Wikipedia). The question is this: ladies, if you want women’s sport on television, and this football example is as good as any, shouldn’t you go and watch it live, first? If the best women’s team in the country, situated just outside the biggest city in Europe, cannot find four and a half thousand women to watch them play, why should T.V controllers and media outlets designate money into areas that interest effectively nobody? They shouldn’t, so they don’t. The women’s sport that does get strong attendances is tennis, and it is no coincidence that women’s tennis does get attention from the media. Athletics and cycling do as well, because loads of people watch the Olympics, and to a lesser extent the World Championships. This is simple supply and demand.

 The subtext in the lamentation that the media don’t pay enough attention to women is sport is really that men don’t pay enough attention to women in sport. Far more men go to watch live sport than women, and there is no obligation for them to watch women’s sport. If women can draw in large crowds of women to watch them perform, then sponsors would get interested and push advertising and push the media to cover the sport more. It is not the responsibility of the sport-watching men to drag women’s sport up from the poor table, it’s the responsibility of the women. 

Revenge!

When Auntie Saskia came to visit, she would always say the exact same thing:

“My, haven’t you grown!” she would exclaim, ruffling my hair, as if patronising me was somehow a viable substitute for actually saying something of worth. Being a polite, well behaved little boy, I just nodded and smiled, but every time it happened I grew slightly more frustrated. When I hit fifteen and 6’3”, I was surely old enough by that point for her to think I had something interesting to say, and tall enough to be out of reach from the dread head-pat - but no. So I hatched a plan.

***

It’s Christmas Day, and now 34, married, and with kids of my own the brood has come to stay; just one person left to arrive. Saskia. Once, she could have been described as svelte – with a name like Saskia you’ve got to be - but age, a sedentary lifestyle and a weakness for chocolate gateau had taken their toll. The stage is set. The doorbell rings.

“Auntie Saskia, my, haven’t you grown!”

Revenge!

A Hundred Years Later, And Cinema Has Gone Full-Circle

The very first films started popping up in the late nineteenth century. They are not really what we would recognise as films nowadays, instead of narratives and characters the earliest films were just a minute or so long, and showed something of interest. This could be a shot of a boat leaving a harbour, a procession of ostriches, some teenage girls having a pillow fight, a wall demolished then reversed; there is not really a unifying theme other than something that an audience used to static backgrounds and relatively thin stage of the theatre found appealing. Hence, it has become known as the 'cinema of attractions'.

There are a few notable examples that I'd like to draw on. One of the earliest was 'Repas de Bebe', which showed a baby eating something. However, it was not the baby that grabbed the attention of the audience, but the moving foliage in the background. This was a realism unlike anything they'd seen produced artificially before, and it was fascinating.

The next video is one of a train pulling into a station. Now this is a myth, and did not actually happen, but the story goes that the first audience that watched this film were scared that the train would come through the screen and into the auditorium. They were not that easily duped, but it neatly summaries my point: audiences found shots that contain great depth and movement towards the camera very striking.

Do the above things remind you of anything? A certain megabudget sci-fi spectacular? Yes - Avatar embodies both of these things, and uses them as its primary selling point. The story is crappy; I'm pretty sure the producers knew that. However: CGI! $250m dollars worth! The dialogue might be hammy and the characters thinly conceived, but goddamnit look at those backgrounds! Who cares what those blue dudes are doing - imma look at that floating rock! With a waterfall!

You get the picture.

It's not just the backgrounds that ape the 'cinema of attractions' style appeal. The feeling of something coming towards you, as with the train before, sounds an awful lot like 3D, the other selling point of Avatar. Those people that did not flinch, but might have, have clear parallels with modern audiences who flap their hands in front of their faces or duck when the 3D effect whizzes something uncomfortably close. There has been 3D before, and there has been complex CGI before, but Avatar is the first time when both are united to fill theatres like never before.

There have not been a huge number that have tried to follow in Avatar's footsteps - Transformers 3 is probably the only one that relies solely on 3D and CGI - but Avatar is the biggest grossing film of all time by a long way and so cannot be ignored. Our watching habits are reverting back to how they were before cinemas were even a thing; and when spectacle took precedence over narrative. Narrative films were barely even possible back then, so in this day and age when anyone can shoot a film better than the Lumiere brothers, why are we reverting back to the superficial?



N.B. Yeah, I know, Avatar came out two years ago, but I've only just learned about the cinema of attractions, so excuse my tardiness.

EDIT: minutes after posting this I discover that some French filmmakers have made a genuine black-and-white silent film. It's not quite the same as what I'm getting at in this piece, but weird coincidence or what.

RealTimeWWII - Twitter's first great piece of art.

A while back, when Twitter was but a mysterious platform for posting about life's inanities to a handful of uninterested people, a writer tried to tell a story in posts of 140 characters of less. It was some boring woman, I think she wrote The Exmoor Files, and she then went on to predict that there would one day be a 'Twitter Masterpiece'. I called cried foul immediately: what a poorly thought through way of writing a story. It just smacks of pretentiousness and novelty. And at the moment I'm still right; the best we've got are some of the intelligent fake accounts that parody people, living or dead.

However, I wasn't banking on something like @RealTimeWWII coming along. It's not fiction but it is art, even if that isn't what it set out to do. RealTimeWWII sends tweets as if World War Two is currently on-going. Sample tweet: 

SS have arrested over 1,200 students. All Prague universities permanently closed. 9 "ringleaders", chosen at random, have been shot"

The amount of research that must have gone into the making of this is daunting. Famous events are covered, of course, but it's the minutiae of the war that really put things in perspective. It allows us to compare the many atrocities committed during the war with the daily workings of the 21st Century. Somehow 'Northen Rock Sold To Virgin' (today's headline) has less impact when it's sat under 'Prague: Trucks of SS troops just drove into Karlsplatz; protest broken up with rifle-butt beatings. Germans have arrested dozens of Czechs' in my twitterfeed.  (Can we rename the Twitterfeed the BirdFeed?)


"One person killed is a tragedy, a million killed is a statistic", and we all know the statistics: 25 million soldiers killed, the same number again of civilians killed. It's impossible to really grasp what those numbers mean, and this is the genius of  RealTimeWWII. Currently (minus 72 years!) in WWII, full scale European warfare is still a few months away, so it will be fascinating how it changes once the belligerents fully engage, but this early period is sort of terrifying; I felt a pang of, what, fear or apprehension when I read the tweet 'Berlin has rejected Dutch-Belgian offer to mediate with Allies & threatened to "show the British what it means to be at war with Germany"'. 


RealTimeWWII makes use of the Twitter medium perfectly. The key elements of Twitter are the 140 character rule, the 'timeline' nature of the Twitterfeed, and multimedia opportunities. All of these are harnessed to great effect. The necessity of brevity in composing each post means there is room only for the brutal facts:  '9 "ringleaders", chosen at random, have been shot' is so brutally factual that we instinctively fill in the gaps and re-imagine the scenario; not so hard given that I myself am a student. The day-by-day nature of RealTime WWII means that it is not a 'greatest hits' - as it were - of the events of WWII. To keep it moving the writer has to include some slightly more mundane aspects of life at the time - we get quotes from forgotten politicians, anonymous members of the public and trivialities of life as well as important military events such as the Winter War. One particularly brilliant aspect of RealTimeWWII is that it posts news items and photos from the time. The immediacy these pictures give is striking. No longer just a photo in a textbook, it is instead contextualised beautifully, one detail in a vast canvass. 


