Fish Custard

 I don't have a lot of time for watching contemporary TV these days. Aware as I am that there are shows out there, many of them probably brilliant, that I 'should' be watching (The Killing, Spartacus, The Wire, etc), I have accepted that I am not superhuman. There are only so many hours in the day, and I cannot afford to spend all of them catching up on the prolific episodic outpourings of every single televison network. And so, I do what any self respecting busy young ambitious working woman would do; I prioritise.

Earlier this year, I prioritised HBO's Game of Thrones. And I mean really prioritised, seeing as I don't even have the channel that it was aired on, and was therefore forced to trawl the internet every Monday morning for one single bastard link that would lead me to a working upload of the latest episode. It was worth it however, especially seeing as the series was aired in the USA on Sunday night, but not in the UK until Monday night, so that despite not having Sky Atlantic, I would still have seen the latest episode a full day before anyone else in the UK. I may not be completely culturally au fait when it comes to the latest television shows, but when I prioritise something, I prioritise it all to shit.

I miss the days of Game of Thrones, when every week, for ten glorious weeks in a row, I would have a new excuse to massively geek out in an obsessive and preferably amusing television based manner. The television show I have most recently been prioritising (or trying to) is Doctor Who. However, the reason I have not been geeking out on the internet over this show nearly as much as I did over Game of Thrones is that the jury is still out on the second half of this series, which began four weeks ago with the admittedly wonderfully named 'Let's Kill Hitler'. Up until the episode before last, 'The Girl Who Waited', my overall opinion of Doctor Who had not suffered any major upheavals (although I didn't (and still don't) buy that Amy and Rory are willing to accept the loss of their daughter quite so easily).

However, 'The Girl Who Waited'  has had the interesting effect of finally making me dislike the Doctor. Fair enough, the Doctor always was a bit harsh, a bit mad, and a bit of a twat, but he was likably amusing and heroic, and therefore the twattish mad harshness only accentuated the amusing heroism, making him all the more intriguingly likable. But, the other week, he finally went just a tad too far over the line into Mean Bastard. Fair enough; he had to do what he did. But he didn't have to do it the way that he did it. Yes it made good television, but in the world of suspended disbelief where there are no cameras or scripts, that shit just wouldn't have flown. And on top of that, Amy seems to have been fine with what her other self was forced to endure; unless we are to assume that she gave him a right bollocking 'between episodes' as it were, and they were able to sort out their differences before the opening scene of 'The God Complex'.

The one redeeming feature of this otherwise rather uncalled for plot development is that, looking back, the fact that the Doctor essentially 'dumps' Amy and Rory at the end of 'The God Complex' makes sense when you factor in the whole heap of bullshit he got them into in the previous episode. What would have made more sense is if he had dumped them off immediately after the whole Green Anchor/Red Waterfall fiasco was all wrapped up, instead of first taking them to a  suspiciously Shining-esque hotel frequented not only by their own worst fears, but also by a fucking minotaur, for no good reason I can discern.

Anyway, that's enough of that for one evening; one can only hope that the writers return to form for the rest of the series and bring back the Doctor who wears a fez and eats fish custard.

The Skin I Live In

some SPOILERS - but not really.

Almodovar's latest, The Skin I Live In, sees him reunite with old friend Antonio Banderas to tell the tale of an obessive (and probably insane) plastic surgeon who is attempting to create a new type of artificial skin which could have saved his badly burned wife (who threw herself out of a window upon catching sight of her reflection). Despite the assertions of many critics, The Skin I Live In is very much a traditional Almodovar film. It is clear however, that he has been watching rather more Hitchcock than is healthy and has also taken his fixations with sexuality, understated violence and body horror to new levels. This film is what Almodovar would have made if somebody had handed him the script for Hitchcock's Vertigo; he has replaced the romance and passion with clinical obession, the hidden motives and manipulation with obvious coercion, and the madness with cold hard insanity. It's Almodovar's version of horror; not very scary, just plain weird.

The old Almodovar does shine through, however, mostly in the cinematography; while not as vibrantly hued as usual, you can see his classic use of colour in the frequent spots of red which jump out of the otherwise quite monochrome screen, themselves reminiscent of the open wounds and surgical cuts which adorn the form of Banderas' unwilling yet submissive guinea pig (Elena Anaya). Plus, there's the mad interlude where a guy in a tiger costume shows up - perhaps he threw that in just to reassure everyone that he hasn't abandoned his signature style (loud, colourful, and camp). The music (Alberto Iglesias) is perfect, as ever. The Big Twist that comes about half way through the film is also classic Pedro; obviously I won't give it away, although if you know Almodovar's work it is a little bit transparent, and unfortunately I managed to twig it about ten minutes too early.

