Tds4a Today

Because it's So Much FUN, ROGER

2009-10-20T01:01:00.000-07:00

I’m back! I’m back from holiday! ...You didn’t know I was on holiday? I’ve been gone for MONTHS.

*stares you down evilly*

Yeah, it’s been a long, long time, and there’s a few reasons for that. The first is that I’m not writing much at all anymore; too busy watching films, thinking about films, etc. This course has certainly invigorated me on that front. I’m still reading, but very little (currently breezing through Salman Rushdie’s Fury, which is wonderful). My writing is essentially limited to reviews/editorials/whatever for Projectorheads and nothing else.

I’ve been so bad with this blog (but then, I’m always inconsistent with it. If you’ve [incredibly] read this far, you’ll know that by now), and the main, main, reason, is simple; I’m not depressed or unhappy at all. In fact, I think this has been one of the best years of my life, or at least the best for a while. I’m stuck in a routine that is glorious to be stuck in. And man, how the hell did I ever live without being a film fan? It seems inexplicable to me now. I realise that Liam and I used to talk projects and whatever, but whenever I picture us pre-film, I just see the two of us sitting around twiddling our thumbs for hours on end before saying “Okay, seeya later!!!!!” and leaving.

(On the blog front, after months of writing an uber-long entry, Jack Bz posted his latest blog. It’s very interesting, and very wordy for him. As he will be the first to point out, it’s basically the length of a normal blog for me, but it’s still great. Still, the fact that he posted it means that I am forced, as a friend, to immediately write a longer one just to render months of Bz’s life worthless. It’s a friendly thing to do, trust me)

On the film thing; I just want to make a fairly extended addendum to a previous blog entry. Last year – in fact, October of last year – in fact, Saturday the 4th of October, 2008 – in fa-no, stop there. Point is, I made a post that “examined” Empire’s top 500 film list, and was fairly scathing throughout. I read through this again recently and shivered with horror at how presumptuous and altogether unknowledgeable it is. I was basically making all these points about films that were on the list, when there was, like, half of the list that was totally unknown to me. I wasn’t qualified to make any judgments. It’s a stupid post, and I removed it from my blog. I don’t usually do that, because I feel – as is the case with this Journal – that if I make a stupid remark in the past, I shouldn’t erase it because I can use it as a reminder of my own folly and growing up. But this one was just too painful to leave online.

It’s still in this blog, though.

I was woefully unknowledgeable about foreign film in particular; as evidenced by this list of films I’d never heard of at the time, most of which are foreign:

Amores perros
Sideways
Brick
The Fountain
Flesh
Santa Sagre
Glengarry Glen Ross
Snatch
Ikiru
Ten
Dog Day Afternoon
A Man Escaped
Do the Right Thing
Greed
The Shop Around the Corner
Cache
Jules et Jim
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Lives of Others
Suspiria
Midnight Cowboy
The Red Balloon
La Belle el la Bete
Rocco and his Brothers
Rashomon (Oh god, I made a Pokemon joke here. Oh god)
L‘Avventura
Secrets and Lies
Ran
The Maltese Falcon
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Leopard
Black Narcissus
Festen
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
Songs from the Second Floor
Le Samourai
Viridiana
The French Connection
Z
Double Indemnity
Breathless
A Woman Under the Influence
Los Olvidados
The Battle of Algiers
Fitzcarraldo
Touch of Evil
Yojimbo (I actually made a horrible remark here about wondering if the rest of the list was going to have more European and Eastern films. This despite the fact that I hadn’t heard of Yojimbo. I mean, what the hell? I made a Pokemon joke on Rashomon, and then did this with Yojimbo?)
The Spirit of the Beehive
The Night of the Hunter
His Girl Friday
La Dolce Vita
8 ½
On the Waterfront
The 400 Blows
Andrei Rublev
The Apartment

Oh god, that list is horrible. I didn’t know Godard, or Truffaut, or Fellini, or Tarkovsky (apart from Solaris), or Herzog, or Cassavetes, or Wilder, or Bunuel (beyond Un Chien Andalou), or Vinterberg, or Tati, or Kurosawa (beyond Seven Samurai), or Haneke, or Kiarostami, or Spike Lee, or Mike Leigh, or Argento, or Visconti, or Roy Andersson, or anyone from the Czech New Wave, or that Touch of Evil was a Welles film.

And even then, I fucked up by:

Assuming The Third Man was an Orson Welles film
Stating that Napoleon was the first silent film on the list, when it manifestly wasn’t

Jesus Christ, if I saw someone do this now, I’d pounce all over them in rage. Still, I’ve learned by my lesson. Not only do I not post about films beyond Projectorheads, but I don’t make Top 5s of books, albums or games anymore. I simply don’t know enough to be able to do so, I think. Liking Rushdie and Dostoevsky is a nothing opinion.

Oh, and I also – and this was in fact the main, main reason I took it down (I should keep this “main, main” thing up, it’s catchy) – intimated that The Godfather didn’t deserve the top spot because it was too obvious a pick. What a stupid, stupid thing to say. I hate myself for saying it. I hadn’t even seen The Godfather then. Hell, I still haven’t seen it*, but I wouldn’t make a claim like that now. In fact, I’ve no idea why I said that in the first place. I honestly can’t even remember what I was thinking.

*Future note: I have seen The Godfather, now!

(...scrolling through this Journal sometimes reaps the most horrible results. Did I really say that Napoleon Dynamite had one of my favourite title sequences ever? Dear lord)

The funny thing about all this is that, as I already said, I’d basically online-bully someone now for making such stupid assumptions. I mean, okay, most people on the internet don’t bag The Godfather for no reason without having seen it (ulp), but certainly there’s a growing and prevalent mindless majority of sorts who hate anything non-obvious-classic and non-Tarantino. The kind of people that label you as a pretentious film snob purely for having seen and enjoyed a Godard film. The kind of people that assume that, if they and possibly their friends haven’t heard of a film, then said film is obscure, not liked by many people at all, and purely something passed around snobby art circles for a bout de semen. In other words, for chronic, groupie masturbation.

(“a bout de semen” actually doesn’t make any sense at all, I just really liked the phrasing of it)

It’s an astonishingly narrow-minded view, and one that assumes without having much evidence. Certainly there are film snobs out there, just as, by the same token, there are – for want of a better term – film slobs out there (the type of people who will rent something like The Fast and the Furious and think it’s cool cos, y’know, it has some cars and women in it. Goddammit, I like cars and women too, but would you really watch an hour-and-a-half [I presume] film just for that? I mean, really?). Most people who actually watch films – i.e. deliberately seek out films to watch – fall between these two extremes. Arguably film slobs shouldn’t even have the word “film” attached to their catchy-and-new-moniker (I bet someone else has already thought of it, but I’m going to pretend only I have because I will look minutely cooler), since film isn’t an issue for them in the slightest. It’s something they indulge in whenever they feel like it, often with friends, just for the fun of it. Ain’t nothing wrong with this; everyone has their just-for-fun activities that they share with other people*. In between watching film and generally attempting to educate/culture myself, I spend a lot of my free time committing random, senseless violence in Doom and Grand Theft Auto, just because, well, I can. Because it’s fun.

*Those with friends, that is. I’m thinking of ex-Ugmoer “Ice the Frosty Cat” (yes, he called himself this), who once argued with me by saying that multiplayer games are worthless based on the fact that he didn’t have anyone to play them with.

However, while a lot of people I know who don’t really care about film are happy to acknowledge that they probably don’t watch the greatest stuff ever (equally, I’m guilty of not watching the best television shows ever, particularly of the current day – my favourite show is the wildly inconsistent Doctor Who, for god’s sake – and I’m even more guilty of, despite my firmly held belief that videogames are art, playing nothing more challenging than Doom when bored), there are those that react angrily, so angrily that they seem almost violent, to being told this. Or in fact, not even told this, because it’s rare that film-lovers will seek out someone and say, “Hey you, you know that film you enjoy? Well, it’s shit.” Usually it’s in fact a perceived insult. Witness Roger Ebert’s recent bashing at the hands of crazed fanboys after he gave a bad review to Transformers 2. They accused him of not being able to enjoy films and being a pseudo-intellectual snob, they said that whilst it may not be Casablanca or Citizen Kane it’s an enjoyable film, they said that he was old and out of touch.

Let’s just look at this absolutely clearly;

1) Roger Ebert can’t enjoy films.
This is a statement you can only possibly make if the only review of Roger Ebert’s you’ve ever read is indeed his Transformers 2 review. Leaving aside the fact that a lot of the “classic” films are often incredibly enjoyable anyway (I’ll get back to this in a second), this is the guy who gave Knowing a good review, in fact four stars (which equates to “great movie”), when everyone else trashed it. This is the guy who did a DVD commentary for Dark City along with obvious candidates like Citizen Kane. Hell, this is the guy that not only gave thumbs-up to both Bill-Murray-voiced Garfield films, but actually really liked the first Transformers film.

But yes, the enjoyability of older/foreign films. There’s this definite assumption that foreign films and older films are always unable to be enjoyed, only able to be analysed and looked at intellectually. This is bullshit and based on no discernable evidence that I can see. Anything by Francois Truffaut is incredibly enjoyable – Jules et Jim is hilarious, heart-warming and very-quickly-cut, and his others are too – and critic-favourite Hitchcock specialised in thrillers, in deliberately thinking of his audience the whole time (without, it must be said, assuming his audience was dumb). Citizen Kane is indeed the critics’ darling, and ignoring whether it’s the greatest film or not, it genuinely is actually really enjoyable. I mean that sincerely; I was entertained throughout. The idea that “art films” (a misnomer that is generally applied to anything foreign or non-mainstream/old; an art film is literally a film made by an artist. It’s Andy Warhol filming the Empire State Building for 24 hours, not Fellini making a film about a comedic clown girl falling in love with her well-built mentor [La Strada]) are always about “the meaning of life” and are incomprehensible because of that is one that is totally, totally incorrect. Apart from “the meaning of life” being a very, very vague term – it could refer to so many things – and apart from the fact that every human being thinks about the meaning of life from time to time – who the hell doesn’t? It’s in our nature to question these things. Otherwise we’d be animals, or worse, Christian* – I honestly can’t think of that many directors I’ve watched that have sparked my brain intellectually rather than enjoyably or emotionally. I can think of three off the top of my head; Andrei Tarkovsky, Bela Tarr, and Ingmar Bergman (and even Bergman’s much more fun than he’s often painted). That’s 3 directors out of the 230-ish films I’ve watched from 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so far. 3.

*Joke! It’s a joke! I swear!

2) It may not be Casablanca or Citizen Kane but it’s an enjoyable film.
This is one of those weird defences that come about whenever someone is arguing with someone knowledgeable about film. Casablanca and Citizen Kane are two of the most well-known “classic” movies, so they’re the most often mentioned. Leaving aside that both are very enjoyable – Casablanca possibly more so (in fact, a lot of its appeal purely comes from its enjoyability, rather than any dissection you could do of it [it’s not that complex a film at all, in all honesty]) – this is a comparison that makes no sense, akin to saying that The Da Vinci Code may not be War and Peace or Crime and Punishment, but it’s more enjoyable than those two. The Da Vinci Code is nothing like those two books; equally, Transformers 2 is nothing like those two films. No critic watches a film about giant robots fighting and thinks, “Man, you know what’s better than this? Casablanca!” There’s no similarity in performances, in context, in genre, in audience, in anything.

The best comparison one could make should be very obvious; Steven Spielberg’s the goddamned producer of the film, so we should be comparing Transformers 2 with his blockbusters, or George Lucas’. So let’s do that. Is Transformers 2 as good as Star Wars? Is it as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark? Has anything Michael Bay’s made been as good as even a lower-tier Spielberg?

I’m not going to answer those questions; I’m just pointing out that those are the questions that should be being asked. You make quality comparisons between products that are similar, not between products that are so wildly different that the comparisons are totally meaningless.

3) Roger Ebert is old and out of touch.
Hahahaha. Hahahahahahaha. This is inevitably the fate, in the internet age, of anyone over the age of, ooh, 35. I’ve seen posters on Something Awful being called “old” for being 38. 38! They’re being called old by the same people who would hate the youth-is-best attitude that the media is constantly shoving in our faces. The younger, the better. Since when has that ever, ever been true? Youth is not better or worse than old age.

And let’s be honest; out of touch? This is a man who watches at least one film a day, who has a back-knowledge of thousands of films, vs. some dudes who like Megan Fox and robots, for who Transformers 2 is basically the only thing they’ll watch all year. This is a man who, as I’ve already pointed out, gives favourable reviews all the time to enjoyable kiddy films. Does Ebert look down on Pixar? Not in the slightest. When Ebert prefers the catalogue of a self-proclaimed children’s animation studio to a supposedly-for-grown-ups film like Transformers 2, you know it’s not snobbery talking. It’s honesty. It suggests something very, very simple; that there’s something very, very wrong with Bay’s films.

Think about this for a second more. Why is Pixar so popular amongst audiences and critics? Why is Transformers 2 only popular amongst (relatively selective) audiences? The answer is simple. Michael Bay is a grown man making an M-rated film with humping jokes, and is supposedly appealing to the child inside him. Pixar are grown men and women making G and PG-rated films that, by contrast, most likely appeal to the adult within children. Certainly Up’s opening is a saddening, depressing opening for a child, and all the better for it. But that’s not really the dichotomy between the two; the truth is that Bay isn’t making films for the child within us, because no child would give a shit about Megan Fox or Shia LeBeouf. No child gives a shit about the plot in general; I cared about emotion and exciting, imaginative images as a child, not plot. I liked Jurassic Park because it had dinosaurs in it, and I was a dinosaur nerd. I didn’t care if Laura Dern was attractive or not. No, Bay isn’t a child in a man’s body; he’s resolutely stuck in his teenage years. He’s stuck in his nostalgic teenage years, for that matter; the kind of guy who reminisces over their favourite things as a child and seeks them out again just to relive the fun. The kind of guy who knows it’s probably very shitty, but hey, big screen dolls, tits and explosions*! The kind of guy who would watch Transformers 2; who would pay money to watch it ironically. I’d say half of its audience is probably those who genuinely really love the film, and half is those who watch it because it’s hilarious to watch bad films.

Seriously, if you’re going to watch a bad film that’s hilarious, for god’s sake, watch The Room. David Cross loves it, and he’s awesome.

*I’m way too much of a Bowie fan these days.

The weirdest thing, though, is that this backlash happened at all. Think about it; Roger Ebert was doing his job by saying that he thought it wasn’t a good film. He’s supposed to give his honest opinion on things. How on earth did so many people think he was insulting their intelligence by doing this? He didn’t even say anything about the obvious dumbness of the film, just that the editing made the action difficult to follow and that there was nothing interesting in it. This is hardly a nasty criticism. It doesn’t even imply anything about the audience, apart from perhaps that they enjoy not knowing what the hell’s going on with such rapid-fire editing.

So why do people react so badly to criticism of such films? It reminds me of an IMDB user who said that critics suck because they like bad movies and hate the movies he likes. He listed Gremlins 2 as an example of a film that they disliked. I mean, what does he expect? It’s ludicruous.

Imagine for a moment that, like me, your diet tends to consist of McDonalds for lunch (hey, the people reading this are probably my age. This probably does apply to them. Stereotyping ahoy!). Imagine that you enjoy McDonalds, but know that it’s not really very good.

Now imagine something different; imagine that you enjoyed McDonalds so much that you genuinely thought it was one of the best sources of food in the world. Now imagine meeting a food critic, or a chef – someone, at least, who genuinely gives a shit about food – and arguing with them when they make a statement about McDonalds being fast-food, near-nothing foodstuff. Would you argue back? Would you claim that they were pretentious food lovers who snobbishly denied McDonalds, and only pretended that they like all these “obscure” foods because they want to look cool to other critics?

Ridiculous. For a start, if all critics genuinely didn’t like these “obscure” foods, they wouldn’t bother trying to look cool in front of other critics. Because if none of them like it, then why would they collectively say they do?

More than that, though, it’s just a stupid attitude to have. Everyone’s so self-absorbed these days, so much so that they assume the things they enjoy are the epitome of whatever those things are in their selective fields. To assume that McDonalds makes the best food ever is ridiculous, akin to thinking only Hollywood makes good films*. If you don’t enjoy the more “complex”/“obscure” stuff, then fine, keep on don’t-ing. However, accusing others of effectively lying about their tastes because it doesn’t fit with yours is just utterly stupid.

*McDonalds really is the most apt analogy for Hollywood; greedy money-loving capitalist pieces of shit that have the decency to have a certain amount of quality control, but only because they don’t want to alienate their consumers in the slightest. This also means that “indie cinema” is the equivalent of McDonalds’ “health-food range”, but I’ll leave you to work out what I’m implying here. Anyway, enough about this; I’m not here to rage against capitalism.

In conclusion, Mr. Reader; if there’s one thing I genuinely don’t like in people, it’s narrow-mindedness. It’s the only thing I’m, ahem, narrow-minded about.

End-note: C#.

No but really; I wonder if simply the fact that I’ve written this will instantly result in a “PRETENTIOUS!!!” back-slapping from anyone who doesn’t agree with me (and from Sandford, who will be three-quarters-joking). No-one at TAFE seems to think Liam and I are film snobs, which is good. I think it’s because despite us watching all this stuff they may not know, we also watch lots of other, more mainstream stuff (like most film fans). I mean, goddamn, my project for TAFE was a zombie film. I’ve argued on this blog previously about the awesomeness of Dawn of the Dead and The Exorcist, and I still absolutely stand by those arguments, and probably forever will. But I wonder if those reading who don’t know me very well (that’ll be a grand total of zero, then, but I’m talking hypothetically here! Give me a break!!) will assume I am this pretentious, arty-farty type of person. The mere fact that I’ve written this on a blog probably leads to the assumption that I like voicing my opinions about these things, about “obscure” films.

Hardly. This blog exists as a friends-only thing (by admitting this I’ve ruined my own hypothetical. BLAST) on the internet, and as a Journal locked away on my computer that no-one reads and that I’m not even sure why I’m writing. In real life (that old thing), I rarely talk about films unless explicitly asked about them, or unless I’m with Liam. I certainly don’t enter a conversation with someone just to say, “You know what’s a really good experimental Czech New Wave feminist film from 1966? Daisies!”

(It actually is a really good experimental Czech New Wave feminist film from 1966, but there’s no way I’d say that in real life)

...so much for an end-note.

Ah, actually, here’s a topic; Quentin Tarantino.

I’ll be honest. When I first sat down to watch Pulp Fiction, I was wary of what I was going to see. In fact, even after seeing it, it took me a little while to realise that what I’d seen wasn’t what I had been expecting to see. Naturally this can be the fear of everyone who watches a highly-well-regarded film – look at me, flipping over to the opposition for a second after arguing against them earlier – but in my case, it was honestly the people who regarded it, erm, well (what a shittily constructed sentence). I was afraid that it would be “cool”. That it would be stylish, and with no substance whatsoever.

I was wrong, of course.

But where did this assumption come from? Well, unfortunately, it came from the majority of the film-watching public. From, if I can call them this, Tarantino fans. What I was surprised to note, later, was that a lot of Tarantino fans actively deny a lot of the things Tarantino supports.

Tarantino’s a great guy, he really is. Possibly a bit too talkative or argumentative, if you’re clutching at straws to insult him, but then, so am I. He’s too talkative only because he has so much to say, because he knows how much digressions can sometimes add to a single, clear argument; his films reflect this too. He’s argumentative because he comes against people with stupid opinions sometimes. Or not even opinions, which is the problem; just unfounded prejudices. One of my favourite Tarantino vids on Youtube is one where he’s interviewed by someone who is apparently a film critic on a news program (Warning bell! News programs don’t employ critics! They’re meant to be unbiased, for a start! Warning bell!), when Kill Bill was being released. Now, I haven’t seen Kill Bill, but the woman’s main argument against him was that it was incredibly violent. What the hell? It’s an R-rated film. If you can’t handle the violence, then don’t watch it. There’s stuff I certainly can’t handle watching (people being raped to death by horses, for instance). But she seemed to take it upon herself to be a moral crusader – one with a stupid gardening hat on her head, of all things, which more than anything else revealed her idiotic conservatism – and question the need for violence in Tarantino’s film. She questioned whether such a film empowered women because butt-kicking women equalling empowered women is a fallacy (certainly it’s a lazy cliche, but you couldn’t accuse Tarantino of that, for god’s sake; look at Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, or Shoshanna in Inglourious Basterds). But the funniest part was when she said, “But why would you have such much violence in a movie?” and Tarantino replied, “BECAUSE IT’S SO MUCH FUN, JAN.”

Oh, and when Tarantino said that he thought 13 year olds should totally see Kill Bill, on the basis that any rational human being would hardly be inspired to commit violence after seeing it, she replied with, “So you did that? And look how you turned out.” Which is how, exactly? He became a filmmaker, not a Columbine-esque shooter.

Still, Tarantino is seen as a man of violence and nothing else by a lot of people. Just last night, Marco said that he hadn’t seen any of his films because “98% of it is violence, isn’t it?” to which myself, Liam and my mum all completely disagreed with (it was good to hear someone from an older generation defend and praise Tarantino, incidentally). But this myth of the man of violence comes not just from his unfounded critics, but bizarrely, sometimes from his fans. You’d think from the way that some of his fans talk about his work that it’s stylish fun and nothing more, and that’s exactly the trap I fell into before I saw Pulp Fiction. He’s far, far more than that. Tarantino loves butt-kicking, because, let’s face it, he’s a guy. I love butt-kicking sometimes too. But Tarantino also loves themes, and dialogue, and emotion and cinematics. I love those things too. It’s not like the guy makes Dead or Alive, for christ’s sake.

That’s not actually what I was going to talk about, though. What gets to me – and it’s this same subset of people who shit upon Ebert for daring to not like Transformers 2, who equate non-Hollywood cinema with “not fun” – is that these fans hold opinions that totally contradict what Tarantino believes and preaches. I often wonder what Tarantino thinks of these fans. He’s probably too busy having fun to care. God, I hope I get to do the same thing one day.

Notions these people have that disagree entirely with Tarantino;

1) Critically acclaimed films suck.
Ignoring the fact that Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds alone were praised to the high heavens – Pulp Fiction won the Cannes Film Festival in 1994, for god’s sake! – there’s just something bizarre about this. Tarantino loves fun as much as the next man, but he’ll be the first to tell you that the broad expanses of cinema reap numerous benefits. This mean lives and breathes films; I remember reading that he watches at least one a day, that he explores as many different areas of cinema as possible. His enthusiasm for films is endless. He was a video geek, remember; working in a video store for years, he indulged in as many things as possible.

And yet a lot of his fans aren’t willing to step outside their tiny circle of what they watch. It’s bizarre.

2) Foreign films suck.
Leading on from the last point is this one. It’s particularly weird, this one, because I know that a lot of these people enjoy lots of Asian horror, which somehow doesn’t qualify as “foreign” to them. Whatever the hell that means.

