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.

Untitled Blog Post

In spite of the fact that I obviously have, I feel like I haven't sat down in about a month. To outward appearance, I would seem to be at work three or four days a week, then sitting around watching television the rest of the time. This is only partly accurate; my time which is not spent at work is taken up with television (specifically Doctor Who and Game of Thrones), editing the first book (slowly and painfully), researching and writing the second book (not such a great idea to be writing two books at once I know, but I had to do something to take a break from the editing), and putting together an anthology of all the halfway decent poems I've written in the last four years (out of about sixty there are about twenty good ones).

In other words, I'm suffering from self induced chronic fatigue. Still, I do occasionally get out of the house; this weekend I was at Slimelight, London's foremost pit of goths and various other alternative freaks. On Tuesday I was in screen one of the Haymarket Cineworld watching Terry Jones (and by watching, I mean he was in fact in the room) introduce a screening of Life of Brian. Not all of my fun activities involve streaming geekish television shows on the internet and then blogging about them.

Although, talking of which (SPOILERS) wasn't it splendid when Viserys Targaryen got croaked? I forgot to include him on my list of 'Game of Thrones Twats Who Need to Die'. And, even better, it was revealed that Daenerys is in fact 'The Dragon', not her brother. Like there was ever a doubt in your mind, right girls? And almost as good as that, we now suspect muchly that the hideous munchkin Joffrey Baratheon is in fact the inbred offsrping of the Lannisters, and therefore NOT the heir to the Iron Throne, which in turn goes some way to explaining why Jon Arran was bumped off at the beginning of the first episode. Those dirty Lannisters have it coming. Now; in the next episode we want to see more of everyone's favourite bastard, Jon Snow. He seems to have been forgotten about for the time being, freezing himself to death at the Wall. Along with Tyrion Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, he is one of the more intriguing characters in the series, and deserves a bit more screen time.

"You fell out of the Tall Tower, you creep!"

Warning: Nerdish Game of Thrones Update Ahead (SPOILERS)

We are now exactly halfway through the series and, although the world of Westeros is rife with juicy intrigue and general weirdness, no really significant events have yet taken place (other than, of course, Bran getting shoved out of the tower by Jaime and surviving only to suffer from amnesia, paralysis from the waist down and weird nightmares involving three eyed ravens). I'd like to see a couple of main characters - and by main I mean not henchmen, not even really important henchmen - get it in the neck. Specifically, I'd like to see the Lannisters' heads on spikes. Not Tyrion Lannister though, of course; we all need a drunken, sex-crazed, intellectual dwarf in our lives. But Jaime and Cersei, the arrogant twincestual social spider monkeys. They need to die, and they probably will; as soon as Robert Baratheon finds out his wife is sleeping with her brother, it'll be Goodnight Vienna.

And then I hope Robert gets it too, quite frankly; he's clearly gone a bit power mad in his old age, humiliating his servants and whatnot. Also, he's plotting to have Daenerys Targaryen killed, and that's just not on. Can't wait to see what Khal Drogo is going to have to say about that. Well, not so much say, as gut like a fish. I can't imagine he'll take too kindly to having his Khaleesi messed with. Daeny needs to get her arse in gear and do something with those dragon eggs. It's obvious something is going to happen with them; all those lingering shots of them bathed in significant candlelight. We've had enough of that now though - let's see some fucking dragons.

Also, when the hell is Winter going to finally Arrive? They've been talking shit about it forever, but it looks like Winter is all mouth and no trousers. Come on Winter, if you think you're hard enough.



......yeeesh. Alright, maybe I take it back...

One Does Not Simply Walk Into Winter

Here for your perusal is my dissection of a Nerdy Joke.

The highest rated comment on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43LW7a_NKMk Youtube video is possibly the most perfect example of The Nerdy Joke I have ever seen. It requires multi-faceted knowledge of epically detailed fantasy productions and their backgrounds on several levels.

One: You must be aware of both The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

Two: You must be aware that Sean Bean stars in both of these productions (playing Boromir of Gondor and Lord Eddard Stark respectively who, even accounting for the fact that they are played by the same man, bear each other a striking resemblance).
  
Three: You must have knowledge of The Lord of the Rings which is detailed enough for you to remember one of Bean's more shining moments; the line "One does not simply walk into Mordor", spoken in exceptionally gravelly tones, head in hands, at the Council of Elrond.

Four: You must have enough knowledge of the plot of Game of Thrones to know that in the land of Westeros, Winter is a pretty big deal. It's an especially big deal to Lord Eddard Stark, who seems to take delight in striding about the unforgiving wasteland that is Winterfell and intoning "Winter Is Coming" with more gravity than you'd find in an orchard on Jupiter.

Only if you comply with all four of these requirements are you enough of a geek to appreciate the full glory of this particular Nerdy Joke. A truly great Nerdy Joke should be so obviously and utterly brilliant (to those in the know) that it will have you giggling arrogantly to yourself first and then banging your head into the wall second because you know you should have thought of it first.

 

David Fincher's Zodiac

Recently bought the DVD of David Fincher's Zodiac, which is based on the true story of a serial killer who shot or stabbed his victims in and around San Francisco in the sixties and seventies. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, the film is classic Fincher, concentrating heavily on the hunt for the killer (similarly to Fincher's earlier film Se7en) and full of dark humour (similarly to Fincher's earlier film Fight Club). It also has strong overtones of neo noir or even sunshine noir, reminiscent of Chinatown. The way the investigative plot is handled is also strongly reminiscent of All the President's Men, which depicts two reporters investigating and eventually exposing the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration.

Like many serial killers, including the famously elusive Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac wrote taunting letters to the police and the press, particularly the San Francisco Chronicle. He also sent codes and ciphers, including the one above. Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) worked at the San Francisco Chronicle and became obsessed with the case, eventually writing the book that the film is based on. Like most true crime books it's a bit convoluted, and obsessively detailed; the Zodiac case, which remains unsolved and highly contested to this day, took over a lot of lives. The main cop in charge of the case was Inspector Dave Toschi, played by Ruffalo (interestingly, Clint Eastwood's character in Dirty Harry was based on Toschi; the killer Clint Eastwood hunts in the film, Scorpio, is also loosely based on the Zodiac).

Although the Zodiac was never caught, the film concentrates on the man most people, including Graysmith, believe was the Zodiac; Arthur Leigh Allen, who died in 1992. Graysmith's book, first published in the seventies while Allen was still alive, uses fake names; presumably Graysmith's second book Zodiac Unmasked which I haven't read, published in 2007 (around the same time the movie was released) goes into more specifics. Anyway, check out the movie if you're into Fincher, horror, or detective stories.