If you're expecting lots of surgically based gore, you won't get it; Almodovar's violence has always been, like Haneke's, subdued, understated, and all the more real and unsettling for it. This film is a new direction for the director, something a bit different and brilliantly done. I'd advise you to go and see it before Odeon wise up to the fact that it's costing them more to screen it than they're making in ticket sales (there were four people in my screening, including me) and take it off the bill. Unfortunately there ain't much demand for Spanish 'mind-fuck' cinema at your average English cineplex. Look at it this way; you'll be in an almost completely empty screen enjoying some excellent, exquisite, thought-provoking film while the hordes of whiny brats (who will soon be back at school, thank God) are all down the corridor seeing Cowboys and Aliens or some shit.

Top Ten: Evil Children of Cinema

10. The White Ribbon: This 2009 offering from Haneke is a tense, slow burning drama set in a rural German Protestant village just prior to WW1. A series of strange and ever more tragic and horrible accidents begin to take place in the village. Attempts to uncover what is truly going on meet with confusion and failure, until it begins to be suspected that the children of the village are perpetrating the crimes in some sort of macabre punishment ritual. Not particularly frightening, but lingeringly disquieting.

9. Village of the Damned: Beware the Stare! A small English village becomes infested with demonic blond children who, through their eerie glowing eyes, manipulate and murder the adults around them. Allegedly, these children are the product of aliens who one day decided to impregnate every woman in the village with their energy beams. You'd have a job talking your way out of that one.

8. Children of the Corn: Based on a Stephen King novella, Children of the Corn centres on a small American town in which all the children come under the sway of a boy preacher; they worship an evil presence which resides in the corn fields and set about murdering every adult they can find. I'm starting to see a theme developing.

7. Night of the Living Dead: Romero's original and classic; over forty years old and still probably the best zombie movie ever made, it makes the list purely because of the scene in which a small girl, after succumbing to zombism of course, stabs her own mother to death with a garden trowel. They don't make 'em like this anymore, kids.

6. The Wicker Man: (Orginal, of course, not remake - pisses me off I even have to specify) A devout Christian policeman visits a small island in search of an allegedly missing girl called Rowan. Not only is Rowan not actually missing, but her entire 'disappearance' is part of an elaborate plot to lure the policeman into becoming a human sacrifice to the Pagan Gods worshipped by the islanders. The children of the island, raised in a world where death doesn't exist and a toad on the tongue can cure a sore throat, are creepy as hell. Check out the classroom scene for evidence; also, Rowan happily dancing and singing as the man who thought he was about to save her burns alive.

5. The Ring: A dead girl left to drown in a well who, if you watch her avant garde short film, climbs out of your television and frightens you so badly that your heart stops and your face instantly rots in the most horrifying way imaginable. And if that wasn't bad enough, she rings you up to let you know this is going to happen a week in advance. At least you'd have time to get the house nice.

4. The Exorcist: possessed by a demon claiming to be the Devil Himself, twelve year old Reagan has a wild time of it peeing on her mother's expensive carpet, murdering her mother's friends, taunting priests with 'your mum' jokes and doing unspeakable things with crucifixes. They wouldn't get away with this one today. Well, they probably would, but nobody would have the nerve to try. Has to be seen to be believed.

3. Rosemary's Baby: in third place, one of the greatest directors of our time (leaving aside the whole rapist thing) Roman Polanski, and the Devil's Own Son Adrian/Andy Woodhouse. Rosemary's (Mia Farrow) husband sells her body to the devil without her prior knowledge or approval in order to further his acting career. She unknowingly carries and gives birth to the demon child under the ministrations of a coven of elderly Satanists who happen to congregate in her block of flats. Never trust anyone over sixty who tries to get friendly with you; they're almost certainly after your fertile uterus to house the Anti-Christ.

2. The Omen: The Anti-Christ takes both third and second place; Damien Thorne, the son of the Devil, born of a jackal, terrorises Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, along with diverse others. Some tricks he gets up to: ramming into his mother on his toy bike so that she falls off a balcony, going apeshit when they try to take him into a church, and driving his nanny to throw herself out of a window with a rope around her neck. Eventually Peck makes up his mind to kill Damien, but loses his nerve in the horribly heart wrenching "no daddy, no!" scene, and then himself dies in a hail of police bullets. Damien ends the film at his own parents' funeral, smiling evilly into the camera as he clutches the hand of the US President.