Why do these people not enjoy foreign films? Do they just not like reading subtitles? If so, how the hell did they get through Inglourious Basterds, which is in German for a lot of its length? Indeed, Tarantino openly criticised the Hollywoodian stereotype of having foreign characters speak English purely for the benefit of the audience. Certainly characters may have to revert to English to understand each other, but no German soldier is going to speak mostly in English just in case someone non-German doesn’t understand him.

I also don’t understand why many lament Pulp Fiction not winning the best picture Oscar in 1994. Look, I don’t think Tarantino cares that it didn’t win. Similarly, I don’t think the guy who played Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds will care if he doesn’t win best supporting actor at the Oscars this year. Both are more interested in Cannes, who, let’s remember, awarded Pulp Fiction the Palm d’Or (in other words, best picture of the year) in 1994, and this year gave the Best Supporting Actor award to said guy who played Landa. Indeed, Tarantino explicitly made Inglorious Basterds over a period of time that corresponded with Cannes; in other words, so that it would be ready for the 2009 festival. He never considered anything else. So when his fans care only about the Oscars, I totally fail to understand. The Oscars often miss out a lot of things. It’s rare that Cannes does. Off the top of my head I can only think of Amelie not being in the official selection in 2001. That’s one example. As compared to the numerous mistakes the Oscars have made over the years.

3) To mention films that aren’t totally mainstream is to be elitist.
This is the most bizarre one of all. Cubert from Projectorheads (okay, his name’s actually James Humphreys, but I’m used to calling him by his 3dmm forum name) said that Tarantino is obsessed with “elitist film references”, which I don’t understand in the slightest. So Tarantino talks about Eric Rohmer in an interview with a reporter – so? Why the hell shouldn’t he? He’s a film fan! Knowing so much about cinema is what made him such a great director. It’s even less understandable that the film trivia in Inglourious Basterds similarly rubbed Cubert up the wrong way. These film references at their most explicit are: 1) a five-second scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage, which is used as a joke explaining how film canisters are flammable; 2) a discussion between an English sergeant and an English scholar about German cinema. They talk about The Blue Angel, they talk about Leni Riefenstahl, they talk about Murnau and Lang. Now, considering this film is set in World War II, considering that the whole film is about propaganda films and how film can influence history (as evidenced by the fact that the last scene is in a cinema, as evidenced by Goebbels and the film he commissions, as evidenced by the fact that history is changed when Hitler is [hilariously] shot in the fact), I can’t see at all how that’s inappropriate. It’s like complaining that a couple of soldiers in a WWII film talk about their makes of weapons and which ones they like the most.

Every other reference in the film tends to be more subtle and only noticed by those that get the references (I mean, it’s more subtle than The Simpsons, so why does Tarantino get the slap on the hand for this?); the Battleship Potemkin moment, the Western feel, etc. They’re not obtrusive in the slightest.
Tarantino wears his influences on his sleeves, because he enjoys sharing his love of them with other people. Don’t you love talking to friends about things you both enjoy? Isn’t that what we all do?

Voice and Cultural Identity

2009-04-10T23:13:00.000-07:00

More digressions from the writing thing, I’m afraid. This is probably a really good thing for some people, though. But rest assured/worried! I will definitely return to the topic of writing later. Indeed.

Recently I became part of something called Newcastle Voice. I’ve no idea why, and it came around purely by chance; apparently they just ring people at random, and they happened to call my house when no-one else was home. I wasn’t in the mood to chat, so I lied and said I was 16. Unfortunately, this was one of those rare “you’re not the home-owner? Never mind, we can talk anyway!” type calls. Ironically, when she later asked for my age, I hesitated and said 1988 – and she didn’t notice the discrepancy. Phew!

But basically, this is just a committee of people who are there to comment on and try and do something (occasionally) about Newcastle. Mostly for me this’ll happen through internet surveys and things like that. The thing is, I’ve no idea what on earth I’m really supposed to contribute to this. As someone whose opinion of Newcastle is more insanely trivial than sane on any level (and as someone who wants to eventually bugger off and live in Melbourne for the rest of my life anyway), I don’t think I’d be much of a reliable member. On the phone, I explained to the woman calling that the only things I really had any self-determined authority to talk about was music and art (the “cultural” side of things), because whilst I’m interested in politics, social concerns, etc., I’m usually only interested at arm’s length, as some sort of fascinating curiosity that I’m not at all involved in. This might change as I grow older (hopefully), but that’s the way it is. She however assured me that this wasn’t a problem.

Except that... as I already made clear, my opinions on Newcastle are more warped self-reflections and cultural identity crises than anything tangible. I feel like Newcastle should have more of a musical and artistic side to it, and yet this is frankly bollocks, because we have very interesting and diverse music and art scenes. I guess the only problem within Newcastle is the way that we cling on to past successes and nostalgic favourites more than pushing forward with newer talent, but not only is this just a symptom of the older generation in general (I will get back to this later on another topic), it’s also just a symptom of me being young and therefore feeling wronged based purely on the fact that I haven’t found a successful niche for myself yet. And, that I’m surrounded by friends who are in the exact same position: Liam, constantly fighting the idea that sampling is stealing, and instating the idea that it’s a form of contextual warping, of giving pre-existing sounds and songs new meaning; Dave, intrigued by the past, by the industrial era, by the oldy-worldy, and sick of being treated as if he’s a novelty with freakish interests rather than a developed human being and artist. The irony is of course that both have found some measure of success anyway, but this will never be good enough for most artists (in any medium), who will always feel that nagging need to win people over. Dostoevsky wrote articles in his Writer’s Diary which directly addressed what some critics had said of his work, critiques that he thought were misguided rather than unfair, and this was when he’d just written Crime and Punishment and was being revered along with Tolstoy (and by Tolstoy). It’s just a measure of one’s own self-worth based on others’ opinions of you that never really goes away.

And um, brief digression there, but back to Newcastle; I guess the only true problem is distribution. The internet is a wondrous thing, but really, whilst we could be said to have a thriving musical and artistic scene, I’d venture to suggest that said scenes rarely step outside our own boundaries and into the world at large – or even the nation at large. And I return, again, to the question of what I contribute to Newcastle Voice. What on earth can I say in a survey? “Yes – I think we should extend our cultural and creative output, by utilising the internet. I’m not even entirely sure how – no-one in the world is – but somehow it’ll work, I’m betting on it.” I’ll look stupid, which would be a problem considering that I already sound and smell stupid. Alternatively, I could write, “Yes – I think the solution is to make the older generation less snobby and tell them to stop putting their noses up on our business.” But this just sounds angsty and worthless. Apart from anything else, it’d look even sillier considering that it’s just been announced that Australia will shortly be upgrading to international-standard broadband. Alright, so I doubt it’s being done with our creative side in mind, but that’s still irrelevant.

The biggest problem is that my own experiences are being catapulted onto the entire nation in my opinions. Without wanting to talk about an album I’ve written for too long because it’d look horrifyingly pretentious, Gatecrash (Vaudewraith album) is in many ways a massive allegory and exaggerated look at Newcastle (and the surrounding Hunter area), and yet... and yet ultimately, the problems I address in it – that of our creative output being stunted by lack of funding/interest/expectation/experimentation/etc. – aren’t problems in Newcastle. They’re problems in the whole goddamned country. Australia’s often referred to as a backward country, and whilst I can’t with any authority state that this is even mostly true, it’s certainly something that reflects on our creative output, because... because we’re still revering AC/DC. I mean, come on, for christ’s sake. It’s not that AC/DC are bad, it’s that they represent a summary of what Australian music is supposed to be; i.e. simple. Fun, catchy, yeah, I get that; and yet, simple. Intrinsically blokey.

I think Australians can sometimes have an immediate desire to reject complexity as the basis for creativity. Simplicity is certainly a virtue, but sometimes it feels like the be-all end-all for us. It’s as if pushing the boundaries even slightly is forgetting our place. It’s because our nation is built on one firm ideal, and that ideal is of the bloke with thongs, holding a beer in his hand. Or more mythically, the man wandering the outback, society an irrelevance to him, talking solace only in his own experiences, and whose interactions with other human beings are friendly and helpful but ultimately short-lived and meaningless. I actually kind of like this ideal, but in the same way that (prepare for a flimsy comparison!) I like Jesus’ teachings but dislike the way they’re interpreted to tally with the laziest/worst possible intentions, the Australian ideal can just sometimes make us comfortable. I’m not against comfort per se, but when it comes at the expense of what’s more important, well. As an example: recently a total arsehole of a radio presenter spoke to the woman who had organised the Tamil Tigers supporters protest. This protest had gone on for an hour longer than it was supposed to (it was unauthorised in the first place), and was impeding on a major road, causing delays for, it was estimated, 20,000 people. Now let’s ignore the issue of whether protesting illegally should be dealt with in a certain manner, etc (especially since some of the callers to the show said that the police should break out the water cannon and employ it. On a non-violent protest), because certainly, that’s exactly what this presenter happened to do. The reason for his rage? So many people had been held up on that road. This is just a total lack of perspective. Apart from the fact that he was very obviously racially-intolerant (however subconsciously) anyway – he at one point said “You’re blocking up our roads!” before amending that with “well, they’re their roads too, but still...” – this kind of attitude just beggars belief. He, and the callers, are furious because they’re going to be slightly late for home? Just fuck. Off. The very idea that these people were inconvenienced in any way sent the presenter into a rage that had him basically verbally drill into the representative of the protest. How utterly fucked up. How utterly fucking Anglo-centric. How utterly Australian.

I should add that he also showed considerable incredulity at the idea that some major retail chains wanted to open up shop on Good Friday and Easter Monday. Again, let’s ignore whether this kind of thing is right or wrong (personally I think it’s excessively capitalist), and focus on why he was incredulous. It was because he couldn’t fathom the idea of stamping on tradition in such a way. It was because he held those days as something sacred. I don’t honestly for a second believe he’s fundamentally Christian, yet if we embraced the idea of similar annual holidays for important other events in other religions – if we embraced Hannukah, if we actively encouraged Muslim workers to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca – then he’d be complaining. The irony as well is that this is the sort of man I’ve met before; who not only holds Christian traditions as sacred despite being broadly atheist and never attending church, but who would use “it’ll just be an excuse to not work” as the excuse for not recognising other religions’ traditions. A shiver of disgust went down my spine every time a former employer of mine (who incidentally is on the Newcastle City Council, so heaven help me) declared that the Aboriginal custom of walkabout was just an excuse for taking days off work (ignoring, apart from anything else, that we forced the Aboriginal people into working in the first place, for fuck’s sake); I suspect these people would also suggest that a pilgrimage to Mecca would be out of a lazy attitude. Yeah, go on then. You trek along with them and see how it is, you piece of shit.*

This is the problem with Australia in a nutshell, as I see it; we’re a country that supposedly (and does, I should add, with a less-cynical tone) promotes and embodies multiculturalism, and diversity in broad terms. And yet for all that, most of the figures of authority in Australia, the people we listen to on the news, the media at large – most of them are Anglo-centric, of an older (baby boomer) generation, and are casually racist even when they purport to support multiculturalism. Casually close-minded in general, really. For instance, there’s no discernable reason whatsoever to oppose gay marriage: the idea of marriage being intrinsically a religious tradition is flawed historically and irrelevant considering our growing proportion of atheism (according to our censuses); there’s no way enabling gay marriage would lead to anything consequentially problematic (the whole no-father/mother-figure argument about same-sex parents being unable to raise children isn’t just unproved and baseless, it’s borderline offensive and suggests that these straight parents know better than the same-sex parents how to raise children). There is no reason whatsoever for Kevin Rudd to oppose gay marriage, especially since this is a man that flaunts his mastery of Mandarin whenever he can.

It’s because it’s a tradition. That’s the thing. I genuinely don’t think it’s fully-fledged intolerance – more your sort of horrible “I’m not homophobic, I just wouldn’t want to be in an alleyway alone with one” attitude (homosexuality, of course, has been proven to be intrinsically linked to rape. Of course. Of course it has) – just this shitty feeling of honouring our forefathers.

I’m a great fan of history, but this is where history and tradition differ; history is something to be studied and learned from, whilst tradition is something to be questioned and in most cases eventually dissipated. I’m not talking about getting rid of the 1 minute silence on ANZAC Day or anything similar, because I think we can all agree that honouring our soldiers who died pointlessly and wastefully (well... actually, let’s not use the word “honouring”, because it sometimes has nasty connotations. Let’s go with “respecting” and “remembering”) is a worthy event. A lot of our traditions, however, are irrelevant, in the way of progress and, as I keep saying, Anglo-centric. Possibly worst of all, it’s simplistic. It’s painting Australia in this horribly narrow way; it’s the multicultural country that only celebrates Christianity, dontchaknow.

(Actually, with this in mind, I’d be interested in seeing how this-aforementioned-presenter views the annual tradition of Christmas. If the idea of opening shops on Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an abomination, then what is his view on the ridiculously-evident capitalisation of Christmas, an event that barely celebrates Christ at all [and historically doesn’t correspond to his birth-date anyway, but that’s less relevant]?)

And so, we remain stunted. This painting of Australia is simplistic, of simplistic things. The bush is just the bush. If the bush means anything, it means something Anglo-centric anyway. Everything is simplified and one-dimensional. And I find this ridiculous, considering the diversity and complexity of Australians. I don’t even just mean racially either, and let’s get off that point for a second; most white people I know (or at least, bother to keep in contact with because I consider them genuinely wonderful human beings) are far more complicated than what our national, stereotypical identity assumes them to be. And yet somehow, this doesn’t correspond to what we actually produce. We listen to a wide variety of genres in music, we appreciate complexity in overseas films, but what do we actually produce ourselves? Hmm. We’re somehow afraid of opening ourselves up, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why. We have such a variety, such a clashing broth of culture, to choose from and show to the world. I personally am interested in Aboriginal storytelling and in my own works I’m interested in recontextualising/reinterpreting them to create a somewhat-fictional/oft-exaggerated, mostly mythological, view of Australia (basically I’m intending to do this through Vaudewraith, if you were wondering). But I don’t know. I live in a city where Aboriginal hip-hop is widely considered a fun gimmick. Nothing more, nothing less.

I want things to change. Of course I do; I am always interested and eager for change. Possibly it’s because I’m young, I’m not sure. But the problem with that is that I can’t offer an end result for these changes. How could I possibly? I don’t know what the eventual total dominance of the internet as a way of distributing music will truly mean. Predicting the future is nigh-on impossible, even if you’re a genius. But that’s how it is; if you want change in this society, you have to have outcomes planned out. Hmmmmf. Maybe if music and art were intrinsically business models, then yes, but they’re not. They’re creative outlets, goddammit.

So I come back to the original point; what on earth can I offer to Newcastle Voice? Should I just throw blog entries or something at them? Bah. I really, really don’t know. And yet, I joined. Maybe some good will come of this. Most likely, none will.

End-note: Halfway through writing this rant, I watched part 1 of the new Red Dwarf special, ‘Back to Earth’. It’s been pummelled by online fans – mostly those who hated series 7 and 8 – and, yet again, I find myself disagreeing with them, and annoyed at their inability to embrace change (their constant refrain of “but it wasn’t funny” is infuriating; not only is the funniness of something subjective, but comedy as a genre does not mean how many laughs something generates, just as horror as a genre does not immediately mean “right well, let’s make the audience shit their pants here, and here, and here...”). But funnily enough, at one point, Rimmer complained about Kryten getting a holiday on the basis that robots shouldn’t need holidays. Purely by coincidence, Rimmer, by way of satire, embodies exactly the sort of true-blue wankers I was talking of before.

*...oh, alrighty then. Want one more dig at this presenter that I can’t remember the name of? Well, okay. He was also incredulous at the fact that a politician recently accused of paying for escort services and brothels had only issued a statement declaring that he hadn’t, and that he was going to take the matter to court. His reasoning was that, were he the politician, he’d be on as many radio shows as possible, attempting to clear his name. Not only is this crass, but when the presenter said, “I don’t understand it, why wouldn’t he want to talk to radio presenters?”, I almost yelled at the radio, “BECAUSE THE MEDIA ARE VULTURES WHO WILL POUNCE ON HIS EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WORD, YOU COMFORTABLE BARSTARD.”

That’ll be all for now.

Pornography: The Worst Topic to Ever Grace this Blog with its Presence

2009-03-18T03:54:00.001-07:00

It seems the most obvious thing in the world when you think about it, but (hopefully?) one wouldn’t think about it much. Get ready to have your mind blown, if you hadn’t;

PORNOGRAPHY HAS SCRIPTS

Check this out, a quick-and-easy (no sex jokes, please. They’re not appropriate in this discussion) guide I found for writing porn:

Step 1:
Check out the market fully before you jump into writing porn. See what opportunities are within this specialty industry, and find out what companies you will submit your script too.

Step 2:
Learn about the porn industry and see what works, what wording writers use, and terms. You must feel comfortable with the language of porn writing if you want to build a career in it.

Step 3:
Ask other writers if they have ever written porn, and ask them what the most important scenarios are for writing porn. They might be able to tell you what editors enjoy reading.

Step 4:
Watch porn on television to get used to the field. You must be comfortable with this type of industry to make it. Look at it as a career move and forget what people say about the porn industry.

Step 5:
Enquire from the producers of pornographic movies about what they are looking for. Most likely, a porn company will have submission guidelines to writing porn themed articles.

Step 6:
Brainstorm ideas for your script and follow guidelines. Use fantasies that you have heard of, have dreamed of, or that your friends have dreamed of, if they are willing to share. Do your research, and keep an open mind.

It seems ludicruous, but pornography really is an expansive industry that manages to include indie porn, amateur porn, and utterly professional, big-budget porn (where porn actors even have their own pyramid-shaped seats to sit on between takes). If there’s one thing I agree with Alan Moore* about, it’s that Dorothy Gale is damn se-wait I mean, it’s that pornography is in itself an art form. Just a very bizarre one. Not stimulation of the mind, but stimulation of the... well. Stimulation, really.

*this is called “being silly”. I probably agree with Alan Moore on many more things than this.

Step 2 interests me a lot; if you’re sickened by one form of pornography – e.g. orgies – could you really work well in the industry? It’d be like only liking writing sci-fi (nothing hugely wrong with this, it’s just really damned restrictive). And is the sum of it basically; the more open you are, the less seedy you seem? Is it better or worse to concentrate on one particular strand of porn? For instance, if you only write lesbian sex movies, are you horribly dirty because you’re obviously only interested in one thing, or are you more dirty for branching out into loads of areas?

Step 4 – on television? How outdated is this, then? That said, I wonder what it’d be like being a write for ads on television that slot in between pornographic movies. In the ad breaks of yer-generic porno, you’d probably just advertise sex talk – but what about in the ad breaks of a paedophilic porno? Would you advertise Bratz dolls?

(I’m being silly. Of course, you wouldn’t broadcast paedophilic porno. Right? Right, SBS? If not, then what the hell, paedophilic porn > Free Quay st?)

I also enjoy “forget what people say about the porn industry”.

And in Step 6, “brainstorm ideas for your movie” is just wonderful.

I’m assuming a porn film script looks something like this:

1. INT. DAY. SEDUCTION PARLOUR YEAH BABY
Two chicks in hot gear, one blonde, one brunette. Massive tits, Russ Meyer style. This is their “first time”.

BLONDE
this is my first time ive never done it with a girl before

BRUNETTE
its easy if you try imagine all the lesbos its easy if you try

BLONDE
ok cool show me what to do

They fuck.

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE
oh

BRUNETTE
oh

BLONDE uses her tongue for kissing and it’s like two eels in a mortal battle the way they’re lashing at each other yeah oh god excuse me must masturbate for a second okay I’m back.

BLONDE
Oh

BRUNETTE
OH

BLONDE
was that good did i please you

BRUNETTE
wtf no get the fuck out of my house skank

FIN

Pretty good, huh? I’m thinking Jennifer Aniston and Sophia Myles. Hmm? Oh, not for the porno, no. I’m just thinking about them in general.

However, I’m in the mood for something a bit more out there. Something more edgy. I know the perfect thing to write, too; a while back I joked that Lost Girls would be another Alan Moore graphic novel that’s impossible to adapt for the screen, but if it’s done as artsy pornography, it may just work. Witness my underage stop-motion pornography film, Norti X Alenky (Alice in Naughtyland):

1. EXT. DAY. FOREST
A WHITE RABBIT runs through the forest. He looks at a bulge in his pants.

WHITE RABBIT
I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!

ALENKY (v.o., seeing her red lips on screen)
...SAID THE WHITE RABBIT.

The WHITE RABBIT runs toward a hole. As he nears it, all the grass around it stands up, erect. He jumps in it, adopting a phallus shape. There is a squeal of pleasure.

WHITE RABBIT
Oh, dear me! What a thing to do!

ALENKY (v.o.)
...SAID THE WHITE RABBIT.

2. INT. NIGHT. PALACE BEDROOM
The ruler of the sex-cards, THE QUEEN OF TWINS, is lying in bed.

THE QUEEN OF TWINS
Where is that White Rabbit? I want him to stick his big white Ron Jeremy inside me.

ALENKY (v.o.)
...SAID SOMEONE WHO WASN’T THE WHITE RABBIT.

3. EXT. NIGHT. PALACE BEDROOM
THE WHITE RABBIT rushes towards the palace, which is adorned with a massive sign saying “Hearts, Spades, Diamonds and Sex Clubs”. He rushes inside.

WHITE RABBIT
I’m late, I’m late, I may have to masturbate!

ALENKY (v.o.)
...SAID THE WHITE RABBIT.

WHITE RABBIT
Shut the fuck up, Alice.

ALENKY (v.o.)
...SAID THE – oh. Sorry.

4. INT. NIGHT. PALACE BEDROOM
THE WHITE RABBIT rushes in. THE QUEEN OF TWINS looks delighted.

THE QUEEN OF TWINS
Finally! You took your sweet-ass time. Also, this is my first time, dontcha know.

THE WHITE RABBIT
Let’s go at it like rabbits!!!

THE QUEEN OF TWINS
Indeed. Off with your head!!!

ALENKY (v.o.)
LOL!!!

THE WHITE RABBIT climbs in bed and they fuck for a bit. I don’t actually find this in any way attractive so I won’t write about it, just leave it to Zack Snyder to figure it out or something. At the end they lie together, post-coital.

THE WHITE RABBIT
Well, I certainly fucked you through the looking-ass!!!

THE QUEEN OF TWINS
Yes! And it’s always fun doing it with the Mad Hatter yelling “CHAAAAANGE PLACES!” all the time!!!

THE WHITE RABBIT
Indeed! And, I certainly Tweedledummed your Tweedledee!!!

THE QUEEN OF TWINS
No, that’s just stupid.

ALENKY (v.o.)
YEAH, WHITE RABBIT. SERIOUSLY OMG WTF. :S

THE WHITE RABBIT
You shouldn’t even be in this film, bitch. It’s a porn.

ALENKY (v.o.)
I – WHAT?!?!?!?!

