I am old enough to remember six of the best and  how painful they were. Trust me, seven of the worst is even more painful and the scars stay with you for a lot longer. There are many things around the internet asking for the ten best this and the ten best that. I would posit that the bad art frequently has just as much of an effect as the good stuff. Here’s my selection. Leave your choices in the comments or on facebook.

Many of these were the first time I saw a certain type of movie, or where the source material was betrayed. But let’s start with the corruption of a character… Batman Forever.

 

 

Continuing the countdown we have at number six a movie hardly anyone will remember. Except the friends who forced me to go and watch it because I have never let them forget that fact. The lesson stayed with me for the rest of my life and saved me severe pain later when the same group tried to convince me that watching Chevy Chase would be better than watching Robert De Niro. They went to see ‘Memoirs of an Invisible Man’ whilst I went to see ‘Cape Fear’. I have never let them forget that either. Here’s Blind Fury ‘starring’ Rutger Hauer.

There are two films that cannot go on this list. One is ‘Memoirs of an invisible man’ and the other is Star Trek V – I have never seen either film.

 

 

And at number 5 we have a complete betrayal of the source material… a beloved book trashed by the film. Of course the book was a Stephen King book so this is par for the course. Pet Sematary was my favourite Stephen King book and so this hurt even more.

This next one is what can happen to you if you go to a cinema trying to impress a girl. Do yourself a favour and just take her for a meal and go watch movies that you actually like with your pals instead. Or you could watch this and end up looking like The English Patient yourself. Seriously, I needed morphine more than he did by the end.

Getting into the medal positions and we have another movie from the late 80s. I have placed many excuses in the previous entries but this next one I must bear the blame for. I have no idea why I went to the cinema to see it – but I surely did regret it. The Accidental Tourist turned me into The Accidental Viewer because I have no idea why I was in a cinema on my own watching this. Actually David Barras might have been there. Yeah, let’s blame him.

And we get to the top two. The first of which is perhaps the only film I have ever physically walked out of. A collection of cliches so long that they managed to make a movie out of them. The Specialist.

And the winner is… the only film on here that I did not go to the cinema to see. Because it was never shown in a cinema. A painful film that I could not bear to watch all the way through for reasons too obvious to go into here. I Spit On Your Grave. And if I find out where the director is buried then I surely will.

That’s it. Let me know your choices or defend these if you dare.

It is unusual for me to go a month without finding some new outrage to witter on about. Might be Grenfell, or Brexit or the latest Star Wars movie. I am a man for whom moaning comes easy. There may well be internauts out there somewhat surprised, therefore, that I have not yet weighed in on this…

I speak, of course, about the heinous treatment being meted out by the Trump administration to families seeking asylum in the USA and the horrific images we have had to endure. It makes me weep for humanity, it really does.

Strange that I have not seen it utterly essential to add my small voice to the wall of outrage, raising the cacophony a smidge. But not strange really. I tend to write only when I think of something that is not being said, or an angle that is important but getting less attention.

And this clown is getting all the attention there is. He is, rightly, castigated across most channels and in any civilised country. Even amongst the varied church that makes up my roster of friends there seems (at long last) to be unanimity. No one, but no one, I know is defending this evil .

And then there are the people I do not know personally. The brain trust that represents trump supporters.

On Fox news they are trying to defend Trump so that these morons will have something to say. And they have come up with two main defences. It will stun you to know that neither is actually a defence.

1. But they are ‘nice’ camps.

Oh FFS! It doesn’t matter how nice the place is. Anywhere a child is kept away from its mother is a hell. You have placed an innocent in hell. There is no punishment worse for a child than taking away its mother. I work with kids in care and I know social workers and probation workers. Children will accept almost any conditions to stay with their family. The trauma you have caused will last a llfetime.

2. But they broke the law. If I broke the law I wouldn’t be seeing my family for a while either.

Technically correct this is the most dangerous piece of nonsense yet. The reason no one was prosecuting these people before is that it makes no bloody sense. Yes, they are committing a crime but the Trump administration doesn’t care about that and, anyway, protecting the law isn’t the point of the exercise. Imprisoning people costs more than just about any other option and does not have to happen but Trump morons cite this defence as if it is cast in stone. As if it cannot be questioned. But that’s because they are morons. The actual crime is classed as a misdemeanour; A lesser crime.

They are doing this because their base is terrified of brown people. It’s that simple.

Should you come across this defence…

Wikipedia to the rescue

Depending on the jurisdiction, examples of misdemeanors may include: petty theft, prostitution, public intoxication, simple assault, disorderly conduct, trespass, vandalism, reckless driving, discharging a firearm within city limits, possession of cannabis and in some jurisdictions first-time possession of certain other drugs, and other similar crimes.

Have a look at that list. See anything you’ve done? Or that you might even do by accident?

What is happening to these poor families is akin to you going for a night out, getting blitzed and waking up to discover that you are now in a police cell. Fair enough, you might think but then you are informed that as part of the punishment for your public intoxication you will never be able to see your family again. Ever.

A life sentence for a small infraction is cruel and unusual punishment in anyone’s book.

