The Artist

 Saw The Artist last night: the much-worshipped, apparently Oscar-worthy, film that follows the rise and fall of fictional silent film star George Valentin in 20s Hollywoodland. It’s a beautiful film, a lovely, stylish, gently humorous look at a glamorous past world. The stars are wonderful. Bérénice Bejo as new-fangled talkies’ cheeky darling Peppy Miller is endearing and Jean Dujardin as the suave Valentin is equally engaging. Really, it’s a lovely film. I just can’t quite understand the excitement and excessive use of superlatives it has engendered in everyone. 10 Oscar noms for a film without a script? There is too much missing for this to be an outstanding film. No nuance except that held in an actor’s expression, which, granted, can sometimes be amazing in itself, but to run the whole hour and a half with nothing more than a fixed two or three characters' smiles, gurns and grins really is a little much. The references to “mugging”, vilified by the new wave of talkies cinema, have an unavoidable truth to them for me.

Plus that cute little doggy is utterly annoying. 

Prometheus + Hobbit = smiley face

I had a wee tussle with myself as these two trailers were finally released. In my world of black and white I felt I had to choose which one I liked and am looking forward to more. The Hobbit, as you know, gives the cheerful but dangerous tale of Bilbo Baggins' eventful journey with a band of dwarfs. Prometheus, meanwhile, is a precursor - not prequel - to the Alien franchise (importantly) directed by Ridley Scott, the ultimate progenitor of the series.

Tolkien's The Hobbit (and the Rings Trilogy) are some of the first books I ever read as a mere infant. They resonate deeply with me for so many reasons, not the least of which being that my parents spent some of their courtship writing love notes in Elvish to one another. Pete Jackson's LOTR trilogy was a magical, beautiful adaptation of the richly detailed world of Middle Earth, of which I loved every minute, extended editions included. The news that Jackson would be helming the brave halfling's adventures with dwarfs (not dwarves), trolls, spiders of Mirkwood and dragons - even at the expense of seeing the great and wonderful Guillermo del Toro's take on the world - was stupidly exciting. Therefore I should choose The Hobbit, shouldn't I?


Alien, on the other hand, Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece, is not only my favourite film, I often give it credit for being the film that pulled me into the world of cinema at all. I am sure it was the first adult film I saw that utterly and totally hypnotised me, I was completely submersed in the dark, dank Nostromo and those terrifying, pregnant silences. I doubt I would be quite so obsessed with film had it not been for this film, the lack of which would therefore have left me bereft of one of the greatest joys on earth. Therefore I choose Prometheus, right?

The choice was killing. Then I had a small epiphany. I don't have to choose! I can love them both equally. So there it is.

It's a man eat dog world

So Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is in trouble for declaring that he has "no objection" to eating darling little puppies. Of course he in trouble: his comments were intelligent and utterly reasonable, suitably backed-up with caveats, but also happen to go against a deeply held belief that dogs are 'pets' and sacrosanct as such.
Hugh is not claiming that he wants to, or that anyone should, eat these furry little creatures, just that there is no sensible distinction between eating a purpose-reared puppy and a purpose-reared pig. Both are intelligent enough creatures, but somehow, the thought of eating the one is abhorrent, but eating the other is utterly acceptable. In true Daily Mail style, there is even a revoltingly cute picture of a little puppy attached to the article, just to hammer home how inhuman you would have to be to eat one. You have to love their sheer gall; ever petrified their 'readers' will form their own opinion on a set of facts. Ha. Hark at me. Facts in a Daily Mail article!
Anyway...It can't be diet. True, dogs eat all kinds of shit - dog food is hardly what you would call haute cuisine - so I wouldn't necessarily want to eat anything that had been feasting on cheap gristly sludge. Pigs, on the other hand, aren't exactly known for their discerning culinary tastes either.
It is surely not about intelligence either. In most 'intelligent' animal lists dogs and pigs feature pretty consistently. Of course what most people mean by 'intelligent' in animals is actually their faculty to do as they are told, which dogs, most of the time, are pretty good at.
I am unwilling to suggest that my pathological dislike of dogs has me cheering in support of the Hugh's comments, but only because I agree whole heartedly. There can be, there is, no reasonable difference between the two.
I would eat you if you had been fed on the right things...

You may have an Oscar, but you still have to take your clothes off...

Why is it that, on the whole, women have to have their beauty weaponised by the press, but men can get away with being ugly, old, fat, sweaty, oily, hairy, vile, or just plain boring? There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of the argument. I know this.