FIN

Like it?

Cos I sure don’t.

[END-NOTE: I’ll write about something with much more point next time, I swear.]

[OTHER END-NOTE: Until this blog came along and spoiled it... I had 69 posts on this site. No, really.]

Books - What the hell is the point of them?

2009-03-10T02:09:00.000-07:00

Hmm, it’s been a while. I guess the whole news thing I started for my blog brought everything to a stand-still. Really shouldn’t have done that.

Blogs are a very commonplace thing now, and there’s so much readily-available opinion, that – okay, obviously this is a good thing, but – it’s difficult to know what to talk about sometimes. Everything’s been discussed, done before.

So what to do? Well, I won’t stop talking about things, but... I should probably start throwing more creative things into this Journal too. Bits and pieces of stuff I’ve worked on, I feel like writing, will eventually work on, stuff like that. My actual online blog is full of a bunch of retarded MSPaint comics, which help break up the monotony of endless words, but this Journal itself needs more of that too. Erm... yes. This Journal needs a bunch of words to break up the monotony of endless words.

What are the value of words, anyway? Well you see, Dom, that’s far too loaded a question and I’m not going to answer it. But. Recently Liam and I talked about reading books, and he was saying that he didn’t think he needed to read any until he’d properly exhausted the huge list of films he was going to watch. As it happens, he had misunderstood my suggestion of reading; he’d assumed I’d meant that he had to write something immediately and needed a book to help with that. That isn’t the case – but definitely, reading is pretty much essential. Isn’t it?

Hmm. Lawrence Miles, book-writer extraordinaire (albeit an unknown/unliked one), said he felt that books were no longer relevant (he may have changed his mind now, but it still makes a good kicking-off point). Bluntly, the generation I’m a part of has grown up with the ability to absorb multiple strands of information in a faster time, and this also extends to interpreting stories in various media. In which case, books seem like the outdated form amongst the collection we have today: graphic novels require interpreting images and text, films require interpretation on more levels than that (if they’re doing their job properly), and videogames even more than that. With that in mind, books feel simplistic, archaic. Why have the audience imagine when you can have them interpret instead?

To an older crowd – particularly a literate one – this would seem an abhorrence. “Dumbing down”, all of those shitty and crap phrases, are thrown around; there was a golden age of story-telling once, and apparently this isn’t it.

It’s possibly true that there could be a slump in the creativity of film and television, but... if that is the case, then it’s the case since our generation can interpret faster, not because they’re dumber. “Short attention span” is another bandied-about phrase, but again, it’s more about focusing on more things at once, about letting your mind accumulate many conflicting things all at once. And then there’s access and availability; why watch a new TV show when you can watch an entire season, online, that you’ve heard is really great?

(Apart from, of course, generational cringe; the ability to deride an entire decade based on its choice of clothes and hair)

The difference is videogames, which are ironically as immersive as books used to be; I see no great difference between playing a game for hours on end, and spending hours at a beach reading, for instance. But in videogaming, you are the player, you’re the one doing things, and you can think whatever you like. Half of book-writing is about telling the audience what to think, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense; it’s about forcing the audience to think of characters in certain terms, to see the world the way that the author sees the world. Creating a world is an intense and wonderful thing, but if the reader can’t see anything but that world, you run the risk of denying interpretation.

On the other hand... a film will give you a fully-fledged world and hand it to you on a platter (as I often do, I’m talking in the loosest ideals here; I’m pretending that all films are great enough to be able to do this). A book, not so much; it can describe a world, even visually, but that doesn’t 100% tally with some peoples’ images of what’s what. I’d wager that some people don’t like to have to imagine, only interpret. This isn’t necessarily a bad attitude, but it runs the risk of losing a valuable part of creativity.

But, to the point (maybe). Is it worth writing a book anymore? Certainly for me, I’ve had a desire to write numerous books since childhood, but a lot of them have jumped media as I’ve seen the advantages of this happening. Even Mungo, which I doubt will work as anything but a book, would work even better as an online book (in my opinion; Liam doesn’t totally agree!). And most definitely, I’d be more interested in utilising the medium as an art-form in its own right, to deconstruct and then reconstruct it. For example; I’m determined to test something in These Storeys Never End* where the narrative voice will be... well, like I’m talking now... but the characters will all talk as real people. Mumbles, having to start sentences again, not actually talking much, and even pronunciation.

*Yeah, yeah, I’m talking about things only a couple of you will know. I apologise.

The above example is one of the things I feel books can do perhaps better than other media. In film and television, you can’t go out on a limb, abandon the characters for a bit, and explain in detail some factor of the society and/or place the characters inhabit. Or if you can, you have to do so by inventing new characters to show us this; you can’t do it through image and sound alone (unless you happen to be a total, total genius). This is actually the biggest limitation with videogaming as storytelling, too; abandoning the main character is unthinkable unless the player’s been given some warning in advance. As a quick example, notice how everyone whinged when Raiden was the main character in Metal Gear Solid 2. But the problem really is that you are that character, whoever that character may be, and to suddenly jump half across the world to, say, talk about how fascinating the bugs crawling through the fruit in this back-end shop are, is alienating and jarring. The best world-building games (apart from the literal ones like Spore, o’course) do so by feeding you information whilst never interfering with the player; Bioshock (and System Shock 2, naturally) spring to mind.

And then there’s the internal factor, specifically of characters. The best (and most well-known, that I can talk about anyway) example is 1984 (or Nineteen Eighty-Four, I suppose). For me, this is one of the few books I’ve read that wouldn’t work very well when adapted into a visual medium (with the possible exception of graphic novels, which allow ongoing internal narrative amongst images**), and that’s because, particularly at the start, most of what goes on, goes on in the main character’s head. The extreme totalitarianism of the setting is such that he can’t even twitch without being caught; and it’s impossible for a film to convey just how amazing it is that he writes even a couple of rebellious words on paper, especially if the opening isn’t set inside his head as well as outside. The only reason Brazil works so well is that it trades internal rebellion for ridiculous slapstick and hilarious absurdity.

**To that end, I’ve seen loads of graphic novels based on Christie works, for instance, and this is a development that makes perfect sense (I’d love to see them try Dostoevsky or Umberto Eco, but we’ll see). It makes much more sense than that really weird DS collection of classic literature, or that videogame based on a Christie book. Seriously, is it that fun to pick up your Wiimote and play what is essentially a more literate game of Cluedo?

Dostoevsky – who’s easily become my favourite writer, even if I haven’t read all of his works yet – is perfect in this regard as well. Crime and Punishment contains huge paragraphs of the lead character ranting at himself. Notes from Underground goes even further; its first half has no plot or characters at all, and is just an alienated man ranting at himself about life and himself. Once you’ve read the first half, the seemingly-average events in the second half take on an all-new meaning. Without wanting to spoil it... the extent of what he achieves is to meet a few people, insult a few more, and spend months doing absolutely nothing. Without the first half, it’d be a piece of shit. With the first half, it’s charged with meaning.

Seriously, if I hadn’t read Crime and Punishment, I probably wouldn’t have read another book for many more years, and would’ve just stuck to film. But now, I’m determined to find 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, and I feel another obsession is coming on. And I’m glad. Really, really glad.

The chief thing will be, though, expressing what the point of books are. With so many media to choose from, and with books having the inevitable feeling of outdatedness, it’s more crucial than ever (to me as a writer, anyway) to concentrate on the medium’s strengths, to open it up, to creatively and artistically tell stories through prose and words alone. Through tone, and implied imagery rather than actual pictures. I’m not being snobbish here, seriously; I understand why reading Bridget Jones, or a goddamned Matthew Reilly book (“Action! Action! Action!”, for those of you who don’t know) might be fun. But it’s totally detrimental to the experience of growing as a reader, and to be brutally honest; I get my actual entertainment elsewhere. With so much to choose from, why the hell would I read an enjoyable-but-unimaginative novel when I can just play TimeSplitters 2?

Possibly more than ever, book-writing must become a purist thing. Darned good thing, too.

#01: These Storeys Never End (original passage)
(So here we go, the first of these exclusive-to-blog writings; the short that led to ‘These Storeys Never End’. I actually posted this a long time ago on my blog, but I feel I can do it again and deconstruct it a bit [something I feel comfortable doing because an earlier incarnation of me wrote it ;P])

The building is alive.
It doesn’t matter who constructed it. It could well have been a baby with Duplo for all that it matters. What matters is what it represents and stores. It’s a giant grey grave, jutting from the ground and hopelessly reaching for the heavens.
Many people die, and many people live.
15 floors, 14 of them in residence, yet so many. Countless lives, countless memories, countless. The building’s countless; there’s no vampiric being perched atop the building who watches those on the ground at night. There’s no vampire feeding off the life force of humanity.
Or at least, not a living vampire.
There are statues, though. Statues etched in front of the foyer like guard dogs, like Cerberus guarding hell itself, yet in this case, lost souls are being ushered inside. It’s accommodating. And once a soul has entered, they become statuesque, locked indoors forever, frozen in time yet aging, never changing yet decaying. These statues are not the oldest creatures in residence; ancient beings reside in the walls and on the floors and occasionally on the ceiling, centuries past. Yet the building will not let them go.
The building’s seen society change around it as it stays immutable, although even that’s not true. Its organs inside are constantly pumping with new bacterium and new newness. Everything’s new. Like George Gershwin films, notes from melodies float in the air, constantly circulating around a sound-proof yet sound-absorbing room. The staves waver but never end, the notes falter but never stop. Like John Cage pieces, it’s a glaringly loud explosion of silence. The difference is it’s endless.
The building has fed upon the continued evolution of music. Jazz, rock, post-rock. The building has fed upon the continued evolution of art. Traditional, modern, post-modern. Post-ancient, post-old, post, post...
The post’s arrived!
Sucked in from the streets surrounding, from the soil that the building has rooted itself in. Its people arise each morning and wade their way through the cascade of letters. Endless conversations, endless talks, endless how’d-you-dos. The letters change, but they never stop coming, and once they enter they never leave.
The people are letters too. 103a died a year ago, and so 103b now resides there. 103b on the dole, constantly thrown out of jobs. Constantly thrown out of concerts. Constantly thrown out of parties. Constantly thrown out of a prison cell after a night’s hard drinking. But the one thing 103b is never thrown out of is the building, because the building never regurgitates its food.
The letters are for communication, or at least they were. They’re dying out. E-mail usurps it. Yet nothing has changed. Technology is assimilated into the building, which continually adapts itself. Technological evolution. E-mail, e-bay, e-this, e-that...
E-taker in 906 laid dying on the floor. Rentboy in 609 laid on the floor, dying. Everyone dies as soon as they enter, yet their corpses are kicked until they’re bled dry of ideas and memories and emotion.
307, the walls. The paint is splattered with blood from a suicidal woman.
307, the walls. The blood is splattered with paint from an artistic woman.
What’s the difference? None that the building can see. Memories don’t need context to survive.
Floor 5, the floor. There’s a chalk outline next to the elevator. A chalk outline depicting police brutality.
Floor 5, the floor. There’s a chalk outline next to the elevator. A chalk outline where the children play hopscotch.
What’s the difference?
There’s a chalk outline in 704. 704c drew it across the bedroom. Marital problems? Preparations for renovations?
The families are all the same. There’s the mother, the mater. The martyr, the one who sacrifices her own life for her family, denying herself the oxygen of life to save others. Then there’s the father, the fater. The farter, the one who sits around in his own filth, denying others the oxygen of life as he suffocates it with his excretory airwaves.
The air’s captured in the ventilation, the windpipes of the creature. It hears everything, it smells everything, it feeds on everything through the ventilation. Unlike the movies, the ventilation isn’t an escape, it’s a winding, never-ending steel leech.
Travel down the ventilation. There’s distracting sounds coming from 209. Echoes of a failed guitarist. 209s isn’t the first to fail dismally in this room. There was r before him, and p before him. Six-stringed guitars join other six-stringed guitars, all hexagonal sides morphing and sticking together to resemble a soccer ball. It’s all a game, a multinational game that crowds cheer at, and 209s is never going to experience that. He reached for the heavens, for the stars, and he plummeted onto the cockroach infested floor.
His only audience is the building, and it’s never satisfied.
There’s graffiti and tags strewn across the walls, floors, ceilings. There’s dog tags; whiffs of faint urine where dogs have marked their territory. The dogs and their owners fade over time but never leave. The only thing they leave is faint traces. Traces that future dogs will bark at as their owners stare on in confusion. At night, the owners will understand, or feel the same, but they won’t know why. They won’t understand the never-ending cycle, the constant feed of numbers and letters into the building.
ABC, it’s easy as 123.
It’s too easy to lose yourself.
Travel up the elevator. The ground, floor 1, floor 2, floor 3, floor 4, floor 5... as the numbers rise, the numbers fall in the probability of escape. As lost souls enter the foyer below, they’re dripped into the throat of the creature, ascending towards its stomach. Floor 6, floor 7, floor 8, floor 9. Hundreds of thousands of living calories a day, and exempt of vegetation so the walls are decrepit, undernourished, dank and dirty. Floor 10, floor 11, floor 12, floor 14... it’s coming, you’re nearly there...
But wait. What happened to floor 13?
And then you realise; you’ve passed it. You’ve passed the point of no return.
Floor 13. The invisible floor. The black hole. The black hole that sucks meaning and time and memories and records into its huge, gaping, hungry mouth. A whirlpool of information turning and turning, consumed and consumed, until nothing is left behind. There’s no selectiveness, no spitting out things it doesn’t like, because it likes everything. Floor 13 doesn’t exist, and it’s hungry.
Welcome to the building.
You’ll live happily ever after.

(Try doing THAT in any other medium. It’s barely even got any characters, and no honest-to-God descriptions either)

#02: Body of Work (actually “Untitled”, originally)
(And here’s another one I posted earlier, but y’know...)

She stood in front of the mirror, knife poised, her face reflected back upon her in the bathroom mirror. It was expressionless, but no less determined. She reached down, drew back her left sleeve in a slow, rapturous motion, and gazed down at the network of scars and criss-crosses branded across her flesh, almost as if it was an incredibly detailed artwork. Performance art, perhaps. She smiled to herself, then steadied herself. Time to add another line to her masterpiece, her never completed magnum opus.
She sliced down, brutally. A thick jet of blood sprayed from the point in which the knife had perverted, but died down in an instant, leaving a faint bubbling effect as the blood was pumped out of her veins. She fiddled a bit with the knife, increasing the flow. There was no point in simply keeping it a minor wound, after all.
Her fingers reached down tentatively and started dipping themselves into the blood, swirling delicately so that she should get as much blood on her fingers as possible. And then, swinging her eyes up to look back at the mirror, she continued her art; the sketching. Art was about emotion, it was about how you felt. When she opened up her body, she scribbled down the feeling she was experiencing in her own blood.
The words tended to be powerful and evocative. Pain. Fury. Sadness.
Control.
Trusting to the instincts of her fingers, she allowed her mind to gaze away, to stare blindly into the wall as her hand took control of itself. She’d referred to it as “talking to the hand”, but no-one else had found this funny. They didn’t understand, though. They didn’t understand her art, the capabilities, the potential.
She was dimly aware of the long strokes her fingers were making as if dabbling in calligraphy... a delicate circle. Two arches. And the last letter reminded her of a helipad. Paying her preconceptions no heed, she stared at what she had scrawled onto her mirror.
Ouch.
A feeling of anxiety and revulsion crept into her stomach and throat, almost in complete contrast to what her body was trying to tell her. Why was her body mocking her? Why was it so indifferent? Why was she so... desensitised?
She knew the answer; her artwork was no longer glorious, no longer original. It was stagnant, dull, and boring. Whilst everyone else had progressed, ever pushing the boundaries of art, she was repetitious – the scars on her arm proved this. She grabbed her arm, as if ashamed of it – not something she’d ever felt before.
Raising the knife up to touch her hair, she looked at it through the mirror. It was the first time she had seen it in the reflection. It was crossing a taboo, it was unheard of. It wasn’t how her art worked. But she knew she had to progress; otherwise she would never feel properly ever again, never create.
She held the knife sideways and thrust it into her neck.

(Again, no dialogue. Everything here is internal. Incidentally, short stories are particularly good at being blunt and getting ideas across; this means that I think it’s only worth writing a book if you have adequate ideas – or adequate investigation of those ideas – to support it. Otherwise, why pay more, Bibilo? Er... I mean, why write a full-length novel? You’ll just put non-readers even MORE off reading)

(Oh, also; I know it’s probably a bit self-indulgent to talk about how to write books “properly”, and then basically post my own material as examples. But hell, I don’t care if it looks like that, to be totally honest. Anyway, HERE is something that is yet again an old writing, but is another good [in my opinion, naturally] example...)

#03: (?)
Wallop. Thump.
“Oi, kick it here!”
Wallop. Thump.
If Jesus Christ had known we were kicking a ball against his house, I’m certain he would have been a bit miffed. Yet the church conjoined with the park where we were playing, so inevitably the soccer ball would arch from time to time, threatening to reduce the stained windows to multicoloured fragments.
From the corner of the park, unseen to our eyes, an aging priest watched, observed, his hand tearing at his white tufts of hair to relieve his tension. He was powerless to stop us; but one thought consoled him.
Wallop. Smash.
The priest’s gaping mouth split into a toothless grin. He looked at the sky, and said triumphantly, “You know what to do with them.”
He knew the horrors that would carve through us later. He knew the abject pain we’d be subjected to. He knew what we’d get.
Wallop. Thump.

SCRIBBLINGS END HERE.

And there, again; implied imagery, all through wordplay.

So. I originally planned Tds4a Today in 2009 to be “The Year Of The Ninemsn Mocking”, for want of a better term; and this Journal would be something separate. Since that took up way more time than I’d imagined, and since I’m scrapping it, this Journal could potentially become what it’s been threatening to be for a long time; a total absence of personal biography, in exchange for, well... Morrissey would say I’ve become the writer and the author of nothing in particular (if he, y’know, knew me. Or cared about me at all. Which he wouldn’t. SELFISH BARSTARD :@ !!).

And there you have it, gentlemen (no ladies read this blog, I’m sure of it). A NEW BEGINNING. Or something.

WITH APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE

2009-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

Due to unspecified circumstances, the TDS4A TODAY NEWS team are unable to bring you the news as of this time. Expect a return shortly.

Friday 23 January 2009

2009-01-23T01:03:00.000-08:00

IN RECENT NEWS:

Virginia Tech, AGAIN

A female Chinese graduate student has been decapitated by a fellow student at Virginia Tech, the scene of the worst school shooting in US history in 2007, reports Ninemsn.

“It’s a perfect opportunity to make a sequel to Elephant,” said director Gus Van Sant. “Forget this pepper grinder thing – it’s Tech all the way. I’m thinking of making it an ongoing series, like how there was I Know What You Did Last Summer and then I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Hmm, what should I call the new one? Elephants Never Forget sounds pretty sweet to me.”

Casting and productions news will come later, and we wish the famed director the best of luck.

Oh yeah, and condolences to that family or whatever.

(Before: student with head. After: an artist depiction)

I Still Call Australia a Cockroach-Infested Home

They’ve survived nuclear disasters and World War III, but will cockroaches survive cultural cringe, is the question Ninemsn doesn’t ask because they’re not as forward-thinking as us. Travel writer Mark Dapin’s new book, Strange Country, talks of a practice in Queensland on Australia Day: cockroach racing.

The cockroach races take place at the Story Bridge Hotel, a nineteenth-century pub that gains lots of tourists in these events (and no customers at any other time, naturally). The founding myth of this noble sport is that “Daz from Hawthorne and Gor (short for Igor) from Kangaroo Point were arguing at the bar about which of their suburbs was home to the biggest cockroaches. To settle the dispute, each caught a cockroach at home and brought it to the pub. For reasons not entirely clear, they then decided to race them.” Well, they were drunk.

The cockroach racing is a fascinating development for Queensland, and after their discoveries of electricity and the bicycle (see: The Quickies, yesterday), they seem well on their way to global domination.

A domination which, naturally, only the cockroaches would survive.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

A pair of British schoolgirls claim they were threatened with expulsion for being too blonde, reports Ninemsn. Raegan Booth, 16, and Aby Wester, 15, claim that Rednock School principal David Alexander will ban them from sitting their exams unless they dye their hair brown.

Raegan stated, “We’re teenagers with awful names. What else are we going to do?”

But Mr Alexander claims that he’s been misconstrued. “It’s not that the girls being blonde offends me and will make me stop them doing the exams,” he said. “It’s that the girls being blonde will mean they just mentally can’t do the exams.”

The Hunchcat of Notre Dame

An American woman who marketed “gothic kittens” with ear, neck and tail piercings over the internet has been charged with animal cruelty and conspiracy, Ninemsn reports. Holly Crawford, 34, lives in Pennsylvania, and has registered shock over being charged by the authorities for animal abuse.

“We’re in Pennsylvania, for christ’s sake,” she said.

She went on to say that her fashioning of the cats is not abuse at all. “They were definitely loved, well-fed, no fleas, clipped nails. And they were happy.” But Daphna Nachminovitch, vice president for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, disagrees strongly on this point. “Since when are goths happy?” she argued. “Cats are supposed to be dressed in snappy suits, constantly check themselves in the mirror, and in terms of hot cat lovin’, the template is James Brown, not Robert Smith.”

Crawford, who sports her own body piercings, said she decided on a whim to pierce the ears and neck of a stray kitten she took in last year and named Snarley Monster. The fact that she named it “Snarley Monster” is being considered another charge of animal abuse.

THE QUICKIES:

Yes, he can: Obama to keep his beloved BlackBerry

“It’ll help remind everyone that I’m black,” he said candidly. “Remember? That I’m black? Yeah, cos I am.”

Brad Pitt comes unzipped

“Luckily I’m currently a baby,” Pitt goo-gooed, “so this isn’t a concern. Milk?”

Whales rescuers hoping for high tide

“We want the whales to be movin’ on,” said a spokeswoman.

‘Broken hearts’: Ledger family marks dark anniversary

“I just wanted to show how much I love that goddamn movie,” said Mr Ledger, Heath’s father. “In the end, my son died of a broken heart – he’d been expecting his wife to love his new facial scars, but she rejected him! God, that was a great scene. Hang on, what?”

In pictures: Miss World finalist’s infection nightmare

It seems likely that, due to this, Ms China will have to step out of the competition.

David Hicks keen to clear name: father

“But I like my name,” whinged Mr Hicks.

Vic firefighters mop up major blazes

“It’s not working very well,” they added. We could have guessed.

Mother let her three-year-old son smoke

To help him recuperate, authorities are currently working on creating a Nicorette nappy patch.

Piece of indigenous history recognised

The rest of it is still being ignored, of course.

ON THIS DAY:

1556 - An earthquake in Shanxi Province, China, was thought to have killed about 830,000 people.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: On second thought, authorities decided it was probably 2.

1977 - The TV mini-series "Roots," began airing on ABC. The show was based on the Alex Haley novel.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: Sex is still prominent today.