What makes this art is that it allows us to re-imagine a period in history that we though we knew so well, and contrasts it with the frankly comfortable society of today, recession and all. It is outstanding.

The 'We Deserved To Win' Fallacy

"We deserved to win" just about sums up the attitude in the Spanish press to England's unexpected 1-0 win against the World and European Champions Spain at Wembley last Saturday. England barely touched the ball, they whined. They parked the bus, they sneered. Boring. cynical. An unjust result. Spain play beautiful, expansive, skillful football, and win every time, did no one tell you, England? 


The Spanish are not the only nation/team guilty of such breathtaking arrogance. Granted, there is a definite sore-loser streak that's developed in Iberia since they came to world dominance, but I imagine that every fan of football in the whole world has uttered that awful phrase, "We deserved to win".

Spain did not deserve to win, no matter how much the precious Spanish press complain. There is merit in defending. There is merit in organisation. And above all, there's merit in putting the ball in the back of the bloody net. A goal has exactly the same worth whether it is scored by a player accidentally scoring with his face after the goalie punched the ball into it or by the most wondrous passing move you've ever seen (Spain again).

Football is all about taking the chances you are given. If a team creates some excellent scoring opportunities but fails to put them away, then they've failed to put them away. It's as simple as that. Bizarrely, it seems to be the final touch, the one that actually scores the goal, that has become undervalued. Once you've reached this mysteriously ill-defined point of basically a goal then by some twisted logic it should be a goal. Fabregas had a great chance. Villa hit the post. But neither were goals. If anything, the dominant amount of possession and territory that a team gains that still results in a defeat or draw makes said defeat or draw even more glaring. It's like a racing driver losing a race despite having a superior vehicle.

The only excuse is when there are some really obvious, pivotal refereeing decisions, like that stupid Chelsea-Barcelona match that made poor Tom Henning Ovrebo a wanted man. Fair play, Chelsea deserved to win.

Football is unforgiving. Hit the post ten times but don't score, and you haven't scored; all or nothing.

It Is Wrong To Deify The Armed Forces

It seems to me, in recent years - or at least I've only just begun to notice it - that our boys in Afghanistan and elsewhere have been deified as faultless, self-sacrificing heroes. I feel this is a fallacy. Before I continue I must assert that I do genuinely have great respect for those that choose to put their lives on the line to try and secure the safety of others, and what I am going to write next should not been taken to be dismissal of those who don't make it back to these shores alive. I know people in the army, and I know people who have been affected by the death of friends on duty.

"We believe that anyone who volunteers to serve in time of war, knowing that they may risk all, is a hero. These are ordinary people doing extraordinary things and some of them are living with the consequences of their service for life. We may not be able to prevent our soldiers from being wounded, but together we can help them get better."

Help for Heroes

These sentiments are all in the best possible faith but it is disingenuous to describe Britain as being 'in a time of war'. We are at war, but the war in Afghanistan is not a total war like the World Wars; the safety of Britain isn't under threat. Those guys that fought in WWI and its sequel are heroes because the safety of Britain and her allies were under serious threat. Iraq and Afghanistan are wars of foreign policy, closer to imperialism than defence of the realm. Because of this, a modern-day soldier does not have the same chime of heroism. A role in the army in 2011 is a job in the most mundane sense of the word, rather than a duty or an act of 'volunteer[ing]' that the Help for Heroes blur speaks of. Strictly speaking, if HfH were to help just the volunteers, then it would have a very minor task indeed. The position of army serviceman is a job that may require self-sacrifice, but it is in pursuit of money rather than as the sole defenders of a nation.

This is not an attack on Help for Heroes; those guys that come back from a warzone infirm of mind and/or body do need the extra help, and I've read various articles outlining the poor treatment they received from whichever branch of the Armed Forces they fought under. No, rather this written against the 'hero' assumption, the assumption that putting one's life on the line makes one worthy of the tag of  'hero'. I haven't got the statistics for the British Armed forces, but the American Armed Forces suffers a casualty rate of 27 per 10 000, in comparison with the American logging industry that suffers 11.7 per 10 000. The death rate in the army is just 2.3 times higher than in the lumberjacking business. Does anyone claim lumberjacks to be heroes just because there is worryingly high mortality-rate? No, because chopping down trees is not romanticised in the same way that 'fighting for one's country' is, whatever that means.

Adorning soldiers with the ‘hero’ tag has further implications than just creating a false sense of valour. By creating such a romanticised view of the army, more young men are encouraged to join despite the very real threat of serious bodily harm, or even death. A more realistic outlook needs to be taken. Like the men of the middle ages that journeyed to far-flung climes in search of fabled treasure, our modern day perspective of the army is similarly distorted, if not to the same extent. The horrors that a soldier is likely to experience is overruled by the heroic image that the armed forces still carry.

It’s also interesting that the ‘hero’ tag has survived the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite the various documented abuses carried out by British and American soldiers. None of these seem to dent its image. I think the hero defence wilts when it goes up against hard evidence with the soldiers in question disgraced, but since these abusive acts are far from the norm, the hero tag absolved the army as a whole.

Band Awareness #3 - Box Codax

Among my favourite bands, Franz Ferdinand are among the most frustrating. Their debut is one of the best albums ever made; their second and third albums have islands of excellence amid fairly average surrounding songs. After each successive album release I have to wait an age in anticipation of what I hope to be the band's redemption. With the fourth album having an incredibly vague release date of some point, eventually, perhaps I'd all but given up hope.

Then I discovered that album to fill the Franz Ferdinand-shaped hole, and it comes from none other than Nick McCarthy, FF's guitarist. His band, Box Codax, are brilliant and virtually unknown. I've complied a crash course for your aural entertainment, courtesy YouTube.

Dawning: an acoustic version of Seven Silvers that's even better than the original.


Choco Pudding: There is a general trend running throughout Box Codax videos - they're all mad.


I Won't Come Back: featuring - a cat; a creepy Leonardo Di Caprio lookalike; suits.


Hellabuster: more silliness, this time on a mountainside


I'll stop there, but I think most of their songs are on YouTube.

Okay, there's only the barest hint of Franz Ferdinand in there, but that's more or less an irrelevance because the songs stand up so well by themselves. The album is called Hellabuster, and it's a cracker. Anyway, with the songs above there's not much left for me to say, enjoy xoxoxoxo


P.S Band Awareness #3? What happened to #1 and #2 I hear you ask. I decided that the Detektivbyran post from earlier in the year and Everything Everything post from last year constitute parts 1 and 2.

On reviews of "The Guard"

I was bored earlier, so I checked out reviews of The Guard online to see how they compared with mine. Turns out, mine is almost identical to Peter Bradshaw's in the Guardian. And Kim Newman's in Empire. And Tim Robey and Jenny McCartney's in the Independent. And almost every other reviewer out there.

Apparently, there is only one way to review this film (even though the scores span three to five stars). It has to be positive (95% on RT, and the few negative reviews are actually just sitting on the fence and don't reach any real conclusion. One even has the line "I'm not really quite sure what to make of "The Guard". Americans.); there are a lot of similarities to In Bruges, only In Bruges is better; Brendan Gleeson is excellent; the Irish racism bit has to be mentioned. Cut, paste, file.

Why is it that at least 60% of every review (and I'm moving on from simply The Guard here) is just synopsis? People watch the trailer to get an idea of what it's about; the reviewers job is to assess it. I've read reviews where the entire thing is synopsis, with one line of appraisal thrown in at the end. Awful.