1. The Shining: In first place, the Grady Twins; axed to death by their father after he is driven mad by the malevolent presence which lurks within the Overlook Hotel, the twins decide to hang around for a while so that they can stand in corridors blocking the way and inviting unsuspecting young boys to come and play with them, forever and ever and ever...

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to take lots of guns...



So, it's yet another 'let's find a cure for Alzheimer's by performing experiments on animals until they get smart enough to open their cages and take sweet revenge on proud humanity' movie. In other words, it's Deep Blue Sea with apes instead of sharks. All in all, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an intriguing and visually pretty wonderful re-imagining of how the apes started to take over prior to the main Planet of the Apes fiasco. But, I'm still going to pretend it was never made. If it had been just a tad more believable, it would have been a significantly better film.

The actors do their best with what they've got, but frankly, what they've got isn't all that much. Tom Felton, aka Draco Malfoy, pretty much appears to be playing an American version of his most famous role, only taking his wizard angst out on apes instead of Gryffindors. Andy Serkis, as lead Apelord Caesar, reprises his role as CGI creature of the year - if you thought it wasn't possible to be typecast as an effect, think again - although, you won't hear Serkis complaining, seeing as in his pre-LOTR days the highlight of his career was a bit part in a little known Poliakoff drama. James Franco is not up to his usual standard, although you can see he really is trying to be; he just doesn't quite get there. In the end, the CGI itself steals the show.

There are a few nice allusions to the classic 1970s original, including the obligatory 'get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape', but unfortunately the film makes itself just a shade too ridiculous, especially with the whole 'Caesar learning to talk' thing which, as Sophie Rickard pointed out, would really be quite impossible on any level within the context of the film. The drug given to these apes in order to make them super-intelligent is neurologically based, and therefore could not possibly cause vocal chords to develop in such a way that would allow an ape to speak. However, you could argue that because Caesar was not in fact given the drug but was born with it as part of his genetic make-up after it had been given to his mother, then he could feasibly have developed the physical capability of speech, but frankly that's a massive stretch, and rather more geeky and obsessive than this film deserves considering its many flaws.

Plus, the ending is mawkish and anti-climactic. The only reason to go and see this film is if you're in the mood to see apes wrecking up San Francisco and beating the shit out of humans during a pitched battle on Golden Gate Bridge. Fairly amusing and interesting to look at, but you'll only ever need to see it once.

Bloody Footprints

(Another re-post from my old blog, continuing the fashion/film theme. Apologies for the changes in font/size, but I'm far too busy and important to type it all out again so that it looks pretty)

‘Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up bloody footprints.’ – Alfred Hitchcock

I’ve always been obsessed with films, style, and being blonde, so it’s no wonder really that I fell into that wide chasm of cinema created by Alfred Hitchcock. I say chasm not because I dislike Hitchcock films, quite the opposite in fact, but because once you get sucked into a Hitchcock binge it’s very difficult to get back out again; it’s far easier to just keep going until you emerge from the other side, a little bloodied up and probably with your shoes missing and your stockings torn. Serial killers, suicides, fake suicides, murders, affairs, and demonic birds; yes, Hitchcock has it all. He is one of ‘those’ directors, an auteur, who seems to leave almost too much of himself in his films, until it becomes vaguely embarrassing to watch them, as though you were reading his diary with the complete works of Freud sitting open next to you.

His use and abuse of blonde women is extensive and complex. Several theories about this have been suggested, some by Hitchcock himself, such as his claim that audiences will be less suspicious of a blonde, having been trained by cinematic tradition to see the blonde as the innocent, virginal heroine, or just that their colouring worked better on black and white film. Hitchcock obviously wouldn’t have made a tradition out of having blondes in his films if he didn’t feel some attraction to them, but it is also obvious that this is a very strange attraction. On some level, Hitchcock seems to truly hate his blondes. In Rear Window, he has Grace Kelly climb into the apartment of a suspected murderer and nearly get murdered herself for her trouble; in Psycho he brutally stabs Janet Leigh to death in the shower, stuffs her body in the trunk of car and sinks it into a swamp; he nearly blinded poor ‘Tippi’ Hedren for real in The Birds, and in Vertigo he not only subjects Kim Novak to the dangerously obsessive whims of Jimmy Stewart, who at one point forces her to bleach her hair, but also throws her out of a church belfry...twice. When it comes to perpetuating hatred of blondes, or what I have come to term ‘blondism’, Al Hitchcock ranks above even a certain Barbara Millicent Roberts. Then again, even Barbie has been sold in a stylish green skirt suit with three plastic crows artfully stuck to her person, so it seems as if there is no end to the abuse.