1974 - Mike Oldfield’s "Tubular Bells" opened the credits of the movie, "The Exorcist".

THE EFFECT IT HAD: Crucifix masturbation is still prominent today.

1941 - The play, "Lady in the Dark" premiered.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: Rape is still prominent today.

1983 - "The A-Team" debuted on TV.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: The death of Doctor Who, and millions around the globe becoming familiar with the phrase “I pity the fool.” Now considered a national disaster by historians, who pity the fool who created the show in the first place.

DAILY FORTUNES:

ARIES: Today’s Cure lyric: “I tried to laugh about it/Hiding the tears in my eyes/Cause boys don’t cry.” So stop crying, you little turd.

TAURUS: Today’s Cure lyric: “I’m gonna watch you drown in the shower/Push my life through your open eyes.” Advice: don’t take a shower.

GEMINI: Today’s Cure lyric: “Doo doo doo doo/doo doo doo/Let’s go to bed/doo doo doo doo.” Advice: don’t go to bed.

CANCER: Today’s Cure lyric: “ ‘I think it’s dark and it looks like rain’ you said/ ‘And the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world’ you said.” In future, please don’t try and predict the weather, you’re useless and overblown. You’re as bad as a fortune teller.

LEO: Today’s Cure lyric: “Somethin’ small falls out of your mouth and we laugh/A prayer for somethin’ better.” You’re an atheist? Oh, you disgusting arsehole. Atheism doesn’t make sense. Think about it, why is the Earth round if the Big Bang happened? And why do you call your parents retarded?

VIRGO: Today’s Cure lyric: “Thursday I don’t care about you/It’s Friday I’m in love.” And it is Friday today, so you’d better get out there and start some lovin’. Oh wait, you’re a Virgo – you can’t. Never mind then.

LIBRA: Today’s Cure lyric: “But chilly Mr. Dilly/too much rush to talk to Billy/All the tizzy fizzy idiot things must get done.” Get off the drugs. Now.

SCORPIO: Today’s Cure lyric: “Everything you do is simply dreamy/Everything you do is quite delicious/So why can’t I be you?” Well, thanks! But you can’t, because I’m me, and I’m too awesome to let anyone else be me.

SAGITTARIUS: Today’s Cure lyric: “And I know that in the morning/I will wake up in the shivering cold/And the Spiderman is always hungry.” He’s fictional, mate. Get your head straight.

CAPRICORN: Today’s Cure lyric: “I’m the stranger/killing an Arab.” You WHAT? Fucking hell, you sicken me. Go kill yourself immediately, you racist son of a bitch.

AQUARIUS: Today’s Cure lyric: “Whatever I do is never enough/It’s never enough.” So stop trying then, jesus. Just lie in your room and stare at the walls and candy-striped-legged spiders.

PISCES: You will realise that star signs are ridiculous, and will stop reading them. Oh yeah, and your Cure lyric is: “I don’t want you anywhere near me/I don’t want you anywhere near me/Get your fucking world out of my head.” So yeah, fuck you.

TODAY’S COMIC:

Thursday 22 January 2009

2009-01-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

IN RECENT NEWS:

INTERFERENCE ON THE CORPSE

A Sydney man who allegedly entered a woman’s unit to steal property but instead found her body has been accused of interfering with the corpse and covering up the scene to avoid any link to him, reports Ninemsn. Chady Wazir covered the body of Joyce Germain with pillows, blankets, clothing and other items, presumably to stop her from noticing that he was burgling her.

Wazir maintains that he was respectful to Germain’s body. “I only covered her in the best pillows I could find. I mean, I could’ve stolen those, couldn’t I? But I didn’t, did I? Eh? Please let me out.”

1000BEATSPERMINUTE

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Islamic leaders have condemned a Melbourne Muslim cleric who told followers it was permissible to hit their wives and force them to have sex, Ninemsn informs us. The cleric, Samir Abu Hamza, claims that he had meant it in the metaphorical sense.

This follows a spate of misunderstandings surrounding Hamza; he has also told his followers that they can masturbate over dogs, lick mannequin vaginas in public, and urinate in buskers’ hats, but all in a metaphorical sense.

WIND-OW!

An alleged burglar broke his arm after falling through the ceiling of a Newcastle house, shocking a family of seven, Ninemsn claims. When questioned as to why he was in their house, he replied, “Ohhhh for god’s sake, get an ambulance, jesus chriiiist.” After a further five minutes of interrogation was similarly fruitless, the police and paramedics were called onto the scene.

Attempted burglary is very much an offence, but it seems that an eye-for-an-eye approach may be taken here. “It’s simple,” said a chief officer. “I let the ******** family into his house, and then I break their arms. It’s only fair.”

PEPS AND ROBBERS

First it was frying pans, then capsicum spray – now, Melbourne woman Davina Adamson has proved that it is possible to ward off burglars by using nothing more than a pepper grinder. “It’s so effective,” Adamson stated. “All I had to do was stand with it pointed at his chest, grinding away furiously, and the pepper crumbled onto his shirt. He was mortified.”

In the wake of this discovery, police are now issuing their squads with pepper grinders. “We wish to investigate every possibility,” said an official. “Sugar might not be good, it might make them hyperactive. But salt? Yeah! And uh... maybe we could stick chilis down their crevices.”

Reportedly, director Gus Van Sant has expressed interest in making a film based on this story, about Adamson’s efforts to be noticed at work, and her eventual pepper shootings. The film will be called Pepperphant and will be released when hell freezes over.

THE QUICKIES:

Where’s the cocaine? It’s in the beef

The government’s funded project to increase the taste of beef comes to a satisfying conclusion.

Brazilian model loses feet, hands to infection

The two events are, as far as Ninemsn can make out, completely unrelated.

Baby’s accidental call lands dad in jail

The father later lamented, “They arrested me on wasting police time. I shouldn’t have taught him ‘000’ as his first word.”

Women can spot cute babies best: experts

Erm, good for them.

Puppy love: Labrador ‘most popular dog’

The Chihuahua nearly won the category, but its revealed affair with Paris Hilton disgusted too many of its previous lovers.

Extend help to those in need: Rudd

Kevin Rudd has realised that he doesn’t know how to run a country, has had a panic attack, and has started a mail-order fund-raiser.

Brisbane adopting pedal power

Having now discovered the “bicycle”, Brisbane’s next discovery will surely change the way we travel all over again.

Men get death penalty over tainted milk

The Chinese government is cracking down hard on tainted products and objects. “It’s lucky we finished our holiday there when we did,” said Marc Almond, vocalist of Softcell.

Electricity being restored to north Qld

Bicycles, and now electricity? Queensland is streets ahead of the rest of Australia right now.

Obama gown-maker ‘designs transvestite dolls’

...

Half Aussie women drink while pregnant

“We’re thinking of banning the dwarf community from pubs in general,” said a leading GP. “I mean, I don’t like looking at them, do you?”

Authorities destroy ‘risky’ cookie dough

This nearly came as a severe blow to Arnott’s new marketing campaign, but luckily they’ve still got other new products lined up, such as Hardcore Tim Tams and Xtreme Sao.

Rescuing bats a deadly game: authorities

“We should really start shooting ‘em instead,” said some resident of Kotara.

Look before leaping to avoid injury

As well as establishing this health benefit, doctors are advising “slow and steady wins the race”, “quality over quantity”, “mind over matter”, “the world is not enough” and “an apple a day keeps the doctor away, my arse. You’re doomed, all of you.”

This is the worst example of a recent register revolution that nearly caused businesses to lose their floats and not make a single dollar.

Qld dengue outbreak ‘worst since WWII’

...ah. Well, two steps forward, one step back.

ON THIS DAY:

1900 - Off of South Africa, the British released the German steamer Herzog, which had been seized on January 6.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: The Herzog immediately returned to its family and washed them with a hose, grumbling “Stop shivering. Stop shivering!”

1951 - Fidel Castro was ejected from a Winter League baseball game after hitting a batter. He later gave up baseball for politics.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: This convinced other ill-equipped stars to become political figures, such as Arnold Schwazzaneger and Greenday.

1984 - Apple introduced the Macintosh. It was the first computer to use point-and-click technology.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: None, as far as we can tell.

2003 - It was reported that scientists in China had found fossilized remains of a dinosaur with four feathered wings.

THE EFFECT IT HAD: None, since the discovery was eventually amended to; “China has found the bones of a man, who had been stricken with bird flu.”

DAILY FORTUNES:

ARIES: Fortune awaits you in the stars. But since you’re on Earth, you’ll be a nothing for the rest of your life.

TAURUS: I once went to a plaza where all the shops were named each consecutive letter of the Greek alphabet. No.19 was called – wait for it – TAU R US. HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!@L!>~!>!

GEMINI: Many things in life are underrated gems. Apart from gems, they’re pretty well rated. I like them a lot, actually, they’re shiny and lovely, I – what? Oh, erm, you’re going to be hit by a car or something. *shrugs*

CANCER: You will feel hungry at lunchtime. I advise you to eat.

LEO: The Simpsons is on tonight, have you ever seen that? It’s pretty good, yeah. How did I know it was on tonight? Well, it’s on every fucking night, isn’t it?

VIRGO: You will read tomorrow’s fortunes, and be as similarly disappointed with what you read as you are right now. Ungrateful swine.

LIBRA: I like to lie with bras myself! HAHAHAHALA>A>A!L!L!L!!!!!!!! Also you’re going to die. Sorry.

SCORPIO: Despite sounding like a Bond villain, there’s nothing cool, suave, ingenious, mad, or the remotest bit interesting about you. Mind you, at least your gal won’t run off with some guy just cos he’s a Scot who punched her in the face.

SAGITTARIUS: Whereas your wife will. See her running off? See that guy with her, smiling at you? I’ve got such lovely teeth, don’t I?

CAPRICORN: You will feel the strange desire to move to England today, unless you are in England, in which case you will feel the strange desire to move there again. This will be difficult.

AQUARIUS: The only good star-sign! ...hmm? No, no, I’m, er, a Scorpio. Honest.

PISCES: You will eat fish on Good Friday. Yeah, I know that’s a while away, but it’s inevitable really. If you try to change this, I will personally come to your house and force the fish down your throat.

TODAY’S COMIC:

Wednesday 21 January 2009

2009-01-21T01:32:00.000-08:00

– the leading light in news journalism, bringing you the shocking truth, mixed in with a couple of petty lies. In other words, we bring you... THE NEWS.

PRIOR NEWS:

Prior to TDS4A TODAY’s revamped dedication to bringing you THE NEWS, it was a blog by some person, we forget who. This means that we may have slightly missed a couple of news that have already occurred in 2009. As you can see, this news isn’t as important, since it isn’t in capitals. But we feel honourable enough to give you a brief rundown of news that caught our NEWS-READING EYE:

MORTAL K.O.MBAT

Two teenagers imitating graphic and gratuitous moves depicted in the controversial game Mortal Kombat has resulted in one of them being hospitalised, Ninemsn reported. The assailant has registered his shock at the incident, stating “I didn’t think ripping out her spine like Sub Zero does would, y’know, be fatal.”

HOURMONES
The results of scientific research have concluded that women with hourglass figures are more sexually active and more willing to cheat on their partners, revealed Ninemsn. Marilyn Monroe, star of films Some Like it Hour and Greenwich Prefer Blondes and international sex icon, has been described as the ultimate example of this phenomenon – reportedly, Monroe is still receiving sexual favours from men even after death.

Whether having an hourglass shape also determines a woman’s sexual practices is still being researched; allegedly, such women have “one-night stands”, which is a pre-determined length of time to spend with a sexual partner.

IN RECENT NEWS:

THE STEAKS ARE HIGH
Over $200,000 in federal government funding will help scientists find new ways of taking photos below the earth’s surface and improving the taste of beef, Ninemsn reports. In the midst of the economic crisis, it is felt by many that the taste of beef is a pertinent and urgent issue that Australia must face as a country; as our neighbour Eliot Fish put it, “Yeah, it’s like the plebs’ version of stroganoff.”

Senator Carr added that “As always, there are some particularly smart collaborations, such as research into white wine by two of the best wine-producing countries in the world”. The reporters of TDS4A TODAY would like to put our full support behind this notion; we enjoy researching alcoholic substances ourselves.

GALILEO GALILEO GALILEO FIGURO
Italian scientists are attempting to get Galileo’s DNA in order to figure out how the astronomer forged groundbreaking theories on the universe despite becoming blind, a historian who for some reason isn’t named says, according to Ninemsn. Scientists at Florence Institute’s and Museum of History of Science wish to exhume Galileo’s body in order to discover just how the hell could he see through his telescope.

Such a discovery would account for errors in Galileo’s theories: “We could explain... why he described the planet Saturn as having ‘lateral ears’ rather than having seen it encircled by rings for example,” said Paolo Galluzzi, the Institute’s director. The question seems to resolve itself, it seems, but evidently a further examination of his corpse is nonetheless necessary.

Following this, the Institute wishes to exhume the bodies of: Ludwig van Beethoven, to discover how he could write music whilst deaf; Vincent van Gogh, to discover how he could paint without an ear; and Napoleon Bonaparte, to discover how he got on a horse despite his shortness.

TEACH ME BABY, ONE MORE TIME
A Romanian migrant in the UK has confessed to violently raping a woman at a train station so that he could get English lessons at the same jail as his brother, reports Ninemsn. Ali Majlat attacked the 21-year-old woman at the West Yorkshire station after she spoke to him – he misinterpreted the phrase “Sorry, could I get through?” as “Take me here, take me now, oh god cum on my nipples and sniff my queefing.”

He then subjected the woman to a sustained attack, stole her phone, purse and bracelet and fled. The crime was caught on CCTV and shown on ITV by the police in order to apprehend him. Majlat happened to view the broadcast and phone in, mistaking the text on the TV saying “If you have seen this man, please call” for “Hey, Maj, how are you? Just thought I’d let you know, if you ring up, you’ll get a free holiday to Hawaii? How sweet is that! And yeah, I’m wearing a cop’s outfit because, goddamn, it’s really, really sexy.”

“When I was on the railway station I thought I should rape this lady in order to get a place to eat and sleep and learn the English language,” the Daily Mail quoted Majlat as saying to a psychologist. We would have thought that this was already in English, but apparently he needs to master the language even more so.

iSEE WITH MY LITTLE i, SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH “JFK”
In a poor-taste coincidence, a sophisticated “sniper” app for iPhone has been released on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, APC reports. It’s a fully functional app that a real sniper could attach to their piece and have all the maths done for them – complex ballistics variables such as the type of ammunition in their M110 semi-automatic, the distance to the soon-to-be-perforated plus prevailing wind direction and speed, temperature, humidity and current air pressure. Reportedly, Apple had the idea after seeing the “iGun” segment on Shaun Micallef’s topical show Newstopia, not realising that it was a joke.

It has come to TDS4A TODAY’s attention that this device was to be used in a plotted attempt to assassinate Barack Obama by the KKK as he stood on the steps of the White House and addressed a crowd on a podium. Our anonymous source tells us, however, that they did not manage to fire at Obama, because they were unable to distinguish him from the area.

ESKY ME, BUT I JUST HAVE TO EXPLODE
A rescue expert has cast doubts over the claims of two Burmese men who say they survived 25 days floating in an esky off Queensland’s Cape York, Ninemsn claims. NRMA CareFlight Rescue’s medical director Alan Garner stated that “There’s no way they could have survived 25 days without water... They don’t appear to have lost much weight. They didn’t appear to be suffering sun exposure and all the skin changes I would have expected to see.”

When asked what his theory was as to how they survived, Garner smiled and said, “Aliens.”

THE QUICKIES:

Emissions trading will cut jobs: Nats
“Rats!” would be more appropriate, we feel.

Serbs and Croats clash at Aussie Open
Very open-minded.

Anti-whalers may drop aggressive tactics
“Harpooning the Japs was fun and ironic, but we should probably stop,” said a spokesman.

Many jobless ‘may end up homeless'
The economic crisis will also lead to these jobless and homeless eventually becoming foodless, sexless, and lifeless.

Total fire ban imposed in Victoria
In other news: 100,000 Victorian chefs are now unemployed.

Nancy-Bird remembered as inspirational
Though admittedly it was because her name sounded like a gay icon, rather than a pilot.

Fiji asked to ‘please explain'
Pauline Hanson wishes to know what’s so good about Fiji, because she likes Seahaven as it is. Er, Australia.

Bush daughters tell Obama girls: just have fun
In tandem, Bush has told Obama “just have fun – I did! Iraq is my favourite game apart from Scrabble. I’m shit at both” as well.

Top Gear’s The Stig identified
“Just some bloke”, said an official spokesman for the show.

Obama kicks up his heels after inauguration
“There’s no place like home,” he said, horrified and anxious, after his tour of the White House.

Paula Abdul fan 'died from overdose'
“Yeah, we’re kinda sick of Idol too,” said her family.

Amy Winehouse almost died twice: father
“I just need to remember not to punch her in the abdomen, and then the beatings can continue,” Mr Winehouse stated.

Hudson heads performers at Grammy Awards
“Having my mother, brother and nephew killed wasn’t enough,” she revealed. “I just need more attention.”

Judith Lucy inspired by being 40
“We’re raking in the cash!” said Volvo spokesman, Gerard Brocklehurst.

SPORTS COVERAGE:
Australian sixteen-year-old tennis player Bernard Tomic will be facing off against Jelena Dokic at the Australian Open on Wednesday night.
Ninemsn’s Poll: Is Tomic frenzy dangerous?
Our Poll: What the hell kind of name is “Bernard” for a girl?

(Note: Until we have footage of Tomic strangling Dokic to death with a necktie, we are not so willing to describe her as “frenzy dangerous”)

Michael Slater, cricket commentator, has expressed his doubts over David Warner’s future career in the game.
Ninemsn’s Poll: Does Warner have a future with Aussies?
Our Poll: Should we organise his premature death to maintain our team’s dignity? Anyone?

THE SPORTS HEADLINES:
Essendon’s Hille stung by stingray
“They’re determined to knock off all of our celebrities,” says marine biologist Stephen Greene. “And good on ‘em.”

Griffiths not for sale, say Jets
But for those who are interested, other teams are perfectly willing to sell their players for sex.

England prop Stevens suspended
“I’m sick and tired of having a fucking prop lying around in the middle of the European Cup,” said an official. “This isn’t the fucking theatre.”

ON THIS DAY:

1846 – The first issue of the "Daily News," edited by Charles Dickens, was published.
THE EFFECT IT HAD: Dickens went on to become a vaguely-known magazine publisher, and isn’t remembered for much more than that.

1865 – An oil well was drilled by torpedoes for the first time.
THE EFFECT IT HAD: “Figured we should use, like, drills instead,” says builder.

1927 – The first opera broadcast over a national radio network was presented in Chicago, IL. The opera was “Faust”.
THE EFFECT IT HAD: Prestigious critics of the time inevitably filled their reviews with headlines such as, “I wish I hadn’t been FAUST to see this!”

2003 – It was announced by the U.S. Census Bureau that estimates showed that the Hispanic population had passed the black population for the first time.
THE EFFECT IT HAD: “Hispanic guys drive like this,” go amended comedy acts.

DAILY FORTUNES:

ARIES: You must be a nerd, because you’ve got lots of RAM. Get it? AHAHHAHAAHAHAH ALALL!L!L!!OL!!. Anyway, get a life, you shit.

TAURUS: I love Pokemon, it’s a great game. It has the message, “Gotta catch ‘em all.” This is to be your motto for the rest of the day around women, but be warned, it may end you in prison. And I’m not bailing you out this time.

GEMINI: There’s a gem! In I! HAAHAHAHAL!LL!L!>!!!L!>!>!:(. Anyway, my arse really hurts, I wish it was removed.

CANCER: Cancer? ...nah, can’t think of any jokes for this one.

LEO: Lions need to shave more often. Therefore, you need to shave more often. Have a shave.

VIRGO: Also known as the “Robster”, this sign means that you just won’t be getting Lucky tonight – which is a shame, because it’s a great song.

LIBRA: There’s some blood coming out of your vagina, just thought I’d call your attention to that.

SCORPIO: This is the most try-hardy name of all the constellations. I bet you think you’re soooo cool, don’t you? Well, you are. Can I get a ride in your Mustang?

SAGITTARIUS: More like, SAGGY TITS R US! HAHAHAA>A>AALALALAAA :3 Anyway, get un-implants, or something.

CAPRICORN: Your symbol says “no”, which means that you’re a very restrictive person. So stop restricting yourself, and have sex with anything you like. Yes, even trees. I find them delicious, myself.

AQUARIUS: Seriously, you think you rule water, or something? Snap back to reality, Xerxes.

PISCES: Seriously, you’re a FISH? Good luck with that, you waste of life. Go hang yourself already.

TODAY’S COMIC:

Political satire at its finest.

'REAPERCHILD' (An Ugmo comic) - PART FOUR

2009-01-12T06:33:00.001-08:00

'REAPERCHILD' (An Ugmo comic) - PART THREE

2009-01-12T03:02:00.001-08:00

'REAPERCHILD' (An Ugmo comic) - PART TWO

2009-01-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

'REAPERCHILD' (An Ugmo comic) - PART ONE

2009-01-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

"Merry Christmas And The Happy New Year!" - a bunch of tis-the-season Journal entries

2009-01-06T02:32:00.000-08:00

[As before, if you desperately want to discover what I wrote in the *CENSORED* sections, just ask and I will reveal. But if I censor it, it en't appropriate for this blog, you understand!)

Monday 22 December 2008
10:18pm

Jesus, it’s so nearly Christmas. And so nearly time to leave Singleton.

Hey Bz, you like “does want to someone through the penpal system”? Well, here’s one that’s nearly as bad:

“That’s the way to get into a girl’s heart; win a marathon. Actually, in the context of a sports film, that wouldn’t doesn’t seem so absurd.”

That wouldn’t doesn’t seem so absurd!

What’s really silly about it is that I actually made that typo whilst making fun of my 2006-self for being such an illiterate little shithead. Ah, how fate bites me in the arse.

Tuesday 30 December 2008
12:36am

Bugger – New Year’s tomorrow, and I still haven’t even thought properly about the New Year’s Resolutions yet. Y’know, the life-long goal ones [RETRO-NOTE: You won’t know about this, I only wrote about them in my Journal. They should be self-evident, though]

Currently back in Newcastle for Christmas, and then I’ll be back in Singleton for some of January, I guess, to… erm, drive. Damn. Anyway. It’s unlikely I’ll be working again – if only because, if I didn’t break away at the end of this year, I’d probably never break away – so technically I’ve said goodbye to people from work, which is the strangest feeling in the world. They’re not people I’d hang out with outside of work – barring the odd farewell or whatever – but I feel genuinely sad to say goodbye. And I haven’t even done that yet! God.

Have I done that in the past? I don’t remember feeling as dejected in previous years at saying goodbye to people as I did on my second-last and last shifts. Maybe it’s because every other goodbye – at least, since school ended – has always half-guaranteed inevitably stumbling into people again. That’s what Newcastle’s like. But leaving Singleton… apart from the odd visit, I probably won’t see anyone again.