This has displayed the true nature of these people. It has shown the world their one defining characteristic. No, not bigotry. Not even idiocy. Although they are surely idiotic bigots. No, their defining characteristic is none of these.

It is cowardice.

Use this to your advantage. And if you find anyone that defends these actions then cut them from your life instantly. They are cowards. You neither need them or want them.

To be racist is to be weak. To blame your faults on one other person is weakness. How weak must you be, how flawed and useless, if you need to blame your limitations on a whole race?

How cowardly must you be to need to hurt her, just to make your self feel better?

That’s the real crime.

If you have not seen Solo: A Star Wars Story then please stop reading. This is a ‘review’ of Solo and a conversation but don’t blame me if you see something that spoils the movie for you. Especially since I went to all the trouble of putting this big picture here.

Don’t know if it is true or not but there might actually  be a link between Electric Man and this movie. When we were filming we had a need for lots of extras – not Ben Hur exactly but lots for a little indie movie. And amongst those extras we actually had one Lorne MacFadyen as a comic shop customer. We later heard that he actually made it down to the last two in the casting for the part of Han Solo – not sure if it is true or not but it’s a brilliant rumour – and Lorne has certainly moved on from being comic customer No 1.

Unfortunately Lorne didn’t get the role (damn sure we would be shouting louder if he had) but Alden Ehrenreich is more than acceptable.

That’s great Bolt –  but this is supposed to be a review of Solo and not yet another story about you.

Right you are, sorry. Well, first things first – is it any good?

To be honest you won’t be expecting much in the way of enthusiasm from someone who had so much to say about The Last Jedi – and, you would be wrong. I really enjoyed this movie. Because it is hardly a Star Wars movie at all.

Please forgive any errors but I write these things from memory – there are no notes, when I go to the cinema I go as a punter and I judge the films as I would any other film.

Solo plays like a western from the very start. They even tell you in the traditional text legend opener that this is a lawless time and place. But which western? You’d think that with a name like Solo it would be about a lone gunslinger – but it ain’t. This is no High Noon and it isn’t The Good, The Bad and The Ugly either (although they are all present.

Nope. This movie might be called Solo but it isn’t really about a single character and there are very good reasons for that. I’ve seen people wondering why Han Solo isn’t more of a smart arse? Why he isn’t darker?  And the reasons are built in to the original films.

There are certain aspects to the character of Han Solo from those original films that you cannot escape or change in the same way that there are parts of James Bond that you just can’t change. Whenever anyone is handed a James Bond movie to write, or anything that is part of an ongoing series there is a bible for that series. You don’t get to change things just because you want to. I hate to bring it all back to Harrison Ford but Indiana Jones isn’t Indiana Jones unless there is a hat and a whip involved at some point.

Actually Indiana Jones is a very useful example because when they went back to do his origin story in The Last Crusade they did exactly what Solo does. All the little characterising details are introduced and explained. You find out why he hates snakes, you find out where the hat came from and so on. Solo does exactly the same thing. His blaster, how he meets Chewie, how he gets the Falcon… even those little dice that I never liked in the latest main series. Solo does all of that, but with one minor handicap. Han Solo was never meant to be a lead character. He was never designed to carry a film on his own.

Throughout the original series we follow either Luke or the Droids and even when they are not the sole focus of the film Han Solo is never really alone. Leia is there, Chewie is there.

Because Han Solo is a comedy character at his core. The thing about Solo is that they were given a secondary character to work with (albeit a very famous one) and asked to turn him into a leading hero. Do they manage it?

Nearly, very nearly.

Han Solo is cocky and overconfident. He is, mostly, wrong about things  and he cannot be described as lucky. But he is handsome and charming and as Leia says…

That’s his whole character though. He is brave and he is good but he was never the prime mover, never the central hero. There is just too much comedy in him for that. The scriptwriters had to take that character – with all his flaws and his shallowness – and transform him from ‘comedy character in a supporting role’ to ‘leading role’. They had to take this character and make him both familiar and new at the same time. Not an easy task when you think about it.

And for the most part, they have managed it superbly.

The whole film has the same task. Take something old and familiar and make it new (but not too new or the fans will go mental).

See what I mean? And they solved it. There are cantina scenes, there are space chases and there are call backs to the original movie. Is it all highly original? Hell no. Wouldn’t have been allowed because if you change the character or the world too much then we don’t recognise them as the people who turn up at the start of Star Wars. Han Solo can’t be a deep thinking gazillionaire coward in this one and then turn up as the character Harrison Ford plays.

The plot has a MacGuffin after a MacGuffin that is the same thing really and I am not thinking too deeply about it. It works on its own terms and there are the usual ridiculous coincidences that seem to happen in science fiction.

Emilia Clarke we are looking at you here.

The plot is thin and proceeds in a fairly straight line but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that there are no bloody death stars, or plans for death stars. The empire gets mentioned sure and there are stormtroopers but no one is using the force and there are no lightsabers. This is not about destiny, it’s about (for the most part) money. And that is a good thing. The lower stakes allow us to invest more – to identify.

This is so much of a western they even have a train robbery with its own (forgive the terminology) red indians but they add to that a sassy feminine droid who brings not only humour but also a current attitude to equal rights. The blend is lovely.