But this isn’t another plea for some respite from the ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, the car horns or the disdaining looks, or even the kitchen knives. Let’s face it, it isn’t just blondes who are often on the receiving end of violence or ‘light hearted’ sexual abuse, it is in fact women in general. But for some reason, in the world of the cinema it always seems to be the blondes that get given the fuzzy end of the lollipop, to put it mildly. Apart from the Hitchcock canon, whose shades range from Janet Leigh’s mussed dirty blonde crop to Kim Novak’s ‘lavender’ iciness, blonde women and their cinematographic hair have always been a movie mainstay. Jean Harlow, Brigitte Bardot, Marlene Dietrich – the list is almost endless. But the true home of the blonde, as Hitchcock knew, was in the horror film. And, in true Hitchcock style, the characters they play are usually evil, weird, brutally done-in and abused, or all three together. Mia Farrow’s pretty blonde-bobbed innocent in Rosemary’s Baby is subject to the evil machinations of a satanic cult, eventually giving birth to the son of the devil. Talking of Satan’s spawn, how could we forget poor Lee Remick in The Omen, unknowingly bringing up the son of Satan in the form of five year old Damian, who viciously scratches her face when she tries to take him into a church, and drives his toy bike sadistically into a chair she is standing on so that she falls over a balcony, eventually plunging to her grisly death from a high window. Damian’s dark haired shenanigans don’t stop there; in the second instalment of the Omen trilogy he murders his blonde best friend and cousin using his psychic powers. It is interesting to note also that the young Harvey Stevens, cast as Damian in the first film, had his naturally blonde hair dyed black for the role. In eerie thriller Don’t Look Now, blonde Julie Christie loses her even blonder daughter in a drowning accident, before running into her lookalike in Venice, who, in what must be one of cinema’s strangest ever surprise endings, turns out to be a sadistic serial killing dwarf who then slashes open her husband’s (Donald Sutherland's) throat. Britt Ekland is also worth mentioning here, for her creepy performance as Willow MacGregor in Anthony Shaffer’s The Wicker Man, helping to lure to Edward Woodward’s Christian policeman to his fiery death. Even the queen of blondes herself, Marilyn Monroe, was not totally exempt from the blonde Curse; chillingly murdered in Niagara, emotionally ruined in The Misfits, and hovering dangerously near the borders of insanity in Don’t Bother To Knock.

The continuing fascination with the blonde, in my opinion, is mostly to with their style. They may have committed suicide, been insane, evil, murderers, murdered, raped, and attacked by mad birds, but they looked damn cool while they were doing it. Kim Novak and Grace Kelly are my two personal favourites; Novak’s iconic grey suit in Vertigo, along with her long white coat and black gloves she wears when she throws herself into San Francisco Bay are the height of melancholy elegance. The first time we see Grace Kelly in Rear Window she looks exactly like Disney’s Cinderella dressed for the ball, and is immaculate in every scene, even when shinning up a fire escape (and let’s not forget that in the end Kelly managed to achieve the difficult task of becoming a real princess). Marilyn Monroe always looks stunning, whether she’s singing, being murdered or having a nervous breakdown, and even as Lee Remick falls off a balcony, her hair and makeup are perfect, her outfit matching flawlessly. They continue to be abused in spite of their fashion sense. As we all know, fear of a minority often equates with hatred of it. You might well ask what there is to fear from a blonde, but we can be pretty creepy when we want to – I know that when I was a child I certainly looked uncannily like an extra from Village of the Damned, especially in photos with a tendency towards red eye. It seems that blondes in the cinema are forever destined to be portrayed as either virgins or whores, both states being of course, equally punishable.

The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

(This is a re-post from my old blog, a small homage to Hunter S Thompson I wrote a couple of years ago. Enjoy).

The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

“Oh God,” I said, as we rounded the corner onto Sidwell Street and glimpsed the blue glow of the Odeon, “I thought this movie came out a week ago?”

“It would appear not,” murmured Sophie Rickard, the erstwhile companion of almost all my cinematic forays in the city of Exeter.

“What in the hell is this? Has there been some kind of accident? Or a fire, perhaps?” I continued incredulously, as we began to attempt to squeeze our way through the noxious rabble that had that fateful day crawled out of the proverbial woodwork in order to bear witness to the latest instalment of the Twilight Saga, New Moon. We later discovered that what we had assumed would be a quiet, almost deserted showing of said film was in fact, due to a heinous release date fuck up on our own part, taking place on only the second day after it had been released.