And even if I do go up for the odd visit, I mean, will I really see, say, *CENSORED*.

And I can’t believe I just wrote *CENSORED*. Dear God, this is what nostalgia does. It makes you morph into a cliché-machine.

(Oh yeah; asked *CENSORED* Cowardly, aren’t I? But then, I’ve got so much more to lose with anyone knowing about how I *CENSORED*)

(Anyway, does this mean *CENSORED* Do I take this at face value, or… god, I don’t know. *CENSORED* I was one of only 30 friends to choose from)

This is why I rarely add people on Facebook and Myspace, really; once I’ve said goodbye, I find it infinitely awkward talking to people I really only liked in the context of classrooms. Don’t get me wrong, they’re great and lovely, but I wouldn’t talk to them outside of school because, well, what the hell do we talk about? Just the inevitable “What have you been up to”, I guess, which you can either answer with “not much”, thus killing all conversation, or going into detail, thus killing all interest.

So, looking back on this year. 2007 was my most productive year in terms of this Journal, but as some of the entries clearly attest, I spent most of that year… well… hating that year. Things have improved this year, and I don’t even mean for me personally. All those things I rabbited on about last year, they’ve been addressed and have (mostly) changed for the better. Rudd said “sorry”, for chrissakes!

And even though I spent a lot of (mostly early) 2008 entries talking about depression… I have this bizarre feeling that I wasn’t really depressed for long anyway, I just caught myself in moods. Oh yeah, and this was *CENSORED*. It wasn’t until my last week or so that I finally started to feel uncomfortable again. I felt old, which I hadn’t felt since the start of this year.

Yup. I’m definitely going to have to move on.

So has 2008 been the best year yet? With no real obligation other than work? Hmm. Well, let’s look at the benefits:

1) Internet. INTERNET, dammit. This can’t be stressed enough.

2) No course. NO COURSE, dammit.

3) Erm… okay, I’m running dry now. But 1 and 2 are bloody important.

4) Oh, money! I had money!

5) So many films, so much knowledge acquired. Mmm.

6) So many plans, so many ideas that completely changed our productions. Mungo is going to be an online book! Etc.

Cons:

1) Erm… I guess *CENSORED* counts as a con.

2) The real world invaded! I’d never had anything like *CENSORED*. Which probably says that I’m a sheltered individual, doesn’t it?

3) Living mostly on toast and Coke for so long. I don’t know if I’ve lost weight (and I’m really bloody skinny), but uh, yeah.

4) Living away from Liam wasn’t just lonely at times, it also meant a really stunted productivity. Effectively, I got nothing done. Hmmm.

Ultimate benefit, though: I was mostly happy! And “mostly happy” counts for a lot, it honestly does. It’s the maximum happiness you can ever have, and it’s lovely.

I might bother to do my New Year’s resolutions in a second, actually. But first, a note about a few films I’ve watched:

1) Finally watched Gummo. Twas good, deserves a rewatch to get all the comedy in it. There was definitely something I thought of that related to something Liam and I are planning, but now I’ve forgotten it completely. Argh.

2) Watched Serenity, so that’s finally all of Firefly wrapped up. That also means I’ve seen Doctor-candidate Chiwetel Ejiofor in action, and… and I think I need to see him in something else, because I was inevitably disappointed by him in such a fairly simple role.

3) Saw Twilight in the cinema. Competent acting, actually-nice direction. The story’s still rather lame, but y’know. It didn’t help that evil-vampire cocked his head and moved like Revolver Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 3. Or that Radiohead’s ‘15 Step’ was played as the end credits, which felt really odd.

4) Watched Quantum of Solace. Ah, what is it with me liking stuff I thought I’d hate, now? Hmm? I enjoyed this a great deal, and the best bit of the movie was undoubtedly Bond’s line, “Oh look! Someone’s trying to kill you!”. Definitely problematic, though: the opening titles are actually really dull; the movie ends really abruptly, which is possibly a bit brave but ultimately dissatisfying; and dammit, Quantum really are a useless concept. At least MI6 had heard of SPECTRE back in the 60s; here we’re supposed to believe that there’s an organisation working that no intelligence has ever heard of, yet not only does Bond very easily locate their meeting and listen in on their plans, but he basically sets up their downfall in just a couple of days. I mean, really.

5) Watched Land of the Dead… and it really is better than Day of the Dead, much better. Ebert agrees with me, amazingly (well actually, other way around, naturally). I’ve read the IMDB boards trying to work out why people think Day is better, but so far the only reason I can find is that it’s a classic. Which is meaningless. And the only actual criticism I’ve seen thrown at Land – as in, real criticism, rather than “what was Romero thinking? This was trash!” and such – was that the zombies learned how to use guns. But c’mon, this happened in Day, for fuck’s sake! And since when has reinvention been a bad thing, anyway?

Right, though. It’s time.

*ominous music*

Dalek: “What-is-that-ooooo-mi-nous-noise?”

It’s…

THE PROPER and UTTERLY-RIDICULOUS but ALL HONEST NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS THAT ACTUALLY APPLY TO DOM’S ENTIRE LIFE LIST!

I’m betting none of them will be as ridiculous as that title.

Anyway, I’ll divide them into “Proper” and “Utterly-Ridiculous” where appropriate. Some I’ll leave blank, for the fun of it (and because I probably can’t decide… whether you should live or die, I should kill you in your sleep but you said sleep is for tortoises and so you never do although Captain Jack said he didn’t sleep in ‘Ghost Machine’ and then we saw him dreaming two episodes later so who knows maybe I could and oh whoops I’m talking too long sorry I’ll shutup n-)

Okay, completely off the top of my head:

1) *CENSORED* (Why did that crop up first? *sigh*) [Proper]
2) Erm… *CENSORED* [Utterly-Ridiculous]
3) Do Free Quay st, exactly as I’d planned it. With the three TV series, with all of the book series, no creative decision compromised. Obviously I’d like no creative decision compromised with anything I do, but still, y’know. [Proper]
4) Have Free Quay st be not just critically acclaimed, but a boot in the back of the Australian TV industry that will not only allow Liam and I to continue on with other things (e.g. These Storeys Never End, the TV series thereof), but will allow new creative talent to emerge in this country. [Utterly-Ridiculous]
5) Record Sensiship, release it. [Proper]
6) Record every other Vaudewraith album as planned – changing details along the way as I see fit, no doubt. [Proper]
7) Have Vaudewraith be recognised as a great band/musical duo/whatever. Have the albums really, really work, and be hailed as brilliantly constructed, intellectually stimulating, boundary-pushing, utterly-Australian and lyrically-beautiful pieces of art. [Utterly-Ridiculous]
8) Realise how most of this Resolutions List will make me look like I’ve got horrible neuroses, and stop myself before I get big-headed. [Utterly-Ridiculous]
9) Film and release my many planned films, including: the one I talked about with Liam about kids having only days to live; Mothership; R+R; Adrift, all three of them. [Proper]
10) Write Vampire Counsel, release it, and have it not dismissed as a crappy attempt to steal Twilight’s thunder. [Proper]
11) Finally do The Bromine Rapier properly – renaming it, no doubt – as I envisioned it would look earlier this year. [Utterly-Ridiculous]
12) Erm… Doctor Who the Thirteenth? [Utterly-Ridiculous] Yes I know it is, shutup already.
13) Watch every Hitchcock movie, every other director I respect’s movies, every… oh hell. Every single good movie I want to watch.
14) The Celebrities I’d Like to Make Love to Include: Catherine Zeta-Jones; Mary Tamm; Carey Mulligan; Sophia Myles (I’m such a nerd, aren’t I); Eve Myles; Morena Baccarin; Myanna Buring; Kate Winslet; Cheryl Cole; Paula Abdul; Sarah Smart; Julie Graham; oh hell, there’s many more that I’d kick myself when I think of them, but haven’t included so far. Oh, t.A.T.u.! Bjork! Er… let’s leave it there.
15) The Girls I’ve Met who I’d Love to Make Love to Include: Y’know, let’s just say “most of them”; most of my teachers, classmates, girls I talk to. And uh, yes.
16) Experience every Doctor Who story ever made. Even the ones yet to be made. [Utterly-Ridiculous]
17) Do Peicey properly. The books, I mean. [Proper]
18) Do Peicey properly. The TV series, I mean.
19) Play Peicey in the TV series.
20) Have loads of people read my blog, talk about my film reviews, whatever.
21) Oh god, I really can’t think of anymore, and yet I’ll think of more over the next few days and cringe that I forgot. Oh well, er… I’ll put more in, this can be an ongoing thing. Unless I forget to continue it, and… no, wait! I can plan against that…
22) Finish things that I promise I will in this Journal. Mwahah, get past that one, Dom!
23) And… more to the point, explain. Explain this fucking Journal. Write a guide to it or something so that newcomers (i.e. Bz) can read it from the start and understand it. Do the Cast of Characters! Make this readable and understandable, even if it is your Journal! You can do it, Dom, I know you can! Yeah! I BELIEVE IN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [Utterly-Ridiculous]

Friday 02 January 2009
9:04pm

Despite acquiring a number of films, recently, I –

What’s that? “New Year’s Resolutions”, you say non-verbally? Hey, I wasn’t joking when I wrote “Utterly Ridiculous”, you know. Well actually, I was, but only because humour is truth, or something.

– haven’t watched any of them.

I watched Gummo, mind, but I won’t talk about that because a) it’ll need a rewatch for me to appreciate (i.e. like) it better* and b) not talking about it will kill Liam.

Instead, I’m here to talk about Lynch.

(No, not really)

*What I mean is, I liked it, but it was so odd that it was impossible to like straightaway, if you see what I mean.

(As I often say when referring to something I wrote previously…) A little while ago, I said that I had argued for the validity of comics as a serious medium. Technically my argument was silly, because graphic novels are obviously considered far better and more mature than they were in “the past” (y’know, the past), but there’s still some merit to it when you consider I was mostly annoyed at the generation who consider what constitutes classic literature. Y’know, like how depraved-sexuality-based Lolita is a classic, but similarly depraved From Hell isn’t. Or how Metal Gear Solid isn’t seen to be an artistic achievement, or Okami.

And yes, I’m fully aware that they’re far more recent than Lolita is, except… I’m not sure that’s really relevant. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is talked of as one of those “don’t panic, just read it” books, and that’s the 70s. Alan Moore’s ground-breaking graphic novels came out in the 80s. So that’s hardly an issue. Hell, I was amazed that Agatha Christie was still around in the 70s, because she seemed so oldy-worldy from the way literate-types talked about her.

Anyway, we live in the nostalgia decade. We can access information at our fingertips, click of a mouse, all those things I could say that just mean “the internet’s here, folks. It wants to say hi, stay for a bit, rummage around your house, drink some tea”. If we can have programmes devoted to the 90s, and even to the early 00’s, there’s no way in/from hell that this needs to be an issue.

(Although I’d agree that the word “classic” possibly needs to be thrown out. By its very nature, it implies “old”. “Canon of literature”? Nah, “canon” is a word that eats me from the inside [yes, I am a Doctor Who fan, born and inbred]. So just “literature” will do)

ANYWAY, this is all irrelevant, so irrelevant that I had to put that in capitals as well as italics.

Point is: I said I’d branch out, and David Hampton has helped me, because he has nothing better to do. Which is lovely.

So; V for Vendetta. Definitely better as a graphic novel, if only because the story is told more interestingly (e.g. the chapter that opens with a piano recital). The story’s pretty much the same – and V still strikes me as villainous (“V”illanious! LOL!) rather than heroic, in a way – but there’s a line in there where he says “this isn’t anarchy, this is chaos”. From memory that isn’t in the movie, which is unfortunate because that line is essential.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… actually I haven’t read the black dossier one yet, so I don’t have a valid opinion yet. It’s probably my least favourite, though.

From Hell, though, is spectacular. Genuinely amazing, and somehow it feels more epic and huge than V for Vendetta ever does.

And for anime… well, I haven’t been branching out a huge amount, admittedly, but I have been avidly watching Death Note. I’m fucking addicted, and every time I finish a DVD volume, I hunger for the next one. It’s insanely good.

I wanted to say a lot more about From Hell and Death Note, actually, but I sort of can’t think of what to say. Jesus, I’m becoming like Liam: “It’s great!” *NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THIS STATEMENT*

Oh well.

Postscript:

Guess what? As I just said to MICHAEL SANDFORD!!!!*, I just realised; now that it’s 2009, everything from 2008 will have to be moved to Tds4a Yesterday. *sigh* Why do I do this to myself? Anyway, I’ll probably do a "Greatest Hits of 2008" thing like I did for 2007 - yes! I’m that much of a self-obsessed prick! - but it’d be cool if like you guys could tell me your favourite bits, so I didn’t have to choose my own. That way it’d be slightly less conceited.

*There you go, Sandy. You were mentioned!

Dom Stand-Up, Or: How I Laughed at Offensive Things and Learned to Watch My Mouth

2008-12-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Did a stand-up gig recently, and it didn’t go very well. For some reason my first anecdote really pissed off the audience.

It went something like this:

‘So I was reading about, uh, about when Hitler met with his respected men, like Goebbels, Goering, all those mad blokes, and they were discussing how they’d get rid of “the problem of the Jews’, y’know. So they’re throwing in ideas, from segregation to… to… I dunno, to pretending they know where Mt Zion is, right.

And eventually, like, Hitler decides that getting rid of them should be meant literally, he decides that they have to die.

“We must exterminate them all!” he says, Dalek-style.

The others agree to this in their own ways, like, Goering was over the moon, and Goebbels just sits in his chair and smiles smugly, being the rat that he is. But like, they hadn’t thought of a way to carry out the plan yet. So they’re thinking of ways to do it.

Hitler’s all, “I think we should have them shot!”

Goering says, “Maybe we should poison their food.”

And Hitler says, “We should put them in a concentration camp, kill them in secrecy”, and that idea goes down a storm too, Goering leaping from his chair in delight, Goebbels sitting there smugly with his hands under the table, just enjoying it all. But then, like, they still needed a way to kill them within the camps, at Auschwitz, whatever.

So Hitler says, “We should still have them shot!”

And Goering says, “We could throw them in an oven!”

And all the while Goebbels is trying to think of something good, something worth saying.

“Hang them!”

“Bury them alive!”

And something’s coming to Goebbels now.

“Break their necks!”

“Slice off their heads!”

“OH! Oh oh oh! Or gas ‘em!” Goebbels yells!

And there’s this sudden pause as everyone just… just looks at him, really shocked and looking kind of uncomfortable. And Goebbels is wondering what the hell he’s done. Like, how was what he said any worse than what they said?

So he says, “Sorry, have I said something wrong?”

And Hitler replies, “Goebbels, there’s nothing wrong with it, but please refrain from masturbating at our meetings.”’

Night of the Laughing Dead

2008-11-30T06:48:00.000-08:00

Spoilers for Psycho, The Exorcist, the of the Dead films, and possibly 28 Days Later.

A little while ago, I talked about the use of comedy in films, how it made things feel more real, more believable. This is swimming around in my head again now, because someone I know recently said that they’d seen The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and said that the latter was better. Before I got the chance to say “YOU FUCKING RETARD, I WILL CUT YOUR BRAINS OUT AND FEAST ON THEM, AND THEN YOUR MOTHER WILL EAT FAGGOTS IN HELL, KARRAS” – which I probably wouldn’t have said, really – they elaborated; Emily Rose is... is scarier.

Look, I haven’t even seen Emily Rose, but I’d be fucking amazed if it happened to be better than The Exorcist, the film which I always think of as my favourite horror film, before remembering that I rate Psycho above it.

(That in itself is interesting, because it says something about what we expect horror to be; a demon vomiting pea soup is more instantly “horror” than someone wearing his mother’s clothes and slicing someone in a shower... isn’t it? Isn’t it? Hmm... I don’t know. I’ll check to see if there’s time before dinner!)

The Exorcist is brilliant because it doesn’t just go for scares. The notion of a horror only being good if it scares you is as alien* a concept to me as a comedy only being great if it makes you laugh. I mean, yeah, laughing’s great, but... but I laugh at things that aren’t comedy too. Whether something makes me personally laugh lots is almost completely irrelevant to how many jokes that something has. And yes, as an example, I laughed far more during The Exorcist than during... say... any old Adam Sandler movie**.

*That is, I can see it. I just don’t feel it.

**Excluding Punch-Drunk Love. Not that I’ve seen it, I’m just excluding it on what I’ve heard.

...recently I have been thinking, based purely on the number of horror movies I’d rate super-highly, that I’m a horror fan in general. That’s probably bullshit, especially in regards to TV – arguably the scariest thing I watch on TV is Doctor Who, and we all know how scary that really is – but there’s some weight to that in regards to film. For me, especially, one of the things I find immediately interesting about horror films is how they tend to immediately force a director to raise his game. Take Psycho (which is a horror film; leaning more towards slasher within that horror spectrum); the opening scenes are well-directed, but there’s nothing much to distinguish that from anything Hitchcock hasn’t already done in, say, The 39 Steps. It’s a thriller at that point. And then comes the shower scene, and suddenly, it’s not just the tone of the film that changes, it’s the entire direction. The shots are sudden and quick-cut, which they hadn’t been up until that point; in a sense, the direction’s stabbing you as horrifically as the music and, well, killer. So there’s definitely something there that forces a director to think about manipulating his audience, purely in the sense of making them frightened. I don’t mean “audience manipulation” in the negative sense either – like cheesy music that tells you how to feel – I mean it in a good way. Making the audience scared is as valid and stimulating a process as making them sad, or making them think, or making them joyful.

Most definitely though, I tend to really dig films that make you feel about fifty different things; not necessarily at once, but certainly throughout. Laughing one second, crying the next (admittedly I don’t actually do either all that much, but I feel emotional. Maybe I’m just too much of a maaaan). Nearly all of my favourite films lurch between tone and emotion wildly; Trainspotting, Frenzy, Brazil. And as you’ll notice – assuming you’ve seen all of those films (which current readers of my blog, erm, probably won’t have) – those three all offset their seriousness with bizarre comedy.

As Steph-from-work has said to me to prove that she’s learnt something from me (no, really, she has); this is black comedy, this is dark comedy. It’s brutal and uncompromising, but somehow it makes it all more worthwhile. It makes the seriousness more serious if it’s intercut with humour. I think it was Sarah Jane Smith that said “we need the bad times to understand the good”, and the opposite is true as well.

(Seriously, I just quoted Sarah Jane Smith and Steph in a paragraph, for christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with me?)

But hang on, let’s get even more personal (leeet’s get peeerrssonnnaalll...). I, well... I don’t get scared by horror films. Probably a bit of a generalisation, but it’s broadly true. If I have been scared during a horror film, it’s been a lovely surprise, an addition to the experience, rather than the acid test of whether that horror film is good or not. Offhand, I can only remember being scared in The Exorcist – the spiderwalk scene, mainly because of the way it’s done (fuck, it still creeps me out) – and Psycho, when Norman Bates appears, grinning manically, in his mother’s clothes at the end of the film, and screams the most horribly animalistic scream I’ve ever heard. Coupled with the strings going, well, psycho, it swipes at my nerves jarringly.

And... and that’s it.

Which is (erm, possibly) interesting in itself. After all, I do like to watch horror films – as I’ve said about thirty times already – and in particular, I’ve now thrown myself through the (original) three of the Dead movies. Yes, that’s right, I hadn’t seen them before I watched Shaun of the Dead. That actually didn’t matter, because I still knew what it was parodying, even if I hadn’t seen the source material, if you see what I mean (like how one knows what exactly Life of Brian is parodying, even if that one has never properly read the Bible. Like, well, me, again). The only slight added understanding now is Ed at the end of the film playing videogames as a zombie, which now makes sense to me seeing as it’s that final memory thing that leads the zombies to the mall in Dawn and is a big part of Day.

Anyway, before I go into whether I liked them or not – although it should become apparent in a second – let’s look at Dawn of the Dead.

It really is one of the best horror movies ever made, and I don’t just say that on some stupid feeling of “Oh, it’s pivotal, so I’ve got to say it’s one of the best”. Didn’t work for Carpenter’s The Thing, ain’t gonna work here (although The Thing is hardly as monumental, of course). Which is perhaps surprising, considering that, even though I liked Night of the Living Dead – particularly the ending – I was also a bit bored by it. I didn’t expect a huge amount from Dawn, to be perfectly honest.

What I did expect was... well, the whole consumerism angle. I knew of that, and so I figured I could at least look at that interesting side-angle if the film itself began to bore the shite out of me. Then there’s the issue of pacing. Now, I’ve seen so many long, “old” films now that I’m thankfully not at a stage where a film being slow is going to put me off. Hell, 2001 is one of my favourites, and that’s as slow as watching the sun move across the sky (perhaps appropriately).

But the zombies... hmm. My window into the zombie genre is really through the (zombie-less, actually) film 28 Days Later. I’m raised on the speed, not on the theatricality, of monsters. I’m raised on shaky-cam in horror, on Blair Witch, not on monsters slowing jerking along the screen whilst a camera slowly pans over them. And anyway, more to the point, Night of the Living Dead’s zombies were hardly the most interesting of foes. To be frank, I found them boring. I also found them ridiculous.

But...! And this is the thing I hadn’t been told about Dawn of the Dead before watching it, which I’m actually thankful for (technically this could ruin it for you, but hey, I did say “spoilers”. I’m not about to ruin another movie like I did Dancer in the Dark for Bown); Romero seems to have found them ridiculous too. And in Dawn, he’s not afraid to show them as such.

It didn’t start well, admittedly; the opening scene’s great, but the assault on the tower block was a pile of horseshit. I liked the zombies sitting around eating, but when they were lurching up and down the stairs, being pummelled with bullets, they were simply dodgy.

And then... and then our-four-heroes fly away in a helicopter, and fly over a whole host of rednecks and army blokes out in the country. And we see zombies staggering towards them, and the rednecks are just calmly taking potshots at them. More to the point, they’re making a game of it. They’re having fun, they’re taking the piss out of the monsters.

A scene later, a zombie threatens one-hero as he loads up the helicopter... and stupidly gets its head sliced off by the rotors.

That’s the key thing. Now that Romero had my attention (well, the audience’s; he was hardly making the movie just for me, cos I’m great but I’m not that great :P), now that he showed off how silly the idea of zombies were, he was free to redefine what’s actually scary about them. Because a zombie slowly lumbering towards you over a grassy field isn’t scary. You have ample time to run away, or to find a weapon and clobber it. But a zombie slowly lumbering towards you in an enclosed space is scary, because you can’t escape, and it’s going to fucking kill and eat you.

Having revealed their silliness, the zombies are, once the action moves to the mall, scary again. They’re still played for laughs half of the time, but then suddenly they’ll come out and bite someone to pieces. The ending of the film has this in spades; some bikers are throwing pies in their faces for god’s sakes in one scene, and then a few scenes later are having their intestines ripped out and feasted upon. It’s gruesome, and it’s horrific because it’s a lot more unexpected. In short, it just works.