But why does every article about an actress, even highly respectful, admiring and intelligent articles, have to be accompanied by lush semi-naked shots of them sprawled across a velvet chaise longue? Empire magazine, who generally have a good understanding of the idea that talent is unrelated to physical perfection (or not) are guilty of sexualising their female stars. Looking at 100 Empire covers, almost every single one with a female actor has her stripped naked, or at least showing some side-boob. True there may be some flexed and oiled  torsos but they really are in the minority.

I know that these are adult women and they surely have a choice in these matters, but I am sure it must be a little wearing sometimes. Yes, we respect your work and yes, we respect you as a person, not just as a woman, yes, we respect your excellent performances and recognise your discerning taste...now just take your clothes off and pout as hard as you can...

King lives

Just found something that made me snigger with excitement. I have such a huge soft spot for bad horror (good horror too) that the news that Alex Aja is looking to make Stephen King's Pet Sematary has brought an early morning smile to my face, something that doesn't happen too often. It has also made me reach for the book itself.
King is one of my guilty pleasures. I remember reading It for the first time when I was a child. On holiday with my parents and my room was next to the pool filter system, which made perfect gurgling noises through the night...terrifying...We all float...we all float...

Chilling lack of news from the east

Alarming how corrupt and shady some of the world still is. I had a good whiff of real life corruption in Thailand where I lived for a while. The local police chief would come and sit in the bar I spent a large part of my weekends in. Bottles of Johnnie Walker and soda water in front of him, right next to the gun he plucked from his holster. If the sheer proximity of the alcohol and weapon wasn’t troubling enough, he would get half way through his Johnnie red and would often gesticulate with the pistol to illustrate some particular point he was working himself up over. His evening would be filled with a stream of visitors - store owners, bar owners, taxi drivers - who would slip into the seat across from him and nod deferentially. This would be followed by a papery wad of baht being slid across the table towards Bangkok’s finest, where it would disappear into some uniformed recess with a grunt of approval. Small time corruption, really, but I got to know Thailand pretty well while I was there and it isn’t hard to recognise that the country runs on the principal that my police chief employed: you must pay for the things you want.

China, however, is just plain scary. How there can be a country - a vast, powerful, hugely populous country no less - which desires such a severe hold on its people and image that a train crash in which 40 people died has been proscribed from being reported in the news? One brave paper defied the ban with an earnest letter to a two-year old survivor of the crash, but the fact that the story has been quashed is almost unbelievable. It’s a train crash, not proof that communism doesn't work!

It also serves to highlight the vileness of NI’s transgressions, when a paper can defy governmental bans and no doubt endanger their own existence, to report the news, rather than employing hideous tactics for creating news, or re-writing news.

Not-so-friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man...

 So, the new Spidey trailer is here and, surprise surprise, he's gone dark. Not eyeliner and sweepy hair dark, but troubled and enigmatic dark. I know this obvious move has been criticised quite extensively on various sites, but I can't honestly say I mind.

I know that Spider-Man's is the light hearted comic, whereas Batman's story arcs generally have the monopoly on murky motivations and more violent characters, but if the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire trilogy represents a faithful adaptation of the character, then I am afraid I am ready for someone with a little more bite to reinterpret Spidey.

Not that I don't love Raimi - I absolutely do - but the Spider-Man films were all disappointing, with one and two being only mildly disappointing and the third rating somewhere near disastrous. In this climate of constant re-makes and re-boots, it's easy to write this off as a money-spinner: using a well-known brand to get bums on seats. But the trailer promises to unveil some of Peter Parker's past, concerning his parents, that the previous films haven't touched, so we can safely say that there will be some new material. I could do without the Twi-like intro music, but that's only a tiny moan. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy is all kinds of better than the dreary Kirsten Dunst (who wasn't Gwen, I know, but MJ was the leading lady for the origin story so is more applicable here - as a side note I do quite like Bryce DH but she was in the third one, so I am ignoring her). And don't have to even try to imagine that Andrew Garfield will be better than Maguire whose casting I always lamented, after Garfield's performance in The Social Network. The trailer finishes off with some pretty good POV climby-spidey stuff, which looks fun, although not quite as epic as the swinging through the streets that was pretty iconic in the Raimi films.

All in all, I am pretty excited about this re-boot ... not a set of words I imagine I will use very often.