Having kicked, scratched and bitten our way to the desk, during which time Sophie was forced to wrench herself from the grip of a weeping teenage girl who had somehow mistaken her for Ashley Greene, and I knocked another off her feet with a swift swipe to the ankles, we managed to obtain tickets. These were of course, by that time in the evening, worth more than their weight in gold, and we were forced to stuff them into our shoes and pretend to be hysterical in order to get back through the crowd, out the front door of the cinema, and into the queue, which by then stretched half way along the street.

As we looked about us at the various cliques of whispering, trembling teenagers with wide, shimmering eyes and palpably damp skin, we began to concoct ways in which we would explain our presence there should any of our peer group happen to pass by. We settled on the rather improbable story of holding a place in the line for our younger sisters. We got around the fact that neither of us in fact have younger sisters by arranging that if an acquaintance of Sophie’s should pass by, the younger sister we were waiting for would be mine, and vice versa. However, if someone we both knew had showed up, we would have been screwed.

After waiting about another half hour, during which the front section of the queue attempted to mount some sort of botched attempt at surging the doors, and were promptly chastened with water cannons, we finally made it into the cinema. The few hours that followed are difficult to describe, especially considering that my tortured psyche made a very valiant attempt to black them out during the next few days, which I mostly spent, according to reliable sources, giggling in my bedroom. I recall only a few significant happenings, such as the constant gasps of disbelief and delight which occurred whenever a main character took his shirt off, or walked in slow motion, or indeed, did pretty much anything. Then there was the girl a few rows behind us who seemed to be suffering some kind of fit of sobbing hysteria for the entire length of the film (seriously). And of course, the gasping, screaming, crying, hugging and general ripping up of fake velvet cushions which occurred following the last line of the movie, “Marry me, Bella”.

Sophie and I leaned against each other for support as we were propelled back through the cinema, down the staircase and out into the street, where we finally managed to make a break fro it when we saw a gap in the scrum, and run back around the corner to our house, where we dead bolted the door and kept watch at the front windows, broken whiskey bottles at the ready, until the last few stragglers had been rounded up by the vigilante groups the Mayor had dispatched for this purpose. Needless to say, never again will we get caught out in the Odeon on the the opening weekend of a Twilight movie - at least not without a can of mace and a couple of pointy sticks.

In the immortal words of the great River Song, "SPOILERS!"

I got told off the other day for putting too many GOT spoilers in one of my recent posts, so here is my big disclaimer: SPOILERS! lots of them! Big ones! Ones you won't want to read if you haven't seen/read Game of Thrones! That's the best I can do, you'll just have to restrain yourself and stop reading at the end of this sentence; this one right here.

Ladies and gentlemen; we have Dragons! Three of them, to be precise. Three cute baby Dragons who will no doubt grow up to be the scourge of Westeros. It'll be interesting to see what Daenerys does with them - I never had her pegged as the ambitious type, but what else is she going to do except use them to burn the Lannisters into the ground? They did murder her father after all, even if her father was himself a murdering psycho. Tyrion was my favourite character, but now Daeny has definitely knocked him off the top spot - she's blonde, she's invulnerable to fire and now she has pet Dragons to boot. Best. Character. Ever. (Also, I think that now Drogo has unfortunately bitten the dust, Ser Jorah and Daeny should get together. It could work).

Apart from the excitement of the Dragon babies, the final episode of the first series had lots of stuff going for it - the aftermath of Ned Stark's execution was brilliantly done, especially the close up of the broadsword which some clever props person had covered with wonderfully sticky blood and clumps of hair; it's the little details that make me happy. Sansa, who I never really had much time for, also looks like she might be about to become interesting. I predict she will eventually kill Joffrey, or herself, or perhaps both at the same time. The rest of the Starks and their henchmen, obviously furious over the death of their fearless leader, are now massing in the North and spoiling for what is probably going to be a very big fight. And, good for them, they already have Jaime Lannister in chains (paving the way for another of the episode's best moments - Cat socking him round the earhole with a big fuck-off rock).

I also liked that John Snow made the decision to stay at the wall and fight with his new black-clad brothers rather than ride south to avenge his father; definitely the right decision. Rob is shaping up to be a very capable king of the North, and John, who gets more interesting by the minute, will do much better heading North of the wall and tackling the White Walkers, whatever the hell they will turn out to be. The next series isn't coming out until this time next year, which begs the question what the hell are we going to do with ourselves until then. Me, I'm going to get to work on finding and digging up some fossilized dragon eggs.