And then... and then there’s Day of the Dead, which by contrast has a great opening scene, and then turns into utter horseshit for a variety of reasons. I’ll go over those other reasons later (perhaps not in this entry, I might go to bed. I’m not actually tired, mind), but the biggest thing is purely that the people underground have no sense of humour whatsoever. They’re dull military or scientist types who spend their time arguing and making horribly-acted threats towards each other. Ebert said that the acting in this was bad – I’d go so far as to say it’s atrocious, and that the best acting comes from Bub the Zombie, for fuck’s sake – but the acting in Dawn of the Dead isn’t amazing either. But it works, because the characters work; they’re depressed, they’re sad, they’re scared, they’re laughing their heads off. They’re real people. It almost doesn’t matter who’s cast in the parts, and with the exception of David Emge, the other parts are completely interchangeable.

It’s a funny thing, comedy (oh, haha [...god, that was like three pun-ny warpings in seven words. I’m thoroughly confused]). I’m very much of the opinion that it’s what makes characters in films feel like real people, but even moreso in horror. And in horror, the characters have to feel like real people, because – in most horror, at least – the whole point is to make them “like us”. So Regan MacNeill’s fate in The Exorcist is horrific not just because she’s a child, but because she’s a sweet, happy-go-lucky child who we hear laughing embarrassedly on a tape recording. The victims in horror films are usually given “realism” by having boyfriends, or some such other connection to real-life. Discussing boys or something. That’s all well and good, but humour’s more universal, it’s more instantaneous. And if done right, it’s not as forced.

Which is why – incidentally – that whole, “OH MY GOD SOMETHING SCARY.... hahaHAHAHAHA, JUST A TERROR TOWER JOOKE!” thing in films, where you have a character that pretends something scary’s going on just for a giggle, never works properly (see; The Evil Dead). It never works because it always feels like a plot contrivance; it’s the director trying to make you scared, and then copping out. It’s got nothing to do with the character whatsoever, and thus it’s hideously annoying.

(And Goosebumps books were fucking full of them, so I probably grew up biased against such things)

Ironically enough, this is why Scream works, despite its occasionally crippling postmodernism. The kids may be too snarkily smug about pop culture horror films, but at least it proves they do have a sense of humour, about themselves as well. Which is more than can be said for any of the faceless nobodies in Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Actually, though... there is one exception in my whole top films list – not that I really have one at the moment, I haven’t bothered thinking it through for a while – to this rule, a horror film that doesn’t really have much comedy at all. I’ve mentioned it a few times already; 28 Days Later. It’s not entirely humourless – witness the buckets-of-rain bit, for example – but it’s not something that ever makes me smile, either. Luckily though, it’s made up for by its beauty amidst its vile, disgusting core... and in fact, showing that vile, disgusting core to also be beautiful in itself. It slowly ponders along with its moods, and then fuckingstabsatyouwithanInfectedattack.

(That’s sort of why 28 Weeks Later – even though I do really like it, probably more than I should – just isn’t as good. It’s got a higher count of brilliant set-pieces, but the whole thing is nihilistic and hopeless, and there’s no real sense of emotion after the opening with Carlyle leaving his wife to die. In a sense that’s brave and applause-worthy... but it’s also a hindrance to making it truly great. Which is why Boyle needs to do 28 Months Later, because he’s a director who understands how to flit between tones, particularly comedy and horror, with ease; Shallow Grave and Trainspotting both being great examples)

But – yes, I’m still going to yap on about this, at least for a while longer – it also applies to the villains. Without wanting to go into too much detail; why is it that Freddy Kruger is great, but Jason Voorhees sucks? Because the former is flamboyantly humorous, and the second is silent. Silent but deadly, yes, but so un-humorous is he that not only is he dull, he wouldn’t even see how “silent but deadly” could be a fart joke*. The devil is amazing in The Exorcist because it finds so many things funny, which is creepier than it acting all serious and doom-laden; so the moment when it says it’ll stay inside Regan “until she dies and lies rotting in the earth” is far more scary than had it said, “Evil will consume the woooorld!” In fact, you almost get the sense that the devil’s just possessing a girl and making her masturbate with a crucifix for a lark, for some sick joke. Which is, again, scarier.

Norman Bates is charmingly funny, the zombies are funny to watch... oh, you get the point.

*...yes, I know that fart jokes aren’t the height of sophistication. Because, you know, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Lynch, Gilliam... they never resorted to obscene, juvenile jokes. Never, ever, ever.

Fucked-Up Lyrics of a Crazed Madman

2008-11-23T21:36:00.000-08:00

My useless hope; that the guy who wrote these will never see this. Otherwise, a) he'll kill me, or b) he will disrespect me. Not sure which is worse!

Without wanting to make it obvious, for some reason or other... I found myself with this guy's lyric-books. They are so brilliant that I had to write them down. Simply HAD to.

(not edited; chords provided where provided in the text. Some lyrics are in capitals, because that’s the way he writes. Even in text messages!)

MARRIED W/CHILDREN
VERSE
THERE’S NO NEED FOR YOU TO SAY YOU’R SORRY... GOODBYE I’M GOIN’ HOME
I DONT CARE NO MORE SO DONT YOU WORRY... GOODBYE I’M GOIN’ HOME

CHORUS
I HATE THE WAY THAT EVEN THOUGH YOU KNOW YOUR WRONG... YOU SAY YOUR RIGHT...
I HATE THE BOOKS YOU READ AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS... YOUR MUSICS SHITE
IT KEEPS ME UP ALL NIGHT... UP ALL NIGHT

VERSE 2
- (nothing written here)

CHORUS 2
I HATE THE WAY THAT YOU ARE SO SARCASTIC AND YOUR NOT VERY BRIGHT... YOU THINK THAT EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONES FANTASTIC... YOUR MUSIC’S SHITE IT KEEPS ME UP ALL NIGHT... UP ALL NIGHT
AND IT WILL BE NICE TO BE ALONE FOR A WEEK OR TWO... THEN I KNOW THAT I WILL BE RIGHT... RIGHT BACK HERE WITH YOU...! Verse!

PROMISES
I DON’T CARE IF YOU NEVER COME HOME
I DON’T MIND IF YOU JUST
KEEP ON ROLLING AWAY ON A DISTANT SEA
CAUSE I DON’T LOVE YOU AND YOU DON’T LOVE ME

CAUSE A COMMOTION WHEN YOU COME TO TOWN
GIVE EM YOUR SMILE AND THEY MELT
AND IN LOVERS AND FRIENDS ITS ALL GOOD IN MIND
BUT I DON’T LIKE YOURS AND YOU DON’T LIKE MINE

LA LA, LA LA LA LA LA. LA LA, LA LA LA LA LA.

I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR NIGHT
OH I DON’T CARE HOW YOU GET YOUR DELIGHTS
I’LL LEAVE YOU ALONE AND I’LL JUST LET IT BE
I DON’T LOVE YOU AND YOU DON’T LOVE ME

I GOT A PROBLEM CAN YOU RELATE
I GOT A WOMAN CALLING LOVE HATE
WE MADE A VOW WE’LL ALWAYS BE FRIENDS
HOW COULD WE KNOW THAT PROMISES END

LA LA etc.,

I TRIED TO LOVE YOU FOR YEARS UPON YEARS
YOU REFUSED TO TAKE ME FOR REAL
ITS TIME YOU SAW WHAT I LIKED YOU TO SEE
CAUSE I STILL LOVE YOU BUT YOU JUST WONT SEE

I GOT A PROBLEM etc.,

LA LA etc.,

DREAM LOVER
(hard to read, but it looks like the chords involved here are either Emaj or Fmaj, and Gmaj. No, that’s all. He’s also put in little ticks, which I assume designate where one changes from Emaj to Gmaj. I’ll put asterisks where these ticks are)

*EVERYNIGHT I HOPE AND PRAY
*A DREAM LOVER WILL COME MY WAY
*A GIRL TO HOLD IN MY ARMS
*TO KNOW THE MAGIC OF HER CHARMS

BECAUSE I WANT* A GIRL* TO CALL MY OWN
I WANT A * DREAM LOVER* SO I DON’T HAVE TO* DREAM ALONE

DREAM LOVER WHERE ARE YOU
WITH A LOVE OH SO TRUE
AND A HAND THAT I CAN HOLD
TO FEEL YOU NEAR AS I GROW OLD

BECAUSE I WANT A GIRL TO CALL MY OWN
I WANT A DREAM LOVER SO I DON’T HAVE TO DREAM ALONE

SOMEDAY I DON’T KNOW HOW
I HOPE SHES GONNA HEAR MY PLEA
SOMEWAY I DON’T KNOW HOW
SHE’LL BRING HER LOVE TO ME

DREAM LOVER UNTIL THEN
I’LL GO TO SLEEP I’M GONNA DREAM AGAIN
THAT’S THE ONLY THING TO DO
TILL ALL MY LOVIN DREAMS COME TRUE

BECAUSE I WANT etc.

I WANT A DREAM LOVER SO I DON’T HAVE TO DREAM ALONE.

Dream Baby.
(The only chord listed here is Emaj. Possibly that’s all you play for the entire song)

Sweet Dream Baby
Sweet Dream Baby
Sweet Dream Baby
How long must I dream

Dream baby got me dreamin sweet dreams
The whole day through

Dream baby got me dreamin sweet dreams
Night time too

I love you and I’m dreamin of you
But that wont do

Dream baby make myself my dreamin
You can make my dreams come true

Oh sweet dream baby

Yeah sweet dream baby

Sweet dream baby

How long must I dream

Sweet dream baby
Sweet dream baby
Sweet dream baby
How long must I dream.

Forever Blue
(Finally, some more chords!)
[A F#m C#m;] D A E7 A F E7 A E
(I’ll put the chords in brackets next to the lyrics)

[A] Nobody [F#m] ever [C#m] worms you
[A] Or tells you [F#m] what to do [C#m]
[D] She walks [A] away, [E7] your left to [A] stay
[F] Alone [E7] forever [A] blue [E]

[A] The stars [F#m] have all [C#m] stopped shining
[A] The sun [F#m] just won’t [C#m] break through
[D] Each days [A] the same [E7] more clouds [A] more rain
[F] Your left [E7] forever [A] blue

[G#7] Forever blue cause you [A] love her
[G#7] But she doesn’t [A] love you
[D] You did [A] your best, [E7] life did the [A] rest
[F] Your left [E] forever [A] blue [E7]

SOLO

[A] No reason [F#m] left for [C#m] living, [A] still theres a [F#m] lot to [C#m]
[D] New tears to [A] cry, [E] old songs to [A] sing
[F] And feel [E] forever [A] blue (1 2 3 4)
[F] And be forever [A] blue

(Note; I can’t read, it might not say “worms”. Damn hand-writing)
(Note; “stopped shining” actually looks like “stofed shining”)
(Note; “Each days the same”, since it has no apostrophe, actually looks like “each clays the same”)
(Note; at the bottom, Gm/E, Em and Dm/E are listed as chords, but aren’t in the song. Possibly they’re for the solo)

You’LL HAVE TO GO...
PUT YOUR SWEET LIPS A LITTLE CLOSER TO THE PHONE
LETS PRETEND THAT WE’RE TOGETHER ALL ALONE
TELL THE MAN TO TURN THE DUKEBOX WAY DOWN LOW
YOU CAN TELL YOUR FRIEND THATS WITH YOU HE’LL HAVE TO GO...
WHISPER TO ME TELL ME DO YOU LOVE ME TRUE
IS HE HOLDING YOU THE WAY I DO
THOUGH LOVE IS BLIND... MAKE UP YOUR MIND... I GOTTA KNOW... OR HANG UP
OR WILL YOU TELL HIM HE’LL HAVE TO GO
YOU CANT SAY THE WORDS I WANNA HERE WHICE YOUR WITH ANOTHER MAN
DO YOU LOVE ME... ANSWER YES OR NO

I’LL BE YOUR BABY TONIGHT
(Cmaj is the only chord listed)

Close your eyes, close the door
You don’t have to worry any more
I’ll be your baby tonight.

Shut the light, shut the shade
You don’t have to be afraid.
I’ll be your baby tonight.

Well the mockingbird’s gonna sail away,
We’re gonna forget it.
That big fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon,
But we’re gonna let it,
You won’t regret it.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear
Bring that bottle over here.
I’ll be your baby tonight.

Be my Baby,
Be My Baby,
Be My Baby,
Be My Baby,

I’ll be your baby tonight.

(Yeah) I’ll be your baby tonight.

WELCOME TO MY WORLD:
WONT YOU COME ON IN
MIRICALES I GUESS
STILL HAPPEN NOW AND THEN
STEP INTO MY HEART
LEAVE YOUR CARES BEHIND
WELCOME TO MY WORLD
FILLED WITH YOU IN MIND
KNOCK AND THE DOOR WILL OPEN...
SEEK AND YOU WILL FIND
ASK AND YOU’LL BE GIVEN
THE KEY TO THIS HEART OF MINE
I’LL BE WAITING THERE...
WITH MY ARMS UNFURLED
WAITING JUST FOR YOU
WELCOME TO MY WORLD...

(Untitled)
(chords: A, Em, D, F#. No placement)

DARLIN’ I’M FEELING PRETTY LONESOME
I’D CALL YOU ON THE PHONE SOMETIME...
BUT I DONT HAVE A LINE (DIME)
DARLIN’ YOUR SO FAR BEHIND ME
TOMORROWS GONNA FIND ME
FURTHER DOWN THE LINE [F#m]
TAKE A [Mercedes Benz symbol. No, really] OF PAPER...
PENCIL IN MY HAND...
IM GONNA WRITE DARLN’... YOU KNOW I FEEL THE COLD NIGHTS...
THINKING OF THE OLD NIGHTS... SPENT ALONE WITH YOU
DARLN’ A TEAR IS IN MY EYE NOW
DARLN’ I CAN TRY NOW TO MAKE IT BACK TO YOU [F#m]
DARLN’ LOVE YOU MORE THAN EVER
WISH WE WERE TOGETHER
DARLN OF MINE

Summer Time
SUMMER TIME AND THE GIVING IS EASY
FISH ARE JUMPING, AND THE COTTON IS HIGH
YOUR DADDIES RICH AND YOUR MOMMIES GOODLOOKING

SO HUSH LITTLE BABY AND DONT YOU CRY
[Am G Em G Am B]

ONE OF THESE MORNINGS
YOUR GONNA RISE UP SINGN’

SPREAD YOUR WINGS AND TAKE TO THE SKY
BUT TIL THAT MORNING
AINT NOTHING CAN HARM YOU
WITH YOUR MOMMA AND YOUR DADDA
STANDING BY...

Em/D/C – Am/C/B/C/B – Bridge

(Not very helpful, those chords)

Layla
(By the way; it’s possible – nay, likely – some of these songs aren’t his. So I might be wrong, particularly about this one)
(...Liam just informed me it isn’t his, so there we go. Moving on!)

GOOD LUCK CHARM
DON’T WANT A FOUR LEAF CLOVER (7)
DON’T WANT AN OLD HORSE SHOE (6)
WANT YOUR KISS CAUSE I JUST (8)
CAN’T MISS* WITH A GOOD LUCK
CHARM LIKE YOU

COME ON AND BE MY LITTLE GOOD
LUCK CHARM AH HA HA YOU SWEET <- open (14)
DELIGHT (11)
I WANT A GOOD LUCK CHARM HANGING
ON MY ARM TO HAVE (TO HOLD)
TO HOLD (TO HOLD) TO NIGHT <- open

DON’T WANT A SILVER DOLLAR A RABBITS
FOOT ON A STRING. MY HAPPINESS
AND YOUR WARM CARESS* NO RABBITS
FOOT CAN BRING.

COEM ON AND BE MY LITTLE* GOOD LUCK
CHARM A HA HA SWEET DELIGHT.
I WANT A GOOD LUCK CHARM HANGING
ON MY ARM TO HAVE (TO HAVE)
TO HOLD (TO HOLD) TO NIGHT.

A HA HA (A HA HA) A HA HA (A HA HA)
OH YEAH
A HA HA (A HA HA) A HA HA (A HA HA)
JUST WANT TO BE YOUR TEDDY BEAR

(...okay, he’s got a revised version of ‘Summer Time’ here. Hold on)

Summer Time
[Em D C B Em D C B]

Summer [Em D C] time and the [B] living is [Em D C] easy [B]
Fish are [Am] jumping, [C] and the cotton is high [B C B]; your daddy’s
Rich [Em D C] and your [B] mommie’s good [Em D C B] looking;
[Am] So [G] hush [Em] little [G] baby [Am]
[B] Don’t you cry [Em D C B Em D C B]

One of these [Em D] mornings, [C] you’re gonna
[B] rise of [Em D C B] singing, spread your [Am] wings,
[C] and take to the sky [B C B]
But till that [Em] morning, [C] aint [B] nothing
Can [Em D C B] harm you, [Am] with [C] your mommy [Em] and [G] daddy [Am] [B] standing by.

BETTER BE HOME SOON
(Emaj)

Somewhere deep inside something got a hold on you, and it’s
pushing me aside see it stretch on forever.

CHORUS
And I know I’m right for the first time in my life, that’s why I
tell you, you better be home soon.

Strippin back the coats of lies and deception, back to
nothingness like a week in the desert.

CHORUS

Don’t say no, don’t say nothing’s wrong when you get back
home maybe I’ll be gone. Yeah I’ll be gone.

When the lights go down on nothing left.

It would cause me pain if we were to end it.

but I could start again you can depend on it and I know I’m
right for the first time in my life, that’s why I tell you, you better
be home soon. Oh that’s why I tell you, you better be home
soon.

LOVE REARS ITS UGLY HEAD
I ALWAYS THOUGHT HAT OUR RELATIONSHIP WAS GOOD... (The “t” on the end of “thought” and at the start of “that” is the same “t”, hence “hat”)
YOU PLAYED THE ROLE OF HAVING SEX...
I ALWAYS PLAYED THE FOOL...
NOW SOMETHINGS DIFFERENT
I DON’T KNOW THE REASON WHY...
WHENEVER WE SPERATE I ALMOST WANNA CRY...

Ohh No. PLEASE NOT THAT AGAIN...
LOVE REARS UP IT’S UGLY HEAD

AND WHEN I COME HOME LATE YOU
DONT COMPLAIN OR CALL...
SO AS A CONSEQUENCE... I DON’T GO
OUT AT ALL... MY FRIENDS ARE
FIGHTING THEY DON’T KNOW WHATS
GOIN’ ON... THEY THINK YOU PUT A
SPELL ON ME... AND NOW MY MIND
IS GONE... Ohh No... PLEASE NOT THAT AGAIN
LOVE REARS UP ITS UGLY HEAD

WHOA... NOT SO BAD THEY SAY...
BUT YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN LOVE IS
GONNA GO...
DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW...
CHECK THIS OUT...

I’M STANDING AT THE ALTER AS THEY
PLAY THE WEDDING MARCH... IM IN
A BLACK TUCKCIDO WITH MY COLLAR
FULL OF STARCH... Aww SHE LOOK AS
LOVERLY AS SHE’S EVER GONNA GET...
I WAKE UP FROM THIS NIGHTMARE
IN A PEARL OF SWEAT...

Awwwh NO, NO, NO, NO
PLEASE NOT THAT AGAIN... YEAH
I’M NOT GOIN’, IN NOT GOIN’
LOVE REARS UP ITS UGLY HEAD

NO NOT ME... NO NAHT...
NO NO NOT AL ME WELL... LUV REARS
UP ITS... LUV REARS UP IT’S... UGLY (x4) HEAD
WHATCHA GONNA DO LORD... WATCHA GONNA DO
WHEN IT COMES AND GETSA YOU...

POWER OF GOODBYE
YOUR HEART IS NOT OPEN... SO I MUST GO...
THE SPELL HAS BEEN BROKEN... I LOVED YOU SO...
FREEDOM COMES WHEN YOU LEARN TO LET GO...
CREATION COMES WHEN YOU LEARN TO SAY NO...

YOU WERE MY LESSON I HAD TOO LEARN!!
I WAS YOUR FORTRESS YOU HAD TO BURN...
PAIN IS A WARNING THAT SOMETHINGS WRONG
I PREY TO GOD THAT IT WONT BE LONG...
YOU WANNA GO HIGHER!!!...

THERES NOTHING LEFT TO TRY... THERES NO PLACE
LEFT TOO HIDE... “THERES NO GREATER POWER THAN
THE POWER OF GOODBYE...”

YOUR HEART IS NOT OPEN... SO I MUST GO...
THE SPELL HAS BEEN BROKEN... I LOVED YOU SO...
YOU WERE MY LESSON I HAD TO LEARN
I WAS YOUR FORTRESS...

THERES NOTHING LEFT TO LOOSE... THERES NO MORE
PART TO PROVE... “THERES NO GREATER POWER
THAN THE POWER OF GOODBYE”

LEARN TO SAY GOODBYE....
I YEARN TO SAY GOODBYE...
THERES NOTHING LEFT TO TRY... THERES NO MORE
PLACES TO HIDE...
THERES NOTHING LEFT TO LOOSE... THERES NO MORE
PART TO BRUISE... “TAIL”

The End of Everything
(G Em G Em G Em C G G)

[G] This is the end of [Em] everything
[G] This is the end I [Em] know
[G] This is the end of [Em] everything
Luke (I swear, this is what it says) your [C] love with you
When you [G] go [G]

[G] This is the end of [Em] happiness
[G] This is the end of [Em] dreams
[G] This is the end of [Em] everything
This is the [C] end for you [G] and me [G]

[D] I don’t [G] know [C] what to [G] do
[D] In my [G] heart [C] I still love [G] you
[D] I don’t [G] know [C] what to [G] say
[D] I will [G] always [C] feel this [G] way

VERSE

(Untitled)
ZEN PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK WHICH
WAYS THAT-AWAY...

STRIPES PIN FREE DOWN...
STARS BLAZE FROM ANOTHER CROWN

THE FEELIN’ COMES & GOES... I GUESS
THIS IS THE UP the S in IT... (unreadable)
THE FEELIN COMES I GUES I GUESS
THIS IS THE U & the S in SUSS...

BELIEVING YOU FOR SO LONG LASTED
YOU’LL BE HERE FOR EVER LETS GO
BLAST IT... WHY YE TREAD SO SHALLOW
WHEN THE DEEP APORES... WE’LL ALWAYS
LOVE YOU AND BE YOUR
FRIEND... BUT IT’S HAPPENING...

(Untitled; possibly still the last song)

YOU TALK LIKE YOU’RE MAKING
LOVE... YOU MEAN LIKE YOU
DONT MEAN IT...

COME OUTA THE SPACE... ITS
ONLY YOU AND IN BETWEEN IT...
FOREVER AND ANOTHA DAY...
SOUND (unreadable) AS A CHORUS
LINE... SO TALK LIKE YOU
WACK... YOUR BOTTLES (?) ALWAYS
GONNA GET YOU THERE...
SO HERE THEN NOW...