I just rolled along with this film. Only vaguely aware of where we were in time. Sure, the maelstrom appeared and the name of the planet told me exactly what was going to happen – but I didn’t care – it was all such fun. Donald Glover does indeed steal the show and we knew what had to happen before the curtain fell. We knew that Han Solo had to end up in the millenium falcon with Chewbacca.

Job done.

Han Solo does not become a solo hero. Because he needs Chewbacca or it doesn’t work. They are a double act.

You can’t have Butch without Sundance.

 

There are two main careers when you are young. Pretty soon, however, you discover that you just don’t have the speed, physique or skill to be a centre forward. Which leaves one… rock legend. I have never shown the slightest hint of musical ability but the dreams don’t die just because they don’t tally with reality. Everyone dreams of being a famous musician don’t they?

How to write a blog post when you aren’t really allowed to talk about the thing you want to write about? Tricky.

Just spent two or three days in Oxfordshire and it really was idyllic. Like most countries England looks great in the sunshine and we were not far from Chipping Norton – home of David Cameron, Clarkson and the like. You can see why they would choose to live there. It is the very definition of the green and pleasant land.

Why was I there? No, not the advance party for the next uprising – although we did cause a fair bit of mayhem.

No, I was working with this bloke. Fish.

And it was an absolute riot. We were there to film some interviews for a documentary and hosted by Ye Olde Reine Deer Inn, Banbury. A lovely place, somewhat thrown out of whack by our arrival. Not sure why we took enough equipment to film Game of Thrones but we did.

We arrived in the centre of Banbury at around 4.30pm on the day before the shoot and decided it might not be a bad idea to just put some of the kit on location that night so we didn’t have to do it in the morning.

And Charlie, who was working the bar, couldn’t have been more helpful. We turned the Globe Room – you’ll see it when we cut the documentary, into our store room for the night. Which, given that Cromwell held court in that very room back in the day, seemed very generous of them.

This was a somewhat seminal moment. it is not often that Fish and Marillion are in the same room together and we wondered what it would be like. You’ll have to wait and see the documentary but it was fascinating to listen to them as they talked about the process of making (what turned out to be) their final album.

Clutching at Straws came after their monster hit album Misplaced Childhood and it was a very difficult process by all accounts. Many of my pals were Marillion fans (some still are) and this album is a favourite for a lot of them.

So we spent an entire day together talking about the album, the tour, the break up and what not. As I said, I can’t go into too much detail here but I will say one thing.

I was never as glad in my life to be a writer/film maker.

Life as a rock star is insane. We got a few of the stories on camera but they are just the tip of the iceberg. The cars, the drugs, the women and the drugs and the drink and the… you get the idea.

I was given a brief glimpse of the lifestyle through listening to these stories and I am frankly amazed that these people managed to survive at all. When you hear of an Amy Winehouse or a Kurt Cobain or whatever that is a tragedy but the truly astonishing thing is that it happens so rarely given the excess that goes on.

I was then given another glimpse through action. The kindly folk of the Olde Reine Deer Inn are part of a company that also own the Hook Norton Brewery. This five storey building has been there for nearly 120 years and even though it is at the end of Brewery Lane you would pass right by and never see it. They showed us around, let us try a few samples and took no offence when we bemoaned the prevalence of union jacks and a lack of saltires. Then one of these blokes did the sensible thing and went home.

I was not that bloke.

After the tour we went to dinner and having sampled some of their fine ales I decided to move on to wine. All I can say is that drinking with someone called Fish ends up just like you think it does. Or at least, that’s what I am told. I do not recall anything beyond midnight. More tales of rock excess, the occasional fan photo and a mad rambling conversation of 9/11 conspiracy theories filled out the evening. Then darkness.

Having neither watch nor phone (where they were was a mystery) I awoke the next day not knowing whether it was 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock or Thursday week. I went down for breakfast (only an hour after breakfast finished) and discovered that my appetite had been left somewhere between the wee hours and the umpteenth bottle of wine.

The actual rock star appeared a short period later – fresh as a daisy. Smiling, even. Hateful man that he is.

What had been a huge night of debauchery for me counts as a mere aperitif in the music industry it transpires.

So yeah, I had a wild time in my 20s but my complete lack of a musical ability has saved my life. You dream of being a rock star but no one tells you about the hangovers.

People say that a lot, don’t they? Or, at least, they do in Scotland.

That’s a shame.

We say it about a lot of things and mostly, I think, the phrase has lost all power now. We use it for little things.

“Oh, she didn’t get the part she wanted in the school play”

“Aw, that’s a shame”

“We missed the bus by a minute”

“She lost her job”

“Aw, that’s a shame”

You get the idea. It’s now reserved for the smaller disappointments in life. But Scottish people are a folk with the gift of nuance. And, not being the types to let a good phrase go to waste, we have a variation.

“What a wee shame”

This is specifically held for protagonists who are helpless. Children, the elderly, puppies and the like.  But even then nobody ever says things like

“200 Syrian children died in a bombing today”

“Aw, what a wee shame”

It just doesn’t fit. But it’s really close to what we need. What the phrase used to mean, as far as I know (not far) is that this should be a cause of shame. That someone should be ashamed. Here is an example.