The Guard: Review

Synopsis: A $500'000 (that's half a billion!) cocaine shipment is due to arrive somewhere near Galway in Ireland, bringing with it FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and a gang of crims to disturb Gerry Boyle's (In Bruges' Brendan Gleeson) quiet life of being a rule-ignoring policeman.

When I write reviews I try and avoid trotting out the same key discussion points that most tend to flag up, but even though I go into writing this review having not read a single one, I can say with assurance that nearly all of them will mention its companion piece, In Bruges. The director of The Guard is Irishman John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin McDonagh. Those who know me will know that In Bruges is my all-time favourite film, so I went into The Guard with expectations sky-high.

I'll get to whether it met said expectations shortly, but one thing I wasn't expecting is just how incredibly similar the two films are. Mimicking the directors, they could be siblings; outwardly different, but dig a little and they are comparable at nearly every level. Plotting and structure are the same; humour is pitched in a similar manner; both are bold, bright and gorgeous to look at; the main characters all have relatives across the celluloid divide; etc. etc. etc. Also, happily, in terms of quality they are comparable too, although In Bruges is still by far the superior film. If you like In Bruges, stop reading and just go and see it*.

One difference, however, is the centrality of the main character, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson). The Guard revolves solely around him, whereas in In Bruges Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson take equal importance. Boyle is brilliant, he's vulgar, racist (in one great moment his racist attitudes are made easier to swallow when he voices assumption that all Irish people are racist, and it's therefore excusable. Boyle is as Irish as they come), hostile towards rules and regulations and he gleefully indulges his many vices; but he loves his ma, he allegedly came fourth in the 1500m freestyle at the Seoul Olympics (Wikipedia backs him up!)  and has a well-buried moral compass. We're happy to root for him though, mostly because he's Brendan Gleeson and he's just so huggable. In short, he holds the film together, and does so excellently.

In Bruges' plotting follows the characters and wanders off to do some sightseeing of its own, only occasionally flitting back to the core narrative, and it's the same here. Much of the film is just spent mining the dynamic between Boyle and Everett for laughs. Unfortunately The Guard is always amusing but rarely hilarious, and it maintains the lighthearted tone even when it feels like it needs to be serious. Boyle for some reason just isn't phased whatsoever that he's about to go up against some armed drug-dealers, including the bad guy of the piece, a world-weary drug-smuggler (the ever-excellent Mark Strong). His determined defence of Ireland should feel heroic, but it's played for laughs and doesn't quite work. The firefight itself is similarly silly and is one of the more bizarrely unrealistic fights I've seen. That wouldn't be so bad if the rest of the film wasn't grounded in something approaching the real world; characters can shoot straight and act rationally, but right at the end that goes out the window, and it jars slightly.

That said, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The Guard is entertaining and has a crock o' gold heart, with a cast of real quality that carries it over the uneven patches. It'sIn Bruges' little brother, and that's no bad thing.


*Good fackin' luck! Retarded distribution means you'll have to dig pretty deep to find a showing. Harbour Lights only got it a good two weeks after it cropped up elsewhere.

A Short Story

So begins a heartbreaking tale of unrequited love, broken promises and mistaken identity. 


"Will you go out with me?"

"No"

"But you promised!"

"I thought you were someone else."

Fin

Rebranding the FA Cup

No one cares about the FA cup any more. As nice a change as it was, there is no way Cardiff and Portsmouth (twice) should have reached the FA Cup Final; nor, in all honesty, should Stoke. Manchester United haven't won it since 2004, and suffer regular giant killings. Even the small clubs don't seem to treat it with much respect, often fielding weak teams in order to prop up their domestic campaign.

The FA Cup is branded as The World's Oldest Cup Competition. Who gives a rat's ass? The Premier League and the Champion's League both dominate the club scene. History doesn't matter if the present doesn't matter. It needs a re-branding.

Instead of the The World's Oldest Cup Competition, the FA Cup should re-position itself as The World's Second Best Club Competition. The former branding draws attention only to its increasing irrelevance; the latter draws attention to the fact that the FA Cup has a very generous serving of the European club pie. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool - each an elder statesmen the European scene and precious scalp for whoever knocks them out (usually Barcelona or one of the other three)  - and latterly Manchester City and Tottenham. This lineup is stronger than the Europa League, the Copa del Rey, the Copa Libertadores and the Club World Cup. These are big teams, with big stadia and strong support. Add Barcelona, Madrid, Bayern Munich and Inter and you've got the last-eight in the CL. Add to that an appearance at Wembley, one of the best stadiums in the world, and you've got yourself something worth fighting for.

Of course it wont solve the entire problem. Bragging rights don't compare to a place in the the First Best Club Cup Competition in the World, so ideally a berth in the qualifying rounds or group stage would be on offer. But it's a start at least, I think.

Edinburgh Fringe

Until my trip up to Edinburgh with the family last week, I didn't really understand what the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was all about. I knew it as a stomping ground for up-and-coming comedians like Russel Kane and Daniel Sloss, and as a place for lesser-comedians to remain performing forever in front of tiny crowds, but I wasn't expecting the sheer abundance of energy, talent and diversity on show. It's not just comedians, not at all, in fact the best shows I saw were all leaning towards theatre, although humour is to be found in abundance.

Days are hectic - much more than the two full days we had there would have rapidly become too much - but so much fun. Most shows are an hour long, so it's possible to cram in five, or six if you're really well organised (not to mention tough), into a day. A good outline for the day is pick two things that really interest you, then spend the rest of the day spontaneously going to see whatever the endless leafleteers foist upon you. It might sound guaranteed to clog your day up with drivel, but such is the talent on show that the chances are you won't be too disappointed. There are bound to be bad shows, fortunately I only came across one awful one, but you will be surprised by the quality of the small companies.

Because I might as well, and because I've never reviews live performance before, I'm going to review the nine shows I saw.

The Spectacular Tales of Grinburrell - Southampton University Theatre Group

I'll freely admit, I only went to see this because my housemate is in it. However, after about fifteen minutes her presence was no longer the important thing: this is a really, really good show. It's a story about a theatre troupe, lead by the aging Mr. Grinburrell, a wheelchair-bound old man directing his last show, who has is performers act out a series of fairy tales, each of them wonderful in their own way, underpinned by the narrative of the performers themselves who fall in love, squabble, and compete for the role of troupe director.

It's energetic and charming, and the cast prove versatile in playing characters who in turn play other characters, something that always impresses me.  It's funny, engaging and at times quite poignant, and although it doesn't try to break new ground, Grinburrell is a whole-hearted success.


Damion Larkin - Cuddly Dreamer

My first spur-of-the-moment choice, and my trepidation wasn't eased as we made our way down increasingly dank flights of stone stairways into a room that felt like a dungeon. Damion Larkin is 42 years old, chubby, and his life has been on a steady decline since he was 19, and the entire show is based around those three facts. I'm not very good at revelling in other peoples' misery, so I found this show a bit of a struggle. He started by reeling of a litany of illnesses, injuries and problems that he suffers from - how many are genuine I don't know - and it only gets worse. Damion used to be a stockbroker which while boring, won him a good living, a Porsche and a beautiful girlfriend (to make sure we believed him he had a slideshow, a proper analogue one with actual slides, of said house, car and girlfriend), only to be made redundant, the big step in his decline.

There's self-depreciating humour, and then there's trying to turn a sob-story into comedy. It wasn't unfunny, but hearing a man declare that he wished he'd taken the decision to jump into the Tyne rather than end up where he is now is a bit much at 4pm on a Monday.