THIS VERSE HERE IS A UNI-
COW... BUT WHAT DOES THAT
MEAN... LETS HEAR IT.
FUCKIN’ SAY OBSCENE.
! FUNNY !

(Untitled)
Feel the Love
you know its sound
as you ride your
bike around

With our Smoke’s
whilst meeting us
is a dream

Any chance of dropping
them 2 number
15

DIRT MUSIC – 21st Century Fox
(Probably not his)
THIS NOSTALGIA SEEMS JUST LIKE THE MOVIES
SCENE BY SCENE I SPOUSE I CHOOSE TO CHOOSE
THESE...
THE FEELING COMES AND GOES I GUESS IT
IS THE U (what the fuck, isn’t this the previous song?) AND THE S IN THIS A...
THE FEELIN’ COMES AND GOES I GUESS IT IS
THE U AND THE S ITS US...
THIS BLOCK BUSTS LIKE PARTIES IN THE MORNING

Building
(B F# B E G C, C G# C A C F, B F# B G B E)
(...no lyrics for this one)

7 MINUTES UP
YOU TALK LIKE YOUR MAKING LOVE
YOU MOAN BUT YOU DON’T MEAN IT (I see, these are all rewrites then)

YOU FRONT ALL SHY AND REPRESSED
CRACK IN THAT SMILE I CAN SEE YOU

CINCH
JESUS COMES BACK BLESSES LEPAHS ON
FRONT PAGE PACKS FREE CARBON MISFITS
NOW THERE ARE NO WARNINGS JUST FACES
ALL LIT UP... DEVILS’ BEEN PAINTING...
WITH THEM DARK SPOTS IN THIS AURAS BLEND...
I COUGH UP BLACK BUGS IS THIS THE END...?!
SO NEVER DID THE STORY SWAN LIKE THIS
SONGS OF FREEDOM... THEN REMINISCE...

MOVIN’ BLOCKS IN THE SKY
MOVING BLOCKS WITH THE SKY

-SHO NUFF-
WE CAN ONLY USDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE SHOWN
WE CAN ONLY UNDERSTAND THAT WE’AVE GROWN

(Alright, from ‘Dirt Music’ onwards, this has been his other book; and he’s either going for surrealism and failing, or was just genuinely stoned. And I don’t often imply people were taking drugs when they made stuff, but... but goddammit)

FERRIS WHEEL
-FAIR IS WHEEL-

(...yep!)
(Right, maybe this is all weird poetry or something rather than lyrics now. It wouldn’t surprise me, he did have the attitude of a wannabe-poet)

(Untitled)
IN A MODERN EPITHAMY
WE CAN NOT LOVE AS A SYMPATHY

(Untitled)
Y THERE CAUGHT ME ON THE STREET
WITH A POINT 0 1 AND AH LOST
BIRDS WING THAT NIGHT WHEN WE
WERE E #OUGHT I GUESS YA SEARCHED
REEL GOOD AND ASKED IF PEPPER REALLY STINGS

(Untitled)
These Horse don’t fear runnin’
through rabbit holes...
No man is an island...
No ones observations can be
believed until repeated...
Stories live on amongst
People not rather Archives

(I should point out; in between these passages in the second book – which is a HUGE scrapbook – there’s pages upon pages of nothing. Absolutely blank pages)

(Untitled)
When the earth was young the old
man rubbed his sticks for fire
And when the sticks burnt him
He asked the water will you be kind
And when the clouds laughed him
They asked what colours too mix two make grey
Then you reveal it the Pavement comes
up from this space...

You leave on a ship with a clone
...takes two!
Animals are digital pictures
and clues
We don’t even know whats
happening with thes
-freight-

(Untitled)
You see but the colours are all in magazine
You breathe out the pixtules we see to agree...
On top of my head, the slamon is a slang not
from here...

On top of our head, we outstand the chance
with uncommon groud...

JOINT OPERATION
THE CHILDREN WITH THE A SACRED HEART
THE CHILDREN OF THE SACRED HEART...

(Untitled)
MY LOVE,
YOUR LOVE...

(Untitled)
(This is the last one! Appropriately, it’s about a last goodbye)

This is our last goodbye...
I hate to feel the love between us die...
But its over... just hear this and then i’ll go...
You gave me more to live for... more than you’ll
ever know... Well this is our last embrace...
must i dream and always see your face...
Why can’t we overcome this wall...
Baby maybe it is just because I didn’t know you at all...
Kiss me... please kiss me... oh kiss me out of desire... babe
and not consolation... oh you know it makes me so
angry... ‘cause I know that in time... I’ll only make you
cry... (this) is our last goodbye...
Did you say “No this can’t happen to me”?
(And) did you rush to the phone to call?
Was there a voice unkind... in the back of your mind
Saying “maybe you didn’t Know him at all”
you didn’t know him at all... oh... you didn’t no!
oh you didn’t no!
Well the bells out in (the) church tower chime...
Burning clues into this heart of mine...
Thinkin’ so hard... on her soft eyes... and the memory
of her sighs... that its all over...
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days
Since you took your love away
I go out every night and sleep all day
Since you took your love away
Since you been gone I can do whatever I want
I can see whomever I choose
I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant, but
nothing, I said nothing can take away these blues
‘cos nothing compares... nothing compares 2 u...!
It’s been so lonely without U here...
like a bird without a song
nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling
tell me baby... where did I go wrong?
I could put my arms around every boy I see
but they only remind me of you (WHAT? HE’S GAY?!)
I went to the doctor and guess what he told me...
guess what he told me... (oh god this had better be good) he said “girl u better try
have fun no matter what u do (okay, so he’s not writing this from his POV. Unless he’s a transvestite)... but he’s a fool!!!”
‘Cos nothing compares... nothing compares 2 u...
All the flowers that u planted mama! in the
backyard... all died when you went away...
I know that living with U baby was sometimes hard
but I’m willing to give you another try...
Didn’t know what time it was the lights were low
I leaned back on my radio...
Some cat was layin’ down some rock ‘n roll...
lotta soul, he said...
Then the loud sound did seem to fade
Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
That weren’t no D.J. that was hazy cosmic jive
Theres a starman (...wait on, this is Bowie! What the fuck? Okay, I’ll skip to the next page)

Don’t love he
(I was wrong, another song. Jesus)

There will be...
Know escape from this heart...
Pumpin’ free...
Fortitude... moxi... love
Feel... stun me...
Confort me...
Crow your feet blunt and sharp
Pumpin’ seed...
fortitude... moxi... love
feel... fun meat...

You flee from way out west... to east its cool...
Won’t call you baby or a tool... your girls a
friend to me thats true... fly it as we go...
Hey... stick your head right in the hurricane....
listen in you know her name... listen in you know
her game... spinnin’ us ‘round and round...
So pick up sticks birds bundle nests from bones
Plumes your after not my phone... dial me up
When you get tone... dial me up again...
I say I gave... I gave... I craved with you
Why are we smashing on this truth?
Why are we lashing out? our youths frozen song
I won’t sing belong... feel... hump me!
DoN’t LuV He!!!

(Untitled)
All along the western front
People line up to receive...
She got the power in her hand...
to shock you like you won’t believe...
Saw her in the amazon...
With the voltage running through her skin
Standing there with nothing on...
She’s gonna teach me how to swim...

Said oh girl... shock me like an electric eel...
Baby girl... turn me on with your electric feel...

All along the eastern shore...
Put your circuits in the sea...
this is what the world is for... making electricity...
You can feel it in your mind...
Oh you can do it all the time
Plug it in and change the world
You are my electric girl...

(Untitled)
I’m feelin’ rough I’m feelin raw
I’m in the prime of my life
Lets make some music... make some money
find some models for wives... I’ll move to
Paris shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars
You man the island and the cocaine and the
elegant cars... This is our decision to live fast
and die young... we’ve got the vision now lets
have some fun... Yeh... its overwhelming but
what else can we do? Get jobs in offices
and wake up for the morning commute...?
Forget about our mothers and our friends we’re
fated to pretend... I’ll miss the playgrounds and
the animals and diggin up worms... I’ll miss the comfort
of my mother and the weight of the world... I’ll miss
miss my sister... miss my father miss my dog and my home
Yeah I’ll miss the boredom and the freedom and the
time spent alone... but there is really nothing, nothing
we can do, love must be forgotten, life can always
start off anew... The models will have children
we’ll get a divorce, we’ll find some more models
everything must run its course...
we’ll choke on our vomit and that will
be the end...
we were fated to pretend
mgmt

(He’s... well, he’s getting better. And madder. Much madder)

(Untitled)
Wheres the love song to set us free
Too many people down, everything turning
the wrong way round...
And I don’t know what love will be
But if we stop dreaming now, lord know
Well never clear the clouds
And you’ve been so busy lately
that you haven’t found the time
To open up your mind...
And watch the world spinning gently out of
time...
Feel the sunshine on your face
Its in a computer now...
Gone are the future (?...!) way out in space
And youve been so busy lately that you
haven’t found the time... to open up your mind
And watch the world spinning gently out of time
Tell me Im not dreaming
but we are out of time
- we’re out of time

(That question mark and exclamation mark? I didn’t write that, he did)

(Untitled)
I can’t sleep tonight
Everybody saying everything’s alright
Still I can’t close my eyes
I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of all these lights
Sunny days... where have you gone?
I get the strangest feeling you belong
Why does it always rain on me?

(...oh, no, wait. Not his. And that’s the last one! What a shit note to end on. Oh well)

"Inland Empire" - a dissection of the film, its surrealism and its overarching themes, in 10,000 words.

2008-11-19T04:09:00.000-08:00

Fuck, I hate shaving.

I realised something today; South Park is the true growed-up version of Rugrats. No, really. It centres around a group of young ‘uns who constantly misinterpret things. It’s just that South Park is dirty about it, and Rugrats isn’t.

So basically, I’m loving a cartoon similar to one I loved as a kid. Goddammit, I haven’t changed in the slightest.

To get a bit more high-brow for a second:

Mark this day; the day when some TV newspaper guy gave 2001 1 star. Out of five. Despite the millions of stars the movie introduced us to – well no, I’m being silly. But still, one fucking star.

This was in the TV Guide from the Melbourne’s Herald Sun, apparently. And the criticism went thus:

“Nay, lest ye be pretentious, ye shall not watch 2001. Yay, it is as true as I spake here afore you. See, it is overcomplicated, and I don’t like the music. So fuck you, Stanley.”

Well, no, it actually goes like this:

“It may be a modern classic, but director Stanley Kubrick’s space oddity takes more time than a voyage to Mars. The movie is like space itself, endless, empty and pretty pointless. 1 star out of 5.”

Of course it’s like space itself, that’s the mood it’s trying to evoke; that intense nothingness. God damn, are some critics really that stupid? I mean, really?

No, I shouldn’t judge. Maybe it’s a personal matter, and that it’s not that it just bored him. Maybe this guy has really well-thought out criticisms, it’s just that he only had a limited space (LOL! PUN!) to write in. I’m willing to give him, or in fact her because let’s not get sexist, the benefit of the d-

...no wait, they also gave Legally Blonde 3 stars. Yeah well, fuck them.

S for Supercallafragalisticexpialadocious

2008-11-11T04:27:00.000-08:00

Today’s question is: Is euthanasia justifiable, and does the state have the right to censor pornography or restrict tobacco advertising, and also, to what extent are Mäori and Päkehä today responsible for decisions made by their ancestors, and in fact, what, if anything, can be known with certainty, and come to think of it, is the mind essentially non-physical, and are values absolute or relative, or does the universe need explanation in terms of a Supreme Intelligence; so in conclusion, what, if anything, is the meaning or purpose of human existence?

I like that question, it’s a good one. Thank god I don’t have to answer it.

No, the question I’m attempting to answer today (please mark me in the section labelled “comments”, in red felt-tip pen. And make sure your comment smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol too. God, the nostalgia’s just flowing back):

“What the fuck is it that audiences take from V for Vendetta?”

The movie, naturally, since I haven’t read the comic and (probably) won’t research it.

Now... I just read up on it on Wikipedia (yes, I know I just said I wouldn’t, but contradiction is what makes life interesting), and it seems the original themes of the comic were squandered (according to the writer, Alan Moore) by the film. Now...

First things off; I like the film, or rather, I like it to the extent that I can sit down and watch it without growing increasingly bored (see: The Matrix). It is a jolly rollercoaster of a film, and it’s, well, darn fun to watch.

And, up until last night, I was happy to like-but-not-love-it.

Now...

Basically, I rewatched The Dark Knight. Which is, of course, brilliant, and, I realised towards the end, just so happens to be the polar opposite of V for Vendetta, if we’re going to boil down their themes to their, well, simplest level.

Consider: both are about a white-faced, unknown guy setting explosives in the name of anarchy and chaos.

In The Dark Knight, he’s the villain. In V for Vendetta, he’s the hero.

Is it just me, or is that a bit perverse? That it promotes chaos and anarchy – not even really anarchism, not really – over order?

Now, hold up, I’m aware that it’s not set here and now. It’s set in a totalitarian state, it’s blatantly fascist, it’s – I mean, the film isn’t at all subtle about what it’s doing. And yet – leaving aside the fact that a film about a bloke blowing up Nazi Germany seems about as silly as broomsticks defeating Nazis in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (no, I’m never going to leave that one alone, ever) – I find it difficult to believe we really should be rooting for this guy. He’s an extreme anarchist, to the point of being – yes, I’m going to say it – a terrorist.

Now (I’m deliberately making some sort of weird gag of writing “now” all the time, I’m not sure why), that’s not a problem if we view this in movie terms. Ignoring the fact that we tend to root for the villain anyway, any reasonably-minded viewer should be able to watch V for Vendetta and not suddenly believe that blowing up things if you disagree with the government is a good idea, in the same way that anyone should be able to watch Trainspotting and not decide to take drugs, and watch A Clockwork Orange and not decide to go off and rape someone.

And yet... and yet, I’m not sure that’s the case. I suddenly remembered something last night; I used to know a guy at TAFE who I liked a lot (he will remain unnamed to a) protect his identity [how ironic] and b) hide the fact that I’ve forgotten his last name) who was a big fan of V for Vendetta. He also seemed to have this irrational hatred of Britain that I never understood, and seemed to like the movie purely for the end sequence. Not because, y’know, it’s a “cool action sequence”, but because “it blows up Britain”.

Y’what?

I’m hardly suggesting this is dangerous, I’m just suggesting that it could breed idiotic political views based on irrational nothings. In the same way that, for example, Greenday’s American Idiot made a bunch of teenagers decide they were anarchists and demonstrated so by kicking in lockers. Surely V for Vendetta should’ve made some effort to show that anarchism is hardly the most reasonable and effective push towards freedom? I wouldn’t mind so much if it was an adult film – because I like to think (in a “trying not to be pessimistic” way) that adults can make up their own minds – but for teenagers?

There’s a responsibility here, as another comic book character would happily tell you whilst hypocritically failing to deliver a pizza on time. If your audience is going to be made up of teenagers – come on, it obviously is – then you need to tone it down a little. Because teenagers are going to latch onto this (I’m stereotyping, but this is sometimes true, and that’s the point), and teenagers like things that go against authority figures. The fact that it’s against a totalitarian state is actually irrelevant; it’s the fact that a cool guy gets to blow stuff up and defeat snotty old people.

(Side point; is it just me that finds it ironic that, out of all the snotty old blokes, the one who goes against the government is played by Stephen “Mr National Treasure” Fry*?)

*Who starred in Absolute Power, let’s not forget.

Fact: It’d be horribly lame of me to suggest that all teenagers are like this. But – and it’s got nothing to do with stupidity – teenagers can be easily influenced, because they’re still trying to work out their place in the world. Children and teenagers both do this, and the only essential difference is that teenagers reject what their parents have to say, rather than cling onto it as being the final word on the matter.

Fiction: I have a dog up my arse.

Side-note: Again, it’s like Sin City refusing to show us any woman that isn’t a) a useless sex-fuelled woman who looks up to men, or b) a useful sex-fuelled prostitute who looks up to certain men, not that there’s much difference in the end. Actually, there’s one other woman; a far-too-attractive lesbian, who dies. Y...e...s...

And about this TAFE guy; the last I ever spoke to him, he asked if I would come down to some anti-Scientology protest. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and made some excuse about being too busy trimming my nails that day. As it turned out, he’s Anonymous (yes, another reason I kept his identity secret!), or a member thereof. So yes, he wore a V mask. Which makes me wonder about Anonymous in general; why did they choose V to represent them? Irony? Or do they really have this image of blowing up Church of Scientology centres to ‘The Blue Danube Waltz’?

Not that... I disagree with them, exactly, about Scientology, and again I’m oversimplifyi-

Ohhh you know what, fuck this, it’s going nowhere. I swear I had a lot to say on this subject, but I can’t think of anything more than “anarchy = SUX!”. Which is concise, but perhaps not all that helpful.

But speaking of cool movies, I was going to do a review of Pulp Fiction. But I uh... it’s late and I’m tired. But, a hint; I do not have a problem with it like I do with Sin City or (now) V for Vendetta. So I’m not totally going to rubbish on everyone’s films.

Hahaa, sometimes I hate being so open-minded sometimes and wish I could just RIP THINGS APART WITH MY BARE TEETH AND WIT AND RHETORIC. Like... like...

http://iveneverliked.blogspot.com

... :’)

Poll 1 has now closed! THE RESULTS ARE IN!

2008-11-11T03:28:00.000-08:00

Results of the following poll:

“How much is that doggie in the window?”
1) $5
2) $10
3) Why is the doggie in the window?

A 66% win for option 3 (4 votes), with the other 33% (2 votes) for option 1.

HOW INSIGHTFUL! THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED! A NEW POLL IS GOING TO OPEN! THIS IS MORE EXCITING THAN THE OBAMA/McCAIN THING! HELLO MUM!

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!

2008-11-09T04:32:00.000-08:00

[...SPOILERS FOR Dancer in the Dark, Eraserhead, A Clockwork Orange, Breaking the Waves... etc]

I watched Let the Right One In last night, and it’s undeniably brilliant. I’ve got no idea where I’d place it in a favourites list – or if it would even make it, though I’d be surprised if it didn’t – because I need time to look at it properly, but definitely, very very very good.

A question that’s been bugging me a lot about movies; how much value is entertainment, really? How much should a movie try to entertain you? And is it wrong if a movie doesn’t, or more rewarding?

This goes back to when I described movies as being a synthesis of entertainment and art (though not in those terms); that every movie is artistic in some way, and entertaining in some way (by definition), but each individual movie occupies a different spot on the spectrum of art <--> entertainment, if you see what I mean.

For instance:

ART <- Eraserhead <- _ -> -> ENTERTAINMENT

Okay, that’s a pretty shit graph (in fact, the middle ground looks like an Ice the Frosty Cat facial expression [don’t ask]), but I only just whipped it up in a second, in Word. So, you know. The idea is that even though Eraserhead leans closer to art – because of the way it’s shot, constructed, conceived and realised – it’s not exclusively art. Definitely, there’s entertainment to Eraserhead. Even... dare I say it... humour.

The best movies, therefore, are a perfect mesh of art and entertainment that can be appreciated on both levels, in the same way that you can get carried away in the pure emotion/atmosphere of a song and then later appreciate the individual workings of it – the lyrics, etc.

The problem here is that I’d classify Eraserhead as one of the most perfect films ever created, but therefore, by my own definition, it supposedly fails. Or it would, to those who don’t find it entertaining.

Clarification! Entertaining does not mean “fun”.

And by the same token, “humour”, or even “comedy”, does not have to mean “light-hearted”. In fact, throwing this into the genre of comedy, some of my favourites, whilst undeniably light-hearted in the sense that they go for the jokes and funny side of things more often than not, are built on serious premises too. Shaun of the Dead’s a good example, being about a zombie plague and relationship issues, but just being genuinely very funny about it throughout. Or Life of Brian, or Dr. Strangelove, which are equal parts gloriously silly slapstick and gloriously clever satire.

It’s interesting in itself what is expected from comedy. Lachlan Willis – Ugmoer, etc. – said just yesterday that he didn’t really like watching comedies, because at the end he’d think, “That was entertaining, but so what?”. It’s a hard one to argue against, because for all that comedy is about setting a frivolous mood... it’s very hard to keep that mood up. Perhaps it’s just that happiness is something shared, whilst depression isn’t; it’s much easier to carry away a feeling (namely, depression) from Dancer in the Dark or Requiem for a Dream than it is to carry away a feeling (namely, humour) from Life of Brian. And even if you did, with friends, it’d be hard to talk about the serious intent to the movie. Discussions about Monty Python, I’ve found, tended to always be quoting the movies – which is absolutely fine, to an extent. I mean, I quote The Exorcist (and Blue Velvet, and... oh, too many) films constantly. But I will also talk about the brilliance of their direction, the power of what each film is saying, etc. I’ve never heard anyone in real life talk about how clever Life of Brian really is. Perhaps it’s just too hard to talk about that in a group dynamic. It’d be like being at school again.

And for Lachlan, films are more a solitary experience, like listening to an album. It’s the difference between what Samurai Clinton (don’t ask, again) would classify a good song, and what Lachlan would; the former makes you get up and dance, and the latter envelopes you personally and through the senses. You can’t share that with another person like you can share dancing, in the same way that you can’t ever make someone truly feel your depression, but you can make them feel your joy and happiness.

So comedy is very... it’s very easy to look down on. In fact, thinking about it, I do, to an extent, as well. Bluntly, if a comedy doesn’t tell me anything beyond, say, “poo is funny”, then I might laugh, but I’ll end up rating it terribly low. Because movies should communicate something, whether it’s an intelligent idea, or just a feeling.

Good god, that last sentence looks silly when you imagine Kurt Van Houten saying it. “Piiii... can I borrow a feeelliiiinnng...”

So how much you enjoy films on an entertainment level, rather than an artistic one, comes down purely to, I suspect, how often you enjoy watching films with friends. That probably makes the artist seem like a terrible loner, but it’s not exactly that. It’s more that it’s easier to talk about comedy than it is to talk about serious ideas: try and tell a dirty joke in real life, complete with pelvic thrusts and exaggerated tone of voice, and it’s easy to make the other person laugh; try to tell a person your thoughts on God and life, which seemed so clear in your head, is near-impossible, because you end up sounding like a pillock when you say it in real life. And you struggle for words, too. The telling is much harder.

But – but but but* – humour is important. Even in serious films. I mean, granted, not every artistic film has to be funny to work, but to an extent, I feel that you need that balance sometimes. It’s about the art of not taking yourself too seriously, and this is the thing; if you’re going to attack the world and its injustices in a serious film, then not having humour to back that up is an incredibly risky thing, because the film is then in danger of falling on its own po-faced, erm, face. Because real life isn’t just depressing, and sad, and devastating – it’s also, at the same time but from another angle, ludicruous, ridiculous, laughably insane. Unspeakable acts by dictators are funny in a “I can’t believe anyone could actually think that was acceptable” sort of way (I’m being frivolous here, but hold on a second). And in that way, sometimes – particularly in the language of film – acknowledging the stupidity, idiocy and slapstick lunacy of the horrors of the world can actually make them far more horrible.