This is Amber Rudd and she used to be the Home Secretary until she finally got ashamed enough to quit.

Amber has been systematically targeting people to get them out of the country. She’s made a habit of identifying the Windrush generation and having them thrown out of their home nation back to places they might hardly remember and have no connection to. Despite the fact that they were specifically invited to come to the the UK in the first place.

Can you imagine? Seriously, try to picture someone telling you that due to a lack of documentary evidence you would have to go back to Hungary. Or Libya? Or… anywhere else. Nothing wrong with these countries I am sure but they aren’t going to feel like home when you have spent your whole life in Huntingdon or Liverpool.

No, Lenny Henry called it out at the Stephen Lawrence funeral – this is racism, pure and simple. I can’t be sure of her motivations since we cannot prove what goes through a person’s mind but I strongly suspect that her goals are even more callous than that. Amber Rudd, for reasons of unadulterated ambition (I suspect) decided that not only would she get rid of the undesired but that she would be the best ever at doing so. Targets were placed there to be met or exceeded.

And make no mistake, those targets were (and are) a problem. Amber Rudd knew that, which is why her first instinct was to deny they existed altogether. Unfortunately for Amber that has proved to be an unsustainable strategy.

She finally decided to resign when the Guardian proved that not only were there targets, but that she knew about those targets and approved them. And I am sure there will be those who think ”That’s a shame”.

It isn’t a shame.

I am delighted she has had to resign and I think more people should be forced to. Normally you might say ‘I don’t want people to lose jobs, but…’. Except in this case, I do. It is easy to forget the real victims in these cases because they do not have access to the media on a regular basis. The Windrush generation are having their hour of fame now but how many have suffered before this: Off screen and unknown?

And let us not lose sight of what was actually done here – yes, people were forcibly removed from their home. Yes, they were separated from their families and lost access to their lives as surely as if they had been put in jail. But do not forget those targets. It seems like a detail, but it isn’t.

Terry Pratchett (genius) once wrote through one of his characters the truest thing I think I have ever read.

‘Evil starts with treating people like things’

And that is what the tories have been doing. Turning people into numbers (targets) and feeding them into the machine. Then claiming (as all evil-doers are wont to do) that it was an unfortunate outcome of the machine’s processes when people had their lives destroyed or their healthcare removed. What normally follows is a detailed discussion of how to make the machine function better in order to avoid these particular outcomes.

Which is the true evil. The inbuilt presumption that the machine needs to be there. It doesn’t. Where a process, or system, is required it should be a human one. The default position in a Windrush case should be that the individual has every right to be there. It is up to you to prove otherwise.

So, let us have no sympathy for Amber here. She lost her job but no one came to take her away and throw her out of the country. Frankly, there will be those behind the scenes who believe she has been hard done by. That she was just doing what needed to be done to appease the voters – they need to be hounded also.

I have many discussions with friends about things like this. It will surprise you, no doubt,  to discover that some of them even disagree with me on certain subjects. And yet we remain friends despite the fact that I tend to swear and rant and get overheated about things. They overlook my inadequacies and frequent mistakes because they know (I hope) that I have good intentions deep down.

Equally, I overlook many idiocies because I know they are good people at heart and sometimes I dial back (shocking, I know) to keep the peace.

Not on this.

Treating people like objects, treating people as if they are worth less than ‘proper people’ is the ultimate in evil and leads to the darkest of places. If you are an Amber, or a person who supports Amber’s actions whilst standing in the shadows then I will bay for your head from now to the end of time. I’ve written blogs about this before – this time it was was the Windrush generation, next time it could be women, or gay folks, or the disabled… I will revel in your downfall and wish you neither rest nor succour between now and that glorious day.

PS

Another individual deserving of no sympathy whatsover. You don’t get to lie for a living to protect another evil liar and then cry when someone calls you a liar.  Although, in her defence, I haven’t seen her actually complain about it

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will happily repeat lies concerning just about anyone from a podium with the white house on it – not even as humour, just as sheer selfish misdirection. So no, that’s not a shame.

 

 

 

 

 

How to feel like an idiot.

We just had the cast & crew screening of our short film ‘Stealing Second’ and it was a bloody wonderful night. We had friends and family there. We had backers, actors and crew members… there were laughs and drinks and at the end of it all … I feel totally scunnered.

That’s a particularly Scottish word for it and there is no exact translation. It’s not as serious as depression but it’s not as mild as feeling blue. Scunnered is the emotional equivalent of the flu. You are washed out but you don’t have the physical pain. Just this mental fatigue that might or might not lift. You can work, but be unable to find joy in it. You can function but there seems little purpose in doing so. Is it possible to smile whilst scunnered? Yes, but only briefly and not spontaneously.

And then you read your last blog post – which starts with images of children suffering in war zones – and you think; well aren’t I the feckin’ snowflake with the first world problems.

And then you go back to feeling scunnered.

As much as I had a brilliant night and it was great to see all my friends the screening of the film is actually the part that I enjoy least. Do I like the atmosphere? Yes, up to a point. I like the getting ready, I enjoy the anticipation. I like going to the cinema and doing the tech check and sorting the logistics and all of that. Those things are all work that doesn’t feel like work. Those things are work that feels like fun – and I guess it must be fun because you don’t make short movies or independent films for the money – that’s for damn sure.