The Improvised Musical - No Shoes Theatre

Six actors, one hour, and absolutely no idea what they are going to be made to perform: that's the basis of this absolutely brilliant show. Before it starts, the audience is invited to give any random items they have to the cast to be used as props, to suggest names of songs, to suggest the name of the show, and to use flashback, spotlight and song cards at any point in the show, if it weren't already difficult enough.

It really is 100% improvised; the actors set no parameters themselves so there is no script, no pre-planned jokes, and no learnt song lyrics. It's astounding how good it is. For the performance I saw, they were challenged to make a song called 'Aaaaaaaa', basically just a strangled vowel sound, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in not having any idea how they could build that into a song. And yet they managed it; in one song about losing control of a spaceship (the play was titled My Rusty Spaceship) the chorus was crying out for direction, and just as the moment looked to have failed one girl reappropriated the 'aaaaaaa' into a shit we're going to crash! sound. The rest of the cast immediately caught up and began harmonising, and a moment of tension was just so wonderfully resolved the crowd immediately broke out into rapturous applause.

 There are of course bumps and imperfections, but frankly I think I'll give them that. Unless you have a heart of stone, the whole performance was so hard to fault. I can't recommend this enough, it was the best thing I saw at the festival, and going on reviews of the other shows, it seems like they somehow maintain this high level of quality.

Ali Cook - Pieces of Strange

Ali Cook's brand of magic is a modest one. None of the tricks were lavishly dressed up, or partiularly mind-blowing. However, it was solidly done, and he has a good rapport with the audience, but I was expecting something a bit more dramatic. The high-point for me was a trick that supposedly foiled Harry Houdini; he could, supposedly without movement, return a card inserted into the middle of the deck to the top. This he did, and I can't even hazard a guess at how. Then he turned the deck from blue-backed to red-, again without movement. Now, that was impressive.

I can't massively recommend this one; it was good without being consistently amazing; it was funny without being uproarious, but the overriding feeling was one of mild apathy.

You Last Breath - Curious Directives

Your Last Breath is a clever piece of serious theatre, there are no laughs here, tightly plotted with a storyline that flits between four interconnected storylines spanning 140 years that all centre on the icy Norwegian landscape. It's something like a theatrical David Mitchell novel in that respect. There's the English cartographer from 1896, charged with mapping the frozen reaches of Norway; there's the girl in 2011 who travels to Norway to bury her recently deceased father's ashes; in 2034 there's the young scientist who has perfected the process of deeply cooling a human body for medical reasons; and there's the downhill skier around who the story is hung, plunged into a river in a skiiing accident in 1991 she was nearly frozen to death, but miraculously made a full recovery.

The pacing is very well controlled, with none of the strands outstaying its welcome at any point, but nor do any feel under-developed. The skiier gets the least screen-time (what's the theatre version of screen time?) by far and isn't a narrative as such, but underpins the other storylines, popping up in the background occasionally, representing though dance the path of the downhill skier. All the actors are either very good or excellent, with the cartographer and Norwegian guide to our intrepid Englishwoman being the standout performers.

It was set design, props and music that elevate this show into really-rather-good territory. The music, performed live by an unseen musician, took the shape a melody intrinsically Norwegian (apparently) and varied it according to setting and timeline. Projections on to the back wall were also astutely planned, but best of all was a physical representation of the longitude and latitude lines that the cartographer would be using to plot his map; several strands were strung across the stage and were manipulated to form mountains and rivers, before being incorporated in a dance. They all felt like good ideas, and they helped the narrative without ever feeling gimmicky.

Nick Helm - Dream A Dream

GOOD AFTERNOON COCKSUCKERS!



...AND GENTLEMEN,

LET'S FUCK THIS PUPPY! LET'S KICK THIS IN THE DIIIICCCKKKKKKK!

Not the subtlest of starts, then. As far as I know, this is an entirely new brand of humour. Helm doesn't seem to have any jokes (though bizarrely he won the Best Joke award. I don't even remember heard that one(sorry for linking to the Daily Mail)), he just loudly berates his audience until they start laughing. Or walk out, as two people did. I found myself laughing out of fear. He has the mannerisms of a rock-star, all hoarse, raspy delivery through a loud sound-system, and had us fist-pumping along to a motivational song or something.

Once things simmered down a bit, he was actually less entertaining. There was an okay songs, and he made a very uncomfortable man lie on a mattress for half the show, eventually stripping down to his y-fronts and snuggling up with the unfortunate audience member. It was a small mattress, and Helm was very sweaty by this point. Probably the best part of his act was his two down-trodden backing musicians, who took the mountains of shit flung at them with cowed dignity.

With a good deal of largely forgettable material, this is an average show at best.

Theseus Is Dead - The Effort

Theseus Is Dead is the worst thing I've ever seen. Stuck with nothing to do at 6pm on our last day, we take a risk and get punched really hard in the part of the brain marked 'boredom'. It's got a good title, the flyer made it sound somewhat interesting, and it kept us warm for an hour. The positives stop there.

The plot has something to do with the rumoured death of Theseus, and the fallout that such an event caused, but it was incomprehensible. The entire cast spent the whole time in this increasingly unsettling state of hysteria; every line was delivered as if in the middle of a catastrophic nervous breakdown. They didn't calm down for the entire hour; I can't imagine how the characters could live constantly so highly-strung. The dialogue was the standard archaic babble. It aims for the highest heights but has absolutely no substance behind it. Many sentences sound cleverly worded, but make no mistake, it was always an unremarkable sentiment smothered in layer-upon-layer of fossilised bullshit.

I'm unfamiliar with Greek theatre, it may be at times excellent, but this does its reputation absolutely no good whatsoever.

The Pajama Men

What a show to end my stay on. I don't really know how to describe this. Two guys, dressed in pyjamas (pajamas - another new Americianism to annoy me) act out bizarre scenarios involving fantastical characters and anthropomorphic animals. These are two guys absolutely confident in their routine, it's so odd, and yet so brilliant. The two frequently started laughing during a sketch as if they couldn't themselves believe the ridiculousness of their show.

Look them up on YouTube. Bit of a lame way to end this post, but I don't know what to about them, other than that they are just sublimely entertaining.

Star Wars:The Continuing Cultural Juggernaught

Forty four years after the release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and the series’ cultural ubiquity continues unabated. The abysmal prequel trilogy has been brushed aside by the combined might of Episodes IV, V and VI, with Star Wars themed merchandise penetrating into every corner of our lives. Product designers have pillaged the Star Wars Universe for ideas: a lightsaber umbrella? Absolutely. An R2D2 projector? Sure! Darth Vader, stormtroopers and lightsabers are apparently limitless wells of inspiration. The desire of every male (and surely most females, right girls?) to wield a lightsaber and the Force has driven game sales for decades. An upcoming Kinect title tries to almost literally put on in your hand. The Lego Star Wars series combined – wait for it – Lego, and Star Wars, instantly breathing new life into the series on that platform. 

But I’m not here to talk about the design aspect of Star Wars. The thing that’s really kept the flame burning during the last decade is the internet. The internet has facilitated the enormous outpouring of love for the trilogy; before the internet the affection for it was equal but isolated. There was no YouTube to delight in the many idiosyncrasies, mistakes and blemishes. The latter two may sound like derogatory terms, but they are not. The stormtrooper that bangs his head; Han Solo’s awful manoeuvres; everything picked up on in Family Guy’s Blue Harvest (1 & 2, and plenty more on YouTube); these are all what Robin Williams’ character in Good Will Hunting would call his wife’s night-time flatulence. They are the ‘good bits, the juicy bits’. Some skilful editing can invert the tone of the film, like this great clip of Darth Vader being reduced from one of the great dark, iconic and complex villains in film history to an irritating child.  Or, in the case of this clip from Episode I, emphasise the absolutely tragic acting and dialogue. Live-action parodies are a risky business, but this one centred on the inability of stormtroopers to survive an laser-blast whatsoever is pretty decent.

