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!