I like checking the poster and making sure I have everything before I go to the screening. I especially like seeing the faces as they arrive. People I haven’t seen in ages, people I saw a while ago,people I saw last week. Then it’s into the auditorium and that’s the end of that. Lights go down and pleasure vanishes.

Because there’s nothing left to do. There’s not a single thing I can contrive at that moment to make the film (or the event) better.

A cast & crew screening is especially painful since you are presenting the combined efforts of the entire crew. They have gathered to see what you came up with using all their fine work and no matter what happens… they’ll say they loved it.

You can’t gain anything from a cast and crew screening except some people telling you how well you’ve done – and because you know that they would say so regardless then you can’t believe it. Thus you sit in the darkness and wait for laughs because they are the only currency you can count on – and there are never enough laughs, or they are all in the wrong place.

I know, I know… first world problems.

Truth be told the work isn’t finished in any case. It just changes into different work. Now we send it to festivals and get told no. And we show it to producers and get told no. Same with agents and commissioning editors… we go in search of a yes. And that’s fierce work as any writer will tell you. Rejections are far more common than acceptances.

It is remarkable how slow I am on the uptake though. The last film we did was Electric Man – and that was released in 2012.

Electric Man got a limited Picture House tour around the UK and it went to San Diego Comic Con International Film Festival and a variety of other festivals. It got good reviews and bad. We worked it for two years trying to get it to go.

Which was a mistake.

It had meant so much to us that we were loathe to just release it into the world. Like over-protective parents we accompanied it everywhere and so, when we could do no more, we were utterly spent. And not in a good way.

We’d taken our eye off businesses, family, health… and so, when people said ‘What’s next?’ we just laughed. It was time to take a step back – we didn’t have the heart for another fight. Which, for me at least, is a shameful thing to say.

It took me five years to get the energy back. Sure, there was other stuff on the go. Busy with the charity, busy teaching myself how to edit and shoot in this modern digital era, busy… wasting time. Busy ducking the fight.

So in 2017, having pottered about on development scripts with other people; having attended festival after festival trying to get into rooms to pitch. This went on Facebook…

Forgive the blur, it’s a small screen grab at best. But that small screen grab was a public statement of intent – Dave and me were back in the filming things business.

And now that’s done. And it moves into the realm of other work. It’s early days but it looks to be just as painful as ever. Seriously, for two days after the cast and crew we were just empty. The pattern repeats. So we said, ‘Fuck it!’ and put it in for Cannes.

Which went just as well as we expected.

The beautiful thing about being slow on the uptake is that this also applies to rejection – we aren’t stopping at Cannes.

And the other beautiful thing about repeating the mistakes of the past is that some of those mistakes are worth repeating. I don’t write just so that it can be filmed. I write because I need to fucking write. There are notebooks and notebooks full of ideas – some complete scripts, some less than half a page of scribbled nonsense I no longer understand.  As I said at the start – the screening of the film is the least pleasurable part of it. The best bit is in the early days of a project, because that is the only time where I get surprised.

I get to sit in my office and just stare into space for ages. And misty figures appear in my mind. Sometimes I can see them and other times not. Sometimes they stay and move into action and sometimes they vanish before I ever really knew who they were.

And then, as the phantom cast assemble – and give themselves names – I try to move them around. Which is thrilling when it works.

But not the best bit. The best bit is when they move on their own (this is rare) and I get to watch in the cinema of imagination. A perfect story, that has not been rendered worse by my conscious interference – a flawless  depiction, a purely conveyed message.

Which is where I am now.

Stealing Second moves on in the world – and yes, it must be helped as it goes. But even a slow fecker like me finally gets the idea. I am starting to write the next one – and because I like surprises this is not going to be in my usual genre. There are a couple of options – change genre or change medium. Go for prose or perhaps film once more… only horror this time.

A public declaration helped focus the mind last time so that’s what I am doing this time. The family are heading abroad on holiday, so I have only work and writing to occupy me. Stealing Second is gone for now… long live…

I know, I know…eventually I will have to let this one go as well. Like, I said. I’m an idiot.

 

 

I have been thinking a lot lately and not in a particularly pleasant way.  The world just seems to be full of misery and woe and Januaryness at the moment and I have been having a hard time just reconciling the fact that this is actually what life is like. You know, some nutbar walks into a school in Florida, or there’s a group of men doing terrible things to children in some northern English town or they just keep bombing in some place that is already rubble because there might be a few kids hiding in there – daring to dream that someday it will be their rubble. Even the smaller things that you shouldn’t worry about like… money. You discover that the people who are in charge are just taking it all and people are homeless and… fuck, it just depresses the shit out of me. Everything was depressing the shit out of me. Until I thought of this monkey…

See, there is an inherent understanding of what is fair or right. Which is what baffles me currently about the world in general. We seem to be losing that innate knowledge – or, at least, we are developing very different definitions of what the words mean. Which is why I believe certain things are all but inevitable.