It is doubtful that there are any other films that could stand up to such scrutiny as Star Wars has undergone, but it testament to its artistic integrity that these YouTube moments don’t damage its reputation, but enhance it. The internet has given Star Wars a personality beyond that present in the films. It is this territory that makes film the medium of the 21^st century. This global ransacking and good-natured piss-taking is impossible with a book. A book is extremely personal; each book is unique to each reader. It is internal, and sharing your own vision of the world in a book with someone else can spoil the illusion. The opposite is true for film. It is external; everyone sees the exact same thing. Thus it can be modified, shared and put on YouTube and, to misuse an expression, everyone will be reading from the same page. Parodies of books are difficult due to the time required to type the damn thing out. Gems like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (a definite improvement) are extremely rare. Internet parodies just require a video editor, creating simple brilliance as in this video, where the voice actor for Darth Vader, James Earl Jones, has lines from his other films spliced into Star Wars.  

The music has become similarly iconic. Most obvious is the Imperial March, which, in the entirety of music history most easily denotes the presence of a bad guy, even ahead of the Jaws theme. By far the best use of the Imperial March I've ever come across is this daring use by none other than the Welsh Guards in protest against a state visit by the Saudi Arabian Sheikh, King Abdullah. Top-notch banter, boys, and love that Queen 'Liz has the misfortune of being cast as the Emperor. 

But a more niche example is the rise to fame of the wonderful Cantina Band music. Blue Harvest obviously has something to say about this, but my favourite, and probably the thing that made me write this post, is an incredible mash-up (so nearly an oxymoron) of the Cantina Band music and We No Speak Americano: We No Speak Cantina. It just works so unbelievably well. 

I think you'll agree it's an impressive oeuvre. In terms of cultural ubiquity, Star Wars is unparalleled in the arts. It succeeds in being a triumph of mainstream cinema and of geek culture simultaneously. The prequel trilogy may have been a colossal let-down, but it hadn't a chance in hell of replicating the feat of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi.

P.S - If you know of any more, and I'm sure there are, send them my way!
P.P.S - If you only watch one clip watch the James Earl Jones one. It's sublime.
Malc x

Wayne Routledge for Goal of the Season

Bit late with this but whatevs

The Guardian and my beloved www.101greatgoals.com (and probably many other sports websites) have made lists of the greatest goals of the past 12 months. There have been a huge number of unbelievable goals - there always is - and because we all like to watch spectacular goals I'll link a few.

Some Greeks scored a goal that would have you celebrating for hours had you put it in on FIFA, a frankly outrageous rabona-bicycle kick combo. Absolute pure fantasy.

Mattie Burrows from little Glentoran made himself an over-night sensation with this ridiculous back-heel volley.

Paul Scholes looks a bit lame in comparison with this Hamit Altintop effort.

Obviously we have to have a few from Spurs, so tek a boo Gareth Bale and Tom Huddlestone. There's something unerring about that Huddleston strike; it just seems to stay hit.

This massively underrated Daniel Sturridge goal wasn't featured on either list. For shame, Guardian and 101gg. It's far from the most stunning goal, but look again. He has two defenders within a metre of him. He is stationary. He gets minimal backlift. And yet somehow he curls it into the far corner. From nothing: a goal. Remember that outrageous Ronaldinho vs. Chelsea goal a few years back where he scored from the edge of the 18-yard-box while stationary? It's like that, but better.

Now we come to, in my opinion, the best goal scored in the past year. Step forward former Spurs boys Adel Taarabt and Wayne Routledge. As with the Sturridge effort above this isn't anything like the fantasy football of them Greek boys from earlier (though the outside of the boot curled pass isn't bad); no, this is normal football executed to the highest possible degree. There's no sense of either going 'Oh fuck it, may as well', they both knew exactly what the needed to do to score, and they did it. Lots of commenters feel the pass is the best part of the goal, but it isn't, it's Routledge's first touch. Running at full speed with the keeper bearing down, Routledge still controlled it perfectly - and I mean perfectly, it could not have been any better - before slotting it home. There is absolutely no room for improvement. It might be unfair to say goals of the quality of those above could be better, but it's true. That bicycle kick hit the ground before going in - amateur! The same can't be said for Taarabt/Routledge. Absolute perfection.

Road Cycling is Far More Interesting Than You Might Assume.

With the Tour de France fast approaching and Bradley Wiggins winning in the Dauphine Libéré, road cycling is back once again as my favourite sport. There aren’t many sports that polarise the public as much as cycling; it’s hard to be a casual fan. Many see it as long-distance running on two wheels, nothing ever happens, right? Those that do know cycling know that such a train of thought couldn’t be more wrong. I am going to try and provide a crash-course in road cycling, and what makes it great television.

Aerodynamics

I’ll concede, it doesn’t sound like a promising start. However, this is arguably the most important factor in providing drama. Aerodynamics is what separates road cycling from, to use it again, distance running. Runners don’t go very fast so the benefits from running in someone’s slipstream are minimal. Cyclists average 40+km/h on flat stages, and at that sort of speed you are shifting serious amounts of air. Consequently it is much easier to ride in someone’s slipstream than take the brunt of air resistance.

The first effect this has is turning road cycling into a team sport. It really genuinely is as much of a team sport as football; the team works together to get their lead rider victories, who would severely struggle without them. The theory is this: the domestiques (servant to the leader) spread the bulk of the 100+ miles between them, until the leader – be he a climber or sprinter – is in a position to make his bid for victory. A domestique is not an easy thing to be. They often find themselves spent still a long way from to finish, meaning they have a tortuous time getting back by themselves, or in a small group of domestiques from other teams. They get little glory, but are still vital.

The most visible incarnation of this phenomenon is the sprint train. Teams look to stretch the peloton (the seething mass that contains the bulk of the riders) by lining up single-file, and putting the hammer down. Sounds easy enough? Not when there are ten other teams all looking to do the exact same thing; it becomes a highly organised mess. Briton Mark Cavendish is currently the best sprinter in the world by some margin, but his team is also brutal. Watch this clip from the final stage of the 2009 TdF for a great example; Cav’s team is was so strong in 2009 that his lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, came second (awesome demonstration of how fast they go at 5:05). Watch how Cavendish stays behind Renshaw as late as possible in order to make full use of the slipstream. The sprints themselves are brilliant. Riders can hit 70 km/h on the flat, all the while veering wildly across the road attempting to dislodge anyone from their back wheel. Unlike the 100m dash, cyclists don’t start in a line; once it starts it’s every man for himself. A glorious scrap.

Aerodynamics also forms the peloton. The peloton is something of a beast. It moves far faster (when it feels like it) than any cyclist riding alone can; even small breakaway groups are usually caught. It’s not infallible, though. Mountains, through a combination of far-tougher racing conditions and drop in the advantage of slipstreaming, decimate the peloton in minutes. Even strong cross-winds can throw it into disarray.