1. Capitalism will struggle – Specifically the late capitalism we are currently undergoing. Early capitalism was all about the actual ‘capital’. Who controlled it, who owned the means of production and all of that good stuff. And just like always it started out as a one-sided affair. But a growing inequality cannot withstand education and information. There has always been inequality – you can go back to the dawn of time and find nothing but inequality. Go back as far as you like and as soon as the tribes start to get beyond a certain size then you start to get inequality. And it is always the weakest who suffer. Every time.

The growing inequality endemic to the system as it stands cannot possibly hold. In the past this was dealt with through the rise of the unions, or in some countries, the rise of the people. In this modern world that seems ever less likely to happen. Even today they are still trying to weaken unions in America.

Every day there seems to be another story demonising the poor, or calling benefit claimants ‘scroungers’. And every day the rich get richer whilst failing to understand that the actual amount of money anyone has is not the point. No one is expecting equality of finance overall. It’s a tricky concept right enough… How to explain it?

Take these idiots…  now they get paid enormous amounts of money. Really quite ridiculous amounts of cash. And that is unfair on many levels. It is unfair on the people who play for a lesser team. It is unfair on people who play in other sports that do not pay quite as well. And it is even more unfair on people who don’t play football at all.

People like these fine individuals. I don’t think you’ll find many people who think Ronaldo (of Real Madrid’s first eleven) is inherently more valuable than Rhona (of Ward 11). Quite the opposite I imagine. And were I to find myself in Ward 11 then Ronaldo is likely the last bastard I would want to see. It used to be the case that a football player was worth the same as a nurse, then it went to being a dozen nurses and now a football player can be purchased for about the same price as a hospital wing.

Bores in the pub to one side however no one is particularly moaning about how much football players earn. They have a saleable talent and they charge what the market will bear. That’s a free market economy. What tends to grind the gears though is when Rhona gets paid less than Ron. And that’s true in any walk of life. It’s not the amount – it’s the difference in amounts for the same work.

That’s what the first monkey is unhappy about. Same rocks, same work – different wages. It’s just. Not. Fair.

And even monkeys have the good common sense to stand up for themselves when they are being dealt a bad hand.

Which is why, eventually, things will change – the imbalance is too great and you can’t have a permanently imbalanced system that is sustainable.

Which is also why…

2. Feminism will rise. It has taken longer and that is shameful but this is inevitable. For centuries women have been subjugated by men and in some places lots and lots of them still are. I know you might not want to believe this but things are actually a lot better than they were. But that’s not the point. Telling the first monkey that she used to be happy with her cucumber isn’t going to calm her down now. Nor is it helpful to point out that a cucumber is a fair price for a rock and that the monkey is no worse off because someone else  is better off. You can try telling women that it used to be so much worse and they will (rightly) start throwing the cucumber back at you. Because they know what’s fair…  and better doesn’t equal fair.

Looking at unfairness and seeing it as an imbalance to the system that creates unsustainability lets you examine a lot of issues with a clear eye.

3. Independence for Scotland – can’t be denied if that’s what Scottish people want in the end. Equally, you can’t deny anyone’s right to say what they think.

4. Brexit – Not an imbalance in and of itself but it will create many, many imbalances in the short and long term. Ireland will be an imbalance; either because it has placed a stupid idea over a sensible idea (Brexit over peace) for unsustainable ideological reasons or it will be an imbalance because one part of the UK remains in Europe. Can you imagine how we Scottish monkeys are going to react when we get cucumber and Northern Ireland gets grapes? Not to mention the long term imbalances that will occur when Europe leaves us behind.

5. United States – will return to sanity as the balancing forces emerge. The whole country was predicated on the (somewhat illusory) idea that if you work hard then you can be as successful as the next person. Sure, it often had a fucked up way of doing things but in general you weren’t allowed to mess with that. Just taking stuff is frowned upon and since that is what Trump thinks he can do then he will soon see the pendulum coming the other way. They are swinging back towards the rule of law and we can all have a laugh when they finally get rid of the orange goitre in the White House.

Is it possible to get rid of unfairness ? – I want to, but I think what was depressing me was that the old adage ‘Who ever said life was fair?’ tended to be more true than I could handle. Only then did I discover that there was unfairness I could do nothing about.

I was looking for something to take my mind off all of this. Something that lets me indulge in armed assault of inanimate objects in a safe and harmless fashion. That teaches me to be calm. I picked Archery.

I am dreadful at it. Seriously bad. Until last week I was still missing the target altogether and sending the bloody arrows down the other end of the hall without troubling the buttes. Everyone is very polite and they pretend not to notice how shit I am by pretending to be busy but… I know. And it was even worse last week. I was finally getting somewhere (at least it was mildly better) but I was shooting next to this guy who was over six feet tall, younger, skinnier and with long hair. We were collecting our arrows and I noticed that bad as mine were  I could at least say they were in the circles. Nowhere near the bull most of the time but in the circles.

His weren’t.

How shallow of me to take a small pleasure in that and it serves me fucking right that I was brought low at the very next end. All his arrows were sprayed in a line and not one of them had hit the circles again. Also, he had managed to hit one of his own arrows – splitting it in two like Robin Hood or Merida.

“That’s unfortunate” I said.

“Yeah” he replied ‘Especially since I don’t aim for the circles just to avoid doing that to other people’

He wasn’t aiming for the fucking circles! There he was looking like Legolas with dark hair. Being all better at archery. And nicer. And better looking and younger! It’s just not fair.

Of course, unfairness cannot stand against information and education as I said earlier. So I know just what to do.

I could spend years and months training at archery whilst wearing high heel boots or… I think I’ll just chuck cucumbers at him instead.

In the end. When you get right down to it. Being as honest as I really can. Being right up front about it, laying it all on the table, no holds barred, just… putting it all out there… we’re all a bit shit aren’t we? Really. I mean, being honest and all. We’re just not… how shall we say it? Well, we’re just not up to snuff. Not performing like we should.

Now, now, now I’m not talking about you being too short or too white or too.. whatever. That’s not something you can control. And don’t think I’m having a go, far from it. If anyone is to blame it is me, not you.

No, I’m talking about the latest scores. We’ve all been just a little bit below par have we not? I am sure everyone is aware of the targets we set at the start of the year.

Didn’t we all promise to be better people? Lose weight? Learn a new language? Get that raise? Promotion? Wasn’t some mention made of making the world a better place?

No?

But we meant to, didn’t we? It’s on the way… okay, maybe it isn’t…

… but maybe that’s a good thing.

I wonder what the world would look like if we all managed to achieve our outlandish dreams?

Not entirely sure NASA has that much space in the capsules for all the would-be astronauts to be honest. I know that Jamie Dornan and Scarlett Johansson are time limited – there’s just no way they can have dinner with all of the people that would happily pay. So… good years are scarce. And yes,  it’s been a while but just what would one good year, one really good year, look like exactly?

In your dreams mate… in your dreams.

But isn’t that the problem?

Aren’t we all just looking a little bit beyond the horizon?

I mean, I have just had a great week. The first really good week of 2018 and I hope that I don’t live to regret this hubris but I have high hopes that 2018 will finally be a decent year. But it isn’t Kate Beckinsale… and it’s not going to be. I have had a good week because I did a music video with this 20 year old kid who is just brilliant. He grew up in care and he doesn’t have the same spoiled outlook that other kids have. I might be able to put a link to his video later but I love his attitude. I also heard that Dave and me might get to go to a war zone and film some stuff happening to kids in the right here and right now. And that is painful, but brilliant. Yes, I will sign up for that.

Do I like what is happening? No. Do I like the fact that I am doing something.. anything, hell yeah.

Hmmm… this is strange and perhaps I am too fond of gin, but… if you ignore the noise, ignore the nonsense and just keep on trusting your values… maybe this could be a good year.

Unless you’re a *Trumpet in which case fuck off.

 

 

The ‘Last’ Jedi? Doubt it.

This is a review of StarWars; The Last Jedi – there be spoilers. Also, I might take a while to get to the film itself – so consider yourself warned on all fronts.

In 2004 I was taking serious drugs. Hardcore opiates.

And I can report that Oxycodone is bloody lovely.

Of course, I had a smashed leg and broken ribs and open wounds, so I had an excuse; Car crashes will do that to you. But the oxycodone was equal to the task for the most part and I do recall being left alone in the apartment one morning, taking my pills, and then staring at a crystal vase on the window sill as the light fractured into the most beautiful rainbow stars. It was 8am.

The next thing I knew someone was bringing me lunch.

Oxycodone is that good. It can make just about anything bearable.

Except Lost.

Lost was the big hit that year. And the trailer was enough to get anyone interested. A plane is pulled apart in mid-air, people scream and then they are all stuck on an island together. Who wouldn’t want to watch that? It is a helluva hook.

But even with the oxycodone and the fact that I was immobilised on a couch I still didn’t want to watch Lost. I started watching it, sure, but gave up about half way through the second episode despite J.J. Abrams best efforts to keep me intrigued.

Why?

Because opioids or not it was abundantly clear to me that JJ was going to spend a long time bamboozling me. Ages, in fact. It seemed all too apparent that this was going to be one big long tease and that the pay off to make that tease worthwhile would be beyond the abilities of a mere TV show.

Remember, I could be taking drugs and watching light refract through a crystal vase here so the bar was set pretty high.

And now JJ is at it again with Star Wars. It isn’t as obvious as Lost was but it is the same technique.

The Last Jedi is an okay film – and my sympathies lie with JJ and Rian. This is the franchise that invented franchises (almost, but then Bond never inspired a dedicated fan base or much in the way of cosplay) and this is the one that started the merchandise model of business. Star Wars changed lives and it changed how we looked at cinema – it’s a shitload to live up to quite frankly and anyone who takes the job is on a hiding from the get go. In any other franchise you would get away with it but not Star Wars.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? This isn’t a review of a movie. It’s a review of a franchise.

Having watched it twice I can see what they are aiming for- the entire film is designed around the idea of moving on; killing off the previous heroes and bringing it back to a base line; reducing it to rubble so that it can be built again new and fresh. They aren’t getting rid of characters just for the sake of it and I suspect that even without the tragic loss of Carrie Fisher the character of Princess Leia Organa would not have survived the next episode.