Variety

A stage race essentially has three types of stage: flat(ish) stages likely to end in a sprint finish; mountainous stages; and time trials. The flat stages determine the winner of the sprint competition, and the mountainous stages and time trials determines the King of the Mountains classification as well as the General Classification. However, each even within each category stages are far from being the same. The organisers are fiendishly clever when it comes to devising the route each year. In the 2010 Tour de France one of the flat stages early in the race turned out to be one of the most decisive of all. It went over the cobbled roads of Belgium which are brutal to ride on, which, in combination with numerous crashes and strong cross-winds, splintered the peloton and caused the big names to either seize the opportunity and go as hard as they could, or commit to the chase. It was carnage. 


Then they hit the mountains and everything changes. Everyone gets ripped to pieces, but some get ripped to pieces less than others. Riders that aren't so great at time-trialling know that the mountains are their only chance of getting any time back, so they launch outrageous attacks off the front, causing everyone to attempt to scramble back to their wheel. Last year we got one of the best ever, with Andy Schleck attacking from an insane 60kms from the finish. (If you've got an hour, watch it here). It's not often in sport where you get people throwing everything on the line, but in cycling it happens quite regularly, and it's awesome.


The Characters


Cycling is a sport that demands masochistic levels of endurance from its athletes, so it's no surprise that you get a load of nut-jobs. Take, for instance, Djamolodine Abdujaparov, the Tashkent Terror. The man is insane and who's suicidal approach to sprinting resulted in one especially famous moment. Then there are men like Jens Voight who can shrug off crashes that would leave lesser men on crutches for a week. Even though he took a battering, he was just happy that he didn't crash on his face. This is quite a common thing; Jonny Hoogerland was launched into barbed wire by a support car last year, and despite suffering a lacerated backside, he finished the stage, and the tour. People like to compare rugby players' get-on-with-it attitude favourably to footballers', but cycling has them all beat, no contest.

There are also the spectators. Firstly, there are millions of them. It is the most watched live sporting event by miles, with each 140km stage lined with spectators. On the mountain stages, a million people can line the roads. Seriously. And they're also a little bit mental, like this guy, who turns up every year. 

Scenery

No football or Olympic stadium can compare to the Alps or the Pyrenees. The mountains are a great backdrop, but the mountains don’t just make the race look nice, but dictate it. It’s man vs. man vs. mountain. The only word that feels appropriate to describe such passes as l’Alp d’Huez, Mont Ventoux, the Stelvio Pass and Alto de l’Angliru is epic. The mountains dwarf the race. They define it. Races are won and lost in the mountains. Savagely steep, they separate the wheat from the chaff, but such is the difficulty of not just making it to the top, but the effort of actually trying to beat other supremely fit men (cyclists have amongst the highest VO₂ maxes of any sportsmen) means that even the best are vulnerable. A few difficult days can mean that the favourites can explode unexpectedly. It is a tense wait for the first attack to come, and who will be able to cope.

Once they get to the top, they have to come down (unless it’s a mountain top-finish). Speeds frequently top 60 mph, on thin tyres, with plentiful hair-pins thrown in for good measure. It is incredibly dangerous, and lives have been lost. In 2010, Wouter Weylandt, a Belgian rider crashed and died. These men know the risks they take, but do it anyway. Even on flat stages crashes are common, but they just get on with it.

Highlights

Races last five hours, but no one is asking you to watch the whole thing. That is pretty boring. Happily, ITV broadcast the Tour de France in highlights in an hour, which is the best way to watch it. Not much more to add here; only the most dedicated watch the peloton rolling through the countryside with few developments for hours at a time. 

The Darkness - Shepherd's Bush Empire June 8th 2011

The Darkness, creators of what is probably my favourite album ever, Permission To Land, have finally returned after a four year hiatus. Last night they played Shepherd's Bush Empire, their third in a series of small warm-up gigs before they play Download this summer, and I was there.

Would the four years out, the drugs, the booze, the success have taken their toll? Had they been out too long? Or had they not been out long enough? Most bands reform after at least a decade, which gives fans plenty of time to move on before rekindling their love. The answer to all these questions, of course, is no. They just did their Darkness thing, no rust, no hitches, no ego, just brilliance.

Justin's got a new moustache. It curls at the end and looks very swarthy. Frankie Poullaine is also back after quitting in 2005. And they brought some new songs.

Yes, there is a new album coming out. Not sure when, but the two tracks they did play are pretty decent. Lessons from the second album appear to have been heeded; gone is the outrageous high-camp of One Way Ticket (as if they weren't alread camp enough), replaced instead by a return to their roots of guitar dominated riff-rock.

Critical Wankery Listed

Critics love to be pretentious, but some fields bring out this tendency more than others. In descending order:

7. Games Critics

6. Film critics

5. Literary Critics (as in book reviews, not literary theory)

4. Theatre Critics

3. Food Critics

2. Music Critics

1. Wine Critics

Observations:
1. The harder something is to be objective about, the more douchey the critics become.

 There have been various studies where professional wine critics have failed to discern between cheap plonk and pricier bottles. It's not completely nonsense, but there is a lot of bullshit. Similarly, music criticism seems to be writers trying to justify why their opinion is right. This isn't always the case; some music journalists do know what they're talking about, but quite often, they don't. Perhaps the main problem is that music is just incredibly difficult to describe. We haven't developed a true vocabulary to describe music, instead borrowing from other senses. Take 'dazzling' for instance. It describes visual phenomena, but is frequently shoehorned into music reviews. It doesn't help at all. That's not to say we don't have the words to describe sound, obviously, but those words came into being long before musicians began making entirely new sounds through first, distortion, reverb, and feedback; and second computerised synthetic sounds. The only way around this is to reference other acts, but this quickly becomes a willy-waving contest to see who can pack in the most obscure references (Q Magazine I'm looking at you). The casual reader will likely miss this wanky esoterica, so the reviewers just sound like bell-ends.

We're not really that great at describing taste, either. 'Fruity', 'Tangy', 'Crisp', 'Smoky' and 'Oaky' are popular adjectives, but they all suck, basically. (How does anyone know what oak tastes like!?) Winos may be able to identify different notes (another wine word I loathe) but can't accurately describe them. Consequently they either get it wrong or sound like tossers.

A good contrast is with film criticism. Film is a visual medium, made up of real-world images. We have developed a deep lexis to describe it; thus it is easier to write about. You do get a few critics who write like arseholes, but it isn't usually needed to reference a range of films that no-one's seen.

2. The wider the market, the less pretentious the critic.

There could be two reasons for this. Either, the masses have an innate ability to discern between high-art and pop culture; or the critics recognise the breadth of their audience so write in a style accordingly. Games critics are very un-pretentious. Maybe there isn't much to be pretentious about; games (at the moment) are focussed on being fun and engrossing. Few try to aim to be high art, or to convey deep themes. There really aren't many like this to choose from, but Shadow of the Colossus is the leading candidate for "art" gaming (half a decade after release).The big outlier is music, for the reasons above.

Brits in Hollywood

They may be American films, but British directors in Hollywood barely make any missteps. This is just a spur-of-the-moment post so I've not done any research, but the three that spring to mind - Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan and Matthew Vaughn - have made a sequence of fantastic films. Interestingly, each director's oeuvre changes drastically from offering to offering.

Danny Boyle is famously diverse, with credits including grimy British dramas like Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, a reinvention of the zombie in 28 Days Later, a taught sci-fi thriller in Sunshine, Bollywood aping melodrama Slumdog Millionaire, and others. It should be noted that his early films are actually British-funded,

Then we have Christopher Nolan, most famous for his two excellent Batman films, but also notable are last year's spectacular and deceptively un-intelligent Inception, The Prestige, Insomnia, and best of all, Memento. Memento is simply one of the best films released in recent years. Again, all these films are very good, and very diverse, and American backed.

Finally we come to Matthew Vaughn, by far the least known of the three. He's only made four films, but as with the other two, they are all great. Gangster film Layer Cake is his first, and probably worst, film, which was followed by the it-might-be-a-bit-wussy-but-it's-so-great-I-don't-even-care Stardust, then back to the violence with Kick-Ass, before we come to X-Men: First Class, just released, but is by all accounts brilliant. For what it's worth (nothing) this guy is probably my favourite. I haven't actually seen Layer Cake or X-Men yet, but Stardust and Kick-Ass are just so much fun. Pure, unapologetic escapism.

So there it is: our boys head a good chunk of the best American films of the past decade. What does this mean? Can we celebrate these films as if they had been made in Britain? I don't really want to crack open the auteur theory debate - basically I don't know enough about it - but how I see it is this: Nolan and Vaughn wrote and directed - and in Nolan's case, he even produced his most recent three films - all their films. The screen-play and the direction are the two most important creative forces behind films, so while other people undeniably contribute to the picture, it seems to me that these two should indeed be able to take credit for their quality. It is not simply a case of getting a great script and turning it into a film; the entire process was under creative control of Nolan and Vaughn. Indeed, Nolan's worst film, Insomnia, is the only one he didn't write. The case is less clear for Danny Boyle. He is a director, turning scripts into (excellent) films, but doesn't write them. Are Danny Boyle's films really Danny Boyle's films, or is he just one part of the production? Don't look at me for answers.

I would like to propose an idea. We don't really have much of a film industry in this country; maybe a couple of decent fully-British film each year. But maybe, our film industry has secretly moved to America, like some sort of leech. We use their money and their technicians to finance our boys' and girls' ideas. The money may all go to American studios, but it is the creatives' film. This is different to being assimilated into the American system. If the leech was somehow beneficial to the person it would be a great analogy. It is entirely dependent on the host, but still a separate entity.

Attack the Block - Review

Tower blocks, dialects, angry young men, Britain - all the ingredients are there but this ain't no slice of kitchen-sink social realism. No, this is Attack the Block and it's got aliens!

I've read a few reviews of this film and they've all be critical of other reviews that make 'lazy' comparisons with Shaun of the Dead, but while it's obvious, it's nevertheless a pretty good starting point. Essentially it is a story of some normal kids dealing with a brutal alien attack; the comedy lies in their coping with the invasion. However, unlike last months The Highness, AtB doesn't rely on vocal incongruencies (being critical of comedy is a sure-fire way of sounding like an utter twat, sorry) to generate laughs. Here, they merely complement a sharp and witty script that succeeds brilliantly in being in mimicking urban culture. Probably.

It's not a complaint as such, but I do worry that anyone that's older than 35, anyone that comes from a rural part of the country, every American - basically anyone that isn't bang up-to-date with the London slang will struggle to understand large parts of this film. First time director Joe Cornish, of Adam and Joe fame, researched the dialect extensively, and it shows. My hometown, Maidenhead, while being backwards is virtually every way, does happen to keep up with the trends so I faired fine, but people from Dorset for instance may struggle. Americans will need subtitles.

Balancing comedy and action is a difficult thing to do, and often films tip towards one end of the scale, but Attack the Block treads the line with ease. It never forgets to be funny, and it never descends into the gore-fest it could so easily have become. The young cast is very good, with the best of the bunch being Alex Esmail as Pest, the token white-guy. Also excellent are Brewis (Luke Treadaway) who plays a Volvo-driving, middle-class, unemployed stoner graduate, desperate to shed his posh image; and John Boyega as gang-leader Moses, who delivers a performance of real intensity. To further the Shaun of the Dead link, Nick Frost is present (along with Edgar Wright as a producer).

However, the thing I like most about Attack the Block is that Britain has finally produced something of real wit and freshness. The budget is typically British - a paltry £8m - and yet it has the feel of a much larger production. As with last years Monsters, the CGI is relatively light, limited mostly to the aliens, which, by the way, are absolutely fantastic. They're black gorilla-werewolf-dog mofos, absolutely black, blacker even than Jerome's cousin Candice, with luminous fangs. Vicious, enthralling, and original, they contribute immensely to an already strong production

I really recommend seeing this film. It's what the British film industry has been crying out for since Hot Fuzz came along in 2007. We can't compete financially with Hollywood, but talented individuals we can outsmart them. Happily, as mentioned previously, it makes no concessions whatsoever to the international market. It doesn't even make concessions for the beyond-the-M25 market. Go see it, because we may well have another long wait before something like this comes along again.

Thumbs UP!

Meticulously preserved monuments are disrespectful to the past

Because apparently writing 2.5k words earlier today wasn't enough...

One thing that's really been annoying me recently is our nation's ridiculous tendency to preserve all the old buildings - castles, stately homes etc - to be looked at (but not touched! You're grubby fingers might destroy this delicate 1000 year old wall!). Perhaps the first time I this bothered me was watching an episode of Grand Designs a couple of years back when a man fought for months for the permission to renovate a utterly decrepit, mostly-collapsed old keep. He turned it into an absolutely fantastic B&B that was respectful of the original building whilst making it comfortable. No one cared about the old building, it was in the middle of nowhere and the only thing preventing it from being refurbished sooner was the ridiculously stringent rules on listed buildings.

I find our tendency to elevate old things to untouchable status disrespectful of the past. You might not have realised it, but these buildings were lived in by real people. They were never intended to be pieces of history, and they should stay that way.

Most of the castles are pretty much in ruins anyway. There's not much to look at. There used to be an outer wall, but it was demolished during the Civil War, you say? Bollocks, I want to see it. Faithfully re-construct it. Once Britain's sorted its finances, I would actually like to see the old crumbling ruins knocked down, the faithfully rebuilt, using the same materials in the same design. After that, either someone could live in it, or it could be opened to the public; either way would be better.

Of course, that raises the massive debate over privatising our new old buildings. God knows we kicked up enough fuss over the privatisation of our forests (though that was justified). It might seem strange, but I would prefer to see these buildings sealed off to the public if it means they are actually being used for what they were intended, rather than just sitting forlornly like a museum piece.

Windsor castle is a model example. It's lived in by the actual royal family, is in great shape, but it also (mostly) open to the public. It's a perfect compromise that retains the integrity of such an awesome looking building. I've linked it before, but it looks so spectacular its worth another eye-full.

I don't think I've quite put into words what I want to express. It's like seeing a magnificent tiger in a cage, or a classic car sitting lonely in a garage, to be looked at but never enjoyed as it should be.

An Outrageous Prediction

Here's one for you. Following on from yesterday's free will post, in which I decided that everything is already pre-determined and we are merely following train tracks, I will make an outrageous prediction: eventually (and we're talking a looong way ahead), once we've worked out how everything works, a computer program will be designed, using the laws of physics, that can compute the entire universe. This has two huge implications.

1) What this amounts to is time travel. We will be able move the simulation forwards (or backwards), seeing events as they will unfold. I can't even speculate about how being able to view the future would change the pre-defined path concept. Maybe it would create a loop, signalling the end of everything. Who knows.

2) If we can perfectly simulate the universe, then in starting the program we are effectively creating life. (Yes - this is very Matrix, or numerous other sci-fi stories. How do we know we're not in a progam? Spooky!) If the program can replicate consciousness, then the simulated people would experience consciousness in the same way that we do.