The film does many things well – it raises the profile of all the female characters and plays on the theme of what a hero is. I enjoy all of that. I also enjoy the start of the movie, I enjoy the humour and I don’t mind the Porgs (little bird things) or the caretakers. The humour is very Star Wars – and I like it. It can even be found at the end when General Hux is reduced to repeating the orders of Kylo Ren but with added shouting. Even at that tense moment there is a little humorous double take from Adam Driver. I love all that.

So what the hell are you bitching about Bolt?

Well, there’s the middle of the film –  but it’s more than that, much more. The middle of the film resembles an episode of Battlestar Galactica interspersed with an episode of Firefly but with bigger budgets and less care. Finn and Rose are sent away on a mission that has no appreciable effect on the film, the plot or them. If you take it out and write a small minor scene putting the two of them together then you come out with the same result. The middle of the film is a nonsense. It sets up characters and questions that it clearly has no intention of developing or answering.

JJ Abrams and his crew are taking us down the Lost route. Or, down the prequels route if you will. I strongly suspect that lazy writing is setting up problems further down the line.

Thems the rules

When writing Science Fiction or Fantasy there is one hard and fast rule. Don’t break the fucking rules.

You can make the rules anything you like but once you do then you have to stick to them. It’s the only way your story stays believable. It’s the only way your story will carry us along and keep us watching. Once you break the rules we don’t hear the explanation. It’s just a lot of blah, blah, blah because a viewer is smart. We know when it means something and when it doesn’t. If it doesn’t mean anything then why should we watch?

And I don’t trust Abrams.

An example, you say? Okay. Snoke.

Snoke is the Supreme Leader – he has been behind events for two films. Mysterious and distant. Powerful and intelligent. He is the Emperor in all but name.

And he’s dead. Just like that.

Within thirty seconds of him explaining how his powerful mastery of the force allowed him to deceive both Rey and Kylo Ren, within twenty seconds of him explaining that Kylo Ren could never betray him in return what happens? Kylo Ren deceives and betrays him, that’s what happens. Snoke dies more easily than a monster in Jabba’s pit, or even Jabba himself come to think of it. We don’t know where he came from, we don’t know what his powers really were but it doesn’t matter now because he’s dead.

In an interview Rian Johnson stated that it was not important to him in this movie. That knowing who Snoke was did not have any impact on the film he was making.

Sorry Rian, you’re just wrong there. We need to know what the jeopardy is for the characters. We need to know what choices they are making and what struggles they are going through. Snoke was just a CGI ex-machina device at this point and now when I see him there is no sense of menace, no sense of anything at all.  The scene on Snoke’s ship, when Rey is finally brought before him is a near carbon copy of the end of Return of the Jedi. But Return of the Jedi carried actual menace. The Emperor managed to be more malevolent sitting still and talking than Snoke was with all his displays of power.

And then he dies.

I won’t go into the fight that takes place after that – it looks like a dance routine more than it does combat. Red-armoured guards who seem to be wearing something that can protect them from weapons that resemble light sabers but not from light sabers themselves. Again, more rules broken.

It goes on.

The fact that the escaping ships can be spotted using a de-cloaking scan – A fucking what? Oh, forget it. What was the point of having them able to be cloaked in the first place?

They can track us through light speed.

Can they?

But only one ship at a time. Only the lead ship can do the active tracking.

What if we blow it up?

Well that won’t work because then another ship will be the lead ship.

So, basically, the technology that allows this is the words ‘lead ship’? Do give over.

There seems to be such a penchant for astral projection in this film I am surprised that anyone even bothers to use communications channels at all and whilst I am on the subject can someone explain to me that if darkness and light are in balance then where are all the dark side force ghosts? Where the fuck is Darth Maul when Ben needs a bit of advice?

I could go on. There are so many examples of lazy writing that I could fill blog upon blog. Yes, we might get answers to some of this. Rey’s parents? Don’t know. How did Kylo Ren manage to deceive Snoke but fail to spot that Luke wasn’t even there? Dunno. It might get explained in the next one. We might find out who Snoke was. We might find out that he was the old Emperor back from his holidays. Or that he was Luke’s other uncle, or… we’re not going to are we?

Here’s my prediction – most of this just won’t get explained at all. Or it will get explained with some midichlorians type of nonsense. When a jump to light speed lets the characters escape next time then that’s what will happen – they’ll invent some kind of counter-tracking-widget-bollocks instead of actually just thinking about it.

And before you say anything I know this isn’t real. I’m not getting into the laws of physics here – not expecting it all to make perfect sense. But it has to make sense on its own terms or why the hell would we bother? They called this film the last jedi and then promptly made it clear at the end that said Jedi was not Luke Skywalker -we can’t even trust the bloody title.

It is my fervent wish that this is a long term strategy – that they are clearing the decks so a new and more coherent Star Wars can emerge. By getting rid of the legends they allow the mythos to come to the fore. The universe they have created becomes the main character. That’s my wish. I don’t think I will get it, because I don’t think they have the discipline to write those films.

At some point in the future I foresee an accumulation of bad decisions and lazy writing forcing me to abandon Star Wars which is a bloody shame – because I no longer have any excuse to get a prescription for oxycodone.