Let me know what you think. Hopefully this is a more fun thought than yesterday's blog.

On Free Will

The idea that we, as individuals and as a collective, aren't in control of our destiny is a scary one, but one we must consider. I will shortly outline my thoughts on why it may not be true, but first we must define Free Will, which is being able to act unencumbered by external forces; we freely make all our own decisions.

There is a well known theory of the multiverse, which is that there exist an infinite number of universes in which things are much the same, albeit with differences on a small scale - the decision to go to this university or that, to ask out a girl or not, etc. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why, if I have an alternate self in an alternate universe, would I make different decisions? If the constraints, pro and cons, levels of willpower and so forth, are exactly the same, I would make the same decision in universe 2 as I would in universe 1.

History is made up of untold billions of events, not just human but also physical - earthquakes, solar events etc - all of which would be made the same way. The laws of physics are unchanging and consistent, with ultimate knowledge anything and everything can be predicted. If history unfolds under pre-determined conditions, then it follows that the present - right now, me, you, everything - is unfolding in a predetermined way.

Even the decision to act spontaneously is a result of thinking about free will, and those thoughts are triggered by something else. We can do what we like, but we can't choose to do what we like.

However, is any of this important? It still feels like we're in control of our destinies, and the choices we make are down to our own personality traits and characteristics; it is our own unique nebulous consciousnesses that govern our actions (even if those traits are themselves pre-determined).



Someone prove me wrong please, I don't like this. Also this should also be much longer, but I've a seminar to attend.

Ray Hudson: Football Commentator Extraordinaire

I watch a lot of football videos on YouTube and the like, and occasionally the video is taken from an American sports channel, and the 'colour man' is a really odd Geordie bloke. For a while I thought he was pretty much an irritant, and felt sorry for the main commentator (who could hardly get a word in edgeways). It was like the channel thought, those British are good at soccer, let's get one of them in, and ended up with what sounds like a drunk guy off the street.

How wrong I was; the commentator, Ray Hudson, is a verifiable genius, and it was a masterstoke by the television network to sign him up. He describes goals in the most overblown, ridiculous yet fantastic fashion, coming out with gems such as 'that was a goal of orgy-astic proportions!', and later in the same game describes the Madrid defence as being 'stretched out like Spandex on Miami beaches'.  I've rounded up most of his best moments for your listening pleasure.

Barca 5-0 Madrid

For those of you that can't be bothered to watch 7 minutes highlights include: 00.5, 2.40, 3.30 (bio-rhythms like a peregrine falcon!) 4.06-4.26, 4.50, random squawk.

Ray Hudson Hates Celebrities and tennis players

More on tennis players 

Ray Hudson has an orgasm

Best of compilation (the 'sledghammer' scene that he mentions at 0.40 can be seen here. It's an odd comparison to say the least)

Another one

There are countless more gems to be dug up. He might not be very professional and grammar seems like an unnecessary distraction, but I'd take him over any other commentator currently working. Apart from Stuart Hall (A Shakespearean Ray Hudson)

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Mixing Cereals: A Beginner's Guide

Here's something a bit left-field: a guide to the misunderstood art of mixing cereals, in the format of a Q&A session.

What the fuck is mixing cereals? Some new kind of indie DJ technique?
No, you tit, it's mixing cereals, like for breakfast and stuff.

Umm...why?
Because cereals are social animals, and work better together than in isolation. Advantages are numerous. The chocolate milk properties of Coco-Pops, for instance, make most cereals more interesting. It also lets you feel less guilty about filling yourself with intensely sugary and salty cereals by tempering them with the 'healthy/ier' cereals, like Fruit 'n' Fibre, or the ones you can convince yourself aren't that unhealthy because no sugar is mentioned in the name, like Cheerios.

You're a strange, strange person.
I know, get over it.

Okay then, hit me with some of your best combinations.
Possibly the best thing about mixing cereals is that it turns that most inedible (yet annoyingly...err...energy-ific? Energetic? Energising?) of cereals, porridge, into something tolerable. I'm not saying it's the most delicious thing in the world by any means, but try sprinkling a load of Honey Nut Cornflakes on your porridge to make it less baby-pukeish (it will look like baby puke though). Most cereals are fine, but there is one massive exception: never ever EVER put Coco-Pops in porridge, it is unquestionably the worst combination ever, and mixes about as well as oil and water. If you're in it and the oil is on fire. With sharks.

Anything else?
So far it's been fairly Marxist - the base-superstructure approach to breakfeast (that was a typo, but I've decided it's better that way), if you like. But don't be afraid to add a third tier, and portions don't have to be equal. For instance Shreddies first, then Cheerios, topped with a few Frosted Wheats.

Don't people...y'know, think you're a bit special when you do this?
Like I've shat on my food, yes. But fuck other people, this is the business.

Right. Are we done now?
Yeah. Don't pretend you don't love it.

[Scene]

Your Highness: Review

In Your Highness, big fat man-child Danny McBride - part Jack Black, part the-boss-from-the-IT Crowd - stars as big fat man-child Thadeous, the younger inept, incompetent, probably incontinent brother of Fabious (James Franco), the kingdom's heroic prince. The cast is surprisingly starry, with a couple of Hollywood's finest in Natalie Portman (swoon!) and Zooey Deschanel (don't ever get old!) also adding further star-power, not to mention low-cut tops. Fantasy quest films and literary traditions are spoofed, and sometimes even used straight, good-naturedly in director David Gordon Green's successor to stoner hit Pineapple Express.

The whole film revolves around McBride's spiel, and if you don't like him it can probably be guaranteed that you will not like this film. There is nothing nuanced about this type of comedy; it relies almost entirely, somewhat bizarrely, on 'fuck' sounding funny against the typically portentious olde worlde fantasy speak that the characters spew. Is it funny? I don't think any critic is in a position to say what is and isn't funny, such are the disparities in senses of humour, so all I can give is personal experience: it works to some extent, but it does begin to wear thin. There is one particularly fantastic use of fuck though, where upon an event called 'the fuckening' occurs when two moons are aligned and if a virginal maiden (in this case Deschanel) gets ravaged then the world falls into darkness. Or something.

It's kind of strange how great the dearth of actual non-fuck-related gags is. They're almost non existent. Aside from McBride, the bad guy Leezar (an unrecognisable Justin Theroux) and the weedy squire Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker) the other characters play it very straight, most of the time. The writers seemed undecided how many laughs they wanted to give Portman and Franco; perhaps because they are not renowned for comedic roles, but whatever the reason there are definite balance issues.

Other discrepancies include the uneven parodic tone; I'm not even sure if it is in fact a parody. There are several classic fantasy elements given only minor superficial comic twists, for instance the gladiatorial arena, or the labyrinth scene. There are also other elements outside the fantasy oeuvre that are referenced; the very premise of a virginal bride and cosmic alignment is taken from the gothic horror tradition; the aforementioned labyrinth scene from Greek mythology - both seem to be going against what the film is aiming for.

I really wanted to really like Your Highness. I wanted it to be a perfectly judged pile of offensive, funny crap, and while it could be very funny, depending on your own personal taste, this only papers over the fact that it is inconsistent and sometimes a bit muddled. Moments of brilliantly quotable silliness are tempered by getting the basics wrong.



I've decided star ratings are worthless, so henceforth all reviews will just be thumbs up or thumbs down; Your Highness gets a thumbs up.


P.S sorry for not blogging for ages, I've had no interesting thoughts in a while. Easy stuff like reviews might have to fill in for more interesting things.