Example: All Quiet on the Western Front’s first half is about schoolboy antics and pranks. Full Metal Jacket’s first half is about swearing and fat jokes. Therefore, the second halves of both films are more immediately powerful: All Quiet has convinced us these are real kids, and so what happens to them is horrifying; Full Metal has shown us how ridiculous the army is, so a platoon being held at bay by a lone woman with a gun isn’t just, by that point, believable, it’s also ludicruous... and also fucking scary, if you think about it.

I’m not sure what it is that makes humour so important – to me, particularly – but trench humour is the closest I can get to explaining it; if mankind didn’t also acknowledge how silly its problems were, then we’d all collapse in on ourselves and die of depression. And movies have to follow suit, and so...

...and so, when, say, A Clockwork Orange is accused of being pretentious, and when Eraserhead is accused of being pretentious, humour is the counter-argument. Pretentious implies being up its own rear end, to the point where it can’t see that what it’s showing us is as equally ridiculous as it is fascinating and disturbing. So with that in mind, a pretentious film is actually something more along the lines of yer-latest-obligatory-action-film, all explosions, serious guys with cool glasses, and – actually, no. Proper example; The Matrix is a pretentious film. Because it has ideas – even if they’re not terribly original – and the ideas are treated seriously, but so is absolutely everything else. Kubrick would’ve made a joke about bullet time, or about “following the white rabbit” being such a silly literary reference, or about the pills – but Kubrick didn’t direct The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers did. And – V for Vendetta included – I’m yet to see them, through their films, admit that they’re getting a bit out of hand and up their own arse. And that is pretentious.

(Note: I haven’t seen Bound... even though it’s a lesbian film, so I should be interested. Also, I actually like V for Vendetta. At least, in V, you have a character who – while not funny – is charming and suave, which is closer to wiping away the pretensions than anything in The Matrix is)

Meanwhile, in A Clockwork Orange, you’ve got droogs, you’ve got “a bit of the old ultra-violent”; it’s as stylised as The Matrix, it’s shot with an incredible eye for detail, and it inhabits its own world with intensely serious ideas. But then... you’ve got Alex having a threesome to the ‘William Tell Overture’. Or, to play along the same idea, you’ve got him raping a woman whilst singing, well, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. This makes him more immediately disturbing, and more real, and it also has the effect of therefore feeling like the real world. That is, even though it’s set in the far-future, and it meticulously constructs that, we can still believe that these are people, and it still says something about us, because of these brief details. Alex is far more a real person than anyone in, say, Star Wars is. Or The Matrix, for that matter.

And Eraserhead is the same. As are all of Lynch’s films, come to that. Eraserhead has got the bizarre freakiness of the X family, and it’s got a tap dancer deliberately squishing sperm with her feet. It’s far removed from reality, but it’s ultimately hilarious and therefore more real a world. No, really; the fact that Eraserhead is both atmospheric/moody and frequently funny means that Lynch truly has made it a real place.

Like how a load of alien warriors in sci-fi always feel ridiculous... because there’s no sense of humour to them, and therefore no personality. Whereas Eraserhead throws a baby alien at us and expects us to believe it’s the progeny of Henry, and... and I do, because even if it doesn’t look like a baby, it has personality and it interacts like a normal life form would. It’s not a cipher, in other words.

Of course... it does seem very perverse of me to suggest that every good film really needs a sense of humour to be good. But mostly, I can’t think of any films I think are really special and brilliant that don’t have humour, in some shape or form. Whether that be simple slapstick, or completely bizarre freakiness. Come to that, Gilliam’s best work tends to be incredibly funny, as does Lynch’s, as does Kubrick’s (Paths of Glory isn’t funny at all, and ends up, despite the brilliant last few scenes, saying a lot less about war than Full Metal Jacket does).

Even Lars von Trier, for chrissakes, although his sense of humour is the hardest to pin up sometimes (mind you, I haven’t seen The Idiots). Since his films often feel improvised, laughs are more natural and not manufactured, and therefore they’re easier to miss. But daringly, von Trier isn’t afraid to make his nastiest and most depressing scenes half-funny, too. In a sense, Dancer in the Dark is actually a very funny film, it’s just that the humour is so dark, so evil, so nasty, that it’s difficult to laugh (I didn’t laugh more than once). The most obvious example – and of course the easiest to laugh at – is the ‘Scatterheart’ song, where Bjork sings about a man she’s just killed, and the dead body joins her for a duet. But... but towards the end of the film, as each musical number grows closer to reality and continually threatens to strip away the delusions Selma is experiencing, it also grows increasingly more ridiculous. ‘107 Steps’ is bad enough, as she sings bravely about her death march, but when we get to ‘New World’ (as it’s called in Selmasongs, but really it’s just Bjork singing the main theme with lyrics), it hits its zenith. Suddenly, with a noose tied around her neck, Selma sings; and for the first time, we don’t see what she’s imagining. And consequently, she looks pathetic, in the same way that seeing an OTT villain ranting in a back alley without dramatic music would look pathetic rather than powerful. And that’s what makes the last scene harrowing, the fact that von Trier strips bare her delusions and shows us how lame she really is. Utterly depressing.

...is that why Breaking the Waves didn’t work for me, because it wasn’t funny enough? It sounds silly when I put it like that (ironically, I guess), but... but perhaps the lack of humour really is key. I don’t ever remember feeling that Emily Watson or Stellan Skarsgard were capable of the slightest bit of joy or laughter in that movie – despite scenes that showed just that – and I think that’s what didn’t work, for me. They’re supposed to be real people, and it’s supposed to be a candid, personal film for the characters... but they’re characters, not people, because they can’t find happiness.

It could be argued that that’s why it’s so brilliant, that they can’t find happiness; but when it seems to me that they don’t even know what happiness is, then them searching for it doesn’t make much sense. You can’t hurt unless you’ve laughed.

It’s funny, this; my least favourite of my favourite directors’ films tend to be their least funny. Twelve Monkeys is my least favourite Gilliam to date – though admittedly it can be funny, it’s just that it rarely is. Rebecca is by far my least favourite Hitchcock, even though it’s an incredible achievement; the problem is just that, with no laughs or real joy to it, I couldn’t really care about any of the characters. Lack of humour = cipher, in my opinion.

Well... it’s a bit more complex than that, but that’s really just it. It even applies to villains; the best tend to have some sort of humour to them, be it juvenile weirdness (Frank Booth, or Pazuzu for that matter), suaveness (nearly any Bond film), or insanity (the Joker is the best example here). Even if the villain doesn’t realise that he’s funny, but the film points it out, that can work as well.

And as I’ve said before, this also tends to reflect my favourite Batman films, and why the Joker instantly makes Batman and The Dark Knight the clear best of the two, with Forever following just behind for me (then Begins close behind, then & Robin... erm... a while back, and then Returns way at the end).

*What a dirty joke!

At the end of the day, I guess what I’m trying to say is that movies like The Matrix are just nope not funny bz.

Stuff I Own, Stuff I'm Reading, Stuff and Fluff

2008-11-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

[Note: As will become obvious, I wrote this like a week ago]
I couldn’t find The Writer’s Tale at the ABC Shop, so I ordered it in, and in the meantime got Roger Moore’s autobiography – My Word is My Bond. It’s a great read, and made me want to write my own. Even though I’m only 20. And even though I’m technically already doing that. Even though this Journal is so all over the place that, unless you know me beforehand, I don’t think it’s possible to work out what my, y’know, real life is like just from reading it.

Luckily for you, real life’s suddenly decided to multiply and gang up on me:

- I’m going to move back to Newcastle, except that will mean getting a darn good job. In fact, my parents said I can’t move back into the house until I get a job. This is fine, except it may be difficult finding one. The ideal job would be this videostore thing Mum talked about, although that’d mean I’d have to leave here almost immediately.
- There’s no way I won’t need a licence next year, and it’s easier to drive in the country. Fuck, this had come up a lot earlier in the year and I’d shied away from it because I, you know, really just didn’t want to drive, but now it’s inevitable and I’ve only got two months. God fucking dammit. I want to put it off as long as possible, but the longer I do, the harder it’ll be.
- This whole censorship-of-the-internet thing, which I haven’t mentioned here, but it’s likely Liam and I will try to do a documentary on it next year, so keep your eyes peeled for that (which would be quite painful – I’m practically asking you to star in Un Chien Andalou).
- Liam and I might move out and stay in a house together eventually, so we now have to start thinking about expenses, for chrissakes.
- Melbourne Cup today. New president of the US tomorrow.

And because real life is so nasty to me at the moment – by actually deciding it’ll wave in my face and make me pay attention to it, the selfish swine – I’m immediately doing my best to steer clear of it.

For example: as well as My Word is My Bond, I also bought a few DVDs. These consist of:

Mr Vampire
12 Monkeys
Badlands
Days of Heaven
Lifeboat
And the Bergman Faith Trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light and The Silence

As expected, Lifeboat kicks arse. I haven’t watched the others yet, apart from treating to myself to another viewing of Mr Vampire. It’s just so lovely. I might write reviews in a little bit, come to think of it. Anything to distract me from real life.

Or maybe I can talk about Doctor Who!

...nah.

Oh yeah, I also rewatched Spiderman 3. You know what? It’s only a mess towards the end. The first hour, at least, is as tight and rewarding as the previous films. And that’s enough for me, bluntly. It’s not like it’s the greatest thing ever, but it hardly deserves to be punched brutally.

And in a 20-to-1 Hollywood Epics list or something like that which Liam watched, Star Wars wasn’t mentioned. Isn’t that amazing?

Hmm... I need to write some sort of list to distract myself, but I can’t think of what. I was considering recently – I said this to Liam – “Best Usages of Swearing”. Like, for example, Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, and – I keep mentioning this – “cunting” in The Exorcist. That sort of thing.

But now appears to be the time to take stock of my film watching this year, even though I’ll probably watch something else tonight after this (though not during the week, I have split shifts apparently). Seeing as Liam will soon be returning and will start catching up on the films I have also seen and have – though admittedly it’ll take him a long time, cos I’ve had a whole year for this. He’ll probably start with The Elephant Man and rewatch Twin Peaks, the arsewipe, and then move onto stuff I had in my Top 45 list – it might be good for me to rate, in order, what I’ve enjoyed this year. That’s right, all the movies I’ve seen in my ever-growing-ever-impossible-to-sneak-past-my-parents collection.

But FIRST! A mini-list for Liam’s benefit;

THE MOVIES HE SHOULD DARN WELL WATCH, IN ORDER, DAMMIT!
(leaving, of course, an inevitable gap for anything Lynch-related)

Wild Things 3, Wild Things 2, W...

...alright, alright, I’ll be serious. Jesus Christ.

Brazil
Dr Strangelove
Frenzy
Rope
The Seventh Seal
Fight Club
All Quiet on the Western Front
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Lawrence of Arabia
Pi
The Last Wave
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Strangers on a Train
Pulp Fiction
Tideland
Traffic
Memento
Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Thin Red Line
The Royal Tenenbaums
The 39 Steps
Singin’ in the Rain
Bubble
North by Northwest
Metropolis
Rebecca
Twelve Monkeys
Paths of Glory
Notorious
The Hour of the Wolf
Time Bandits
Die Hard
Shadow of a Doubt
Night of the Living Dead
The Wicker Man
Poltergeist
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Friday the 13th

Well... okay, that’s not every movie in my list. But I shouldn’t go overboard. Anyway, this is just a guideline as to what I vaguely feel is his most needed-to-watch... and I only spent a minute on it then.

Also, this isn’t indicative of my favourites. For example, I put Pulp Fiction and The Royal Tenenbaums over other movies I love much more, but I figured that was a good idea so that he could see some of Bown’s favourites. Similarly, though Rebecca isn’t one of my favourite Hitchcocks, I’ve put it above the superior Notorious and Shadow of a Doubt because it stands out more and is possibly more iconic.

Anyway, Gilliam, Hitchcock, Kubrick and Bergman in the top 5. He shouldn’t complain. And he also shouldn’t break up every movie with yet another viewing of Inland Empire (not that I’m insinuating anything! WHAT? I’M A LITTLE HARD OF INSINUATING).

Oh yeah, Lifeboat isn’t on that list. That’s okay, I’ll see how he likes Rope first.

Okay, and now for the very hard, it’ll-take-me-ages-to-work-this-out-and-I-inevitably-won’t-be-happy-with-it list.

THE “BEST OF THE STUFF I’VE WATCHED AND OWN” SORTA-THING LIST

With possibly a brief note about each.

...oh fuck, I just realised I have to include the Bond films in this list too. Well... forget that, they won’t count, for now. If only because it’s too complicated, and I’ll end up with a massive wedge of them in the one spot.

Also, even though I don’t think I have it anymore, I’m going to cheat and put in Fucking Amal. Because I just can’t not put it in (though ironically, it’ll be in lower than on Liam’s list, certainly).

...I’ll also omit Harry Potter. This time.

1. Trainspotting
Right, yes. Obviously, this isn’t a better film than Psycho, or 2001, or loads of others even in my top 50 here. But this is the movie that got me into movies, that made me realise just what a movie could be. It’s a fantastic film, truly cult, yet massively appealing. It doesn’t glorify drugs, or even say anything about them at all, yet it feels more meaningful than – say – the similarly light-hearted Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s got McGregor and Carlyle (in his BEST ROLE EVER, of course) in it. Every so often, you expect a dull scene to come along and break the film’s concentration, like that nerd does to Begbie’s pool game, but it’s as suave and amazing as Begbie’s false story throughout. “And after that... well, the game was mine.”

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
There is nothing else like this. The greatest movie experience ever. Or it is an art film? Or, y’know, who cares, in fact? It’s marketed as a film, so that’s what it is; an incredibly arty, not at all pretentious, very ambiguous, not at all “deep”, brilliantly designed and scored experience. It’s like what I wish taking drugs was like (ironic, considering my no.1).

3. Psycho
Irritatingly spoiled... but a perfect movie. Innovative, a huge phenomenon, and also the best “experiment” (depending on how you compare this to, say, Rope) Hitchcock ever made. Perkins is gripping as Bates, the opening is a brilliant misdirection, and it’s punctuated with moments of direction that no-one else could’ve done. For better or worse, it’s Hitchcock’s master work.

4. The Exorcist
To paraphrase – “FUCK ME!” “Do you know what she did? Your cunting daughter?” Ball-grabbing. Pissing on the floor. Vomit. Crucifix masturbation. Penetrating needles. The bruise on Burstyn’s face. Karras’ sacrifice. The eerily beautiful shot of Regan reaching towards the demon. The tense poster-shot of the exorcist intercut with Regan’s breathing. The spiderwalk. The superimposed faces. Karras’ dream. The incredibly clever dialogue. “There’s an alien pubic hair in my drink.” And just so, so much more. A movie about faith that’s offensively gross; beautiful yet juvenile.

5. 28 Days Later
A fantastic opening, and the rest of the movie is a beautifully slow look-at-the-sunset with massively frenzied punctuations of the Infected. A perfect horror film, really.

6. Eraserhead
In terms of films, nothing else is like watching this. Only 2001 runs alongside it in the “like nothing else” stakes, and that’s in a league of its own too. Even if it’s not your favourite Lynch film, I can’t see how one can’t really praise this, because it’s just so amazing on every fucking level. And yeah. I don’t want to spoil it.

7. A Clockwork Orange
To paraphrase – “I’m just siiiingin’ in the rain!” “Droogs.” “Malchik.” “Moloko.” “Ludwig van.” “A bit of the old ultra-violence”. Eyelashes. A very energetic threesome. The list of greatness in this just goes on.

8. Tideland
I’d say that Brazil is actually Gilliam’s best film by default, but this is my favourite of his. It’s also his most overtly personal. You’ll think you’ve seen the basic idea before – young girl has imaginary adventures – but not like this. Not in a way where you actually don’t see what she’s seeing. It’s like watching a young kid play in a park for two hours, and it’s fascinating and disturbing and amazing. And, most definitely, not at all for everyone.

9. Rope
This has risen quite a lot since my last list, and it’s because I’m surprised to find I still haven’t found anything as brilliant. Not even today! About a thousand things get resolved in this, and at the centre of it is a brutal murder committed with no motive except delusional superiority. A highly clever, nail-biting and experimental movie. And Hitchcock said it was a failure. What does he know, eh?

10. All Quiet on the Western Front
The greatest war film ever made, or anti-war film if that’s the way you want to play it. It covers everything, and somehow, despite being a bunch of American kids playing Germans in real life, manages to feel utterly authentic and real. They’re just kids. I don’t know how hard I can hammer that point home, but that’s the heart of what makes this so great; they’re just kids.

11. Vertigo
A tragedy between two people. I don’t at all want to spoil this, because it flits moods in a typically-golden-age-Hitchcock style, but suffice to say that this is the best I’ve ever seen James Stewart, Kim Novak is the best “Hitchcock girl” ever, the theme is fucking fantastic, and – yeah I know, I can’t spoil it and can only rave. I apologise.

12. Brazil
So clever, so hilarious, so packed with memorable images, with about a thousand details in every single set. Perfectly constructed. It’s said this is too long, but that’s hardly fair – we’re given the time to live and breathe in this world. And anyway, the actual ending is hilariously twisted and nasty.

13. Perfect Blue
Psychological fuckups, and the best anime film I’ve ever seen. Nope, better than Grave of the Fireflies, or Miyazaki’s stuff (that I’ve seen, I should add)!

14. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The best rom-com ever made. The fact that it’s even a rom-com is in itself amazing.

15. Inland Empire
This has dropped a bit, but only because I’ve seen too many good films recently. Ho-hum. Obviously this is a major artistic achievement and anyone would be silly to suggest otherwise. Right?

16. Frenzy
The more I rewatch this, the more I realise how great it is. From the way Hitchcock avoids obvious exposition – Blaney’s trial is unheard – and how he implies – the killer’s second victim – and then how he throws things in your face – the first victim, and the ending to the pre-credits. I don’t want to spoil it all, but that’s all great. It’s also very quotable, incredibly funny, and says far too much about Britain and people in general for comfort; witness the two people who glance upwards then keep walking when they hear someone screaming while being murdered in the building next to them.

17. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
A satire on religion, or an excuse for incredibly silly sketches? Both, at once. This is really the ultimate comedy, as you can see the cleverness in it and take away a message from it on the one hand, and you can just go and quote the funniest bits (and lord, there are loads) on the other. The ending is perfectly glorious and of course famous – and it’s like being told that the anniversary of Jesus’ death is called Good Friday.

18. Lawrence of Arabia
It’s looong. With that out of the way, it’s fantastic, amazing to look at, cleverly scripted, brilliantly acted, and it has a fantastic score. It’s difficult to say anything more eloquent than that, other than “triumph”.

19. Dr. Strangelove
Satire done through silliness, just like Life of Brian. It’s very funny. Again, I should mention that I actually don’t like the title character and his joke – it feels just so done – but that’s honestly a small quibble in an otherwise perfect movie.

20. Casablanca
I so doubted this, and I was so wrong. Ingrid Bergman is delicious, Bogart is a great anti-hero of sorts, and it’s far more intelligent, witty and sophisticated than I ever thought it could be based on impressions I’d been given.

21. The Seventh Seal
The best film about death. Ever.

22. Requiem for a Dream
One of those “difficult to communicate the mood” movies; it’s depressing, a continued downward spiral, and it works, thanks to great direction, Ellen Burstyn and co., and the incredible theme tune. The American Dream takes another blow.

23. Full Metal Jacket
Endlessly quotable, endlessly watchable, endlessly creative and it’s about war, which is endless. Timeless, too.

24. Bubble
It’s practically a documentary. I hadn’t known this before watching it, but Steven Sodebergh selected non-actors from the area to act in this, and it shows; the performances are so naturalistic, so genuinely naturalistic, that it almost hurts. And these people are so normal, so average, that it’s depressing, yet fascinating to watch. And I haven’t even told you what the film’s about.

25. Mulholland Dr.
Each frame is filled to the brim with meaning in a way that hasn’t truly been seen, I’d say, since Bergman or Kubrick (Gilliam and Hitchcock are definitely close, depending on which films of theirs you’re counting), and it’s exceptional to look at, think about, listen to, and get caught up in. And no-one does love like Lynch; heartfelt, simple, but never sappy. There’s a couple of stilted scenes at the start, but that hardly nullifies it.

26. Dancer in the Dark
Breaking the Waves didn’t do it for me, but this did, and I felt horrible at the (inevitable) ending. It’s brilliant enough anyway, but the added bonus of Bjork composing and singing and acting the songs is just heaven.

27. Shaun of the Dead
This isn’t a spoof movie (Hot Fuzz pretty much is, though), which is its biggest success; it’s a serious horror movie, but the characters are hilarious losers. In other words, it actually does qualify as a horror film on its own terms, it’s just that it’s so clever and laugh-out-loud along the way. And Simon Pegg is really, really good at this kind of thing.

28. Children of Men
Alfonso Cuaron is quite obviously gifted, and his trademark single-shot technique – erm, insofar as it is a trademark, really – is the most beautiful part of a very impressive movie. I haven’t seen Clive Owen in anything else and cared, which goes to show what Cuaron can do.

29. The Last Wave
The Australian director with the ironic name of Peter Weir let out a torrent of water in this, and it’s the best Australian movie I’ve ever seen. It feels Australian too, without ever feeling cringeably so. Based on this and Picnic, you could say that Weir’s a master of suggestion rather than exhibition.

30. The Thin Red Line
This is just so darn beautiful, and in a way that’s hard to articulate with words. It really is just one of those movies you have to just watch.

31. Citizen Kane
It’d be a crime not to put this in, so luckily I really like it. Mind you, this is more of an objective placing, obviously. In fact, I probably prefer the bottom five or so films to this, except... it’s still an incredible film. Goddammit, why do I feel guilty with this movie, but not with Metropolis? Just keep in mind this is an objective placing more than a subjective one – even though I think it is brilliant – and we’ll move on.

32. Rear Window
It’s a strange one this, because Hitchcock movies tend to be either big entertainment romps, or highly experimental works. This is both; it appeals to the mainstream, yet was a very experimental, technical work. Perhaps that’s ultimately why I don’t like it more, but it’s undeniably incredible.

33. Sex, Lies and Videotape
Say one thing about Soderbergh; he knows exactly how many characters he needs. Exactly. In this case, we’ve got the wife, the husband, and the woman he’s cheating with. That alone is the basis of any old film, and yet Soderbergh adds the sexually-impotent tape-watcher into the mix. It doesn’t make the film explode, it just makes it quietly sophisticated and fascinating.

34. Fucking Amal
A teenage coming-out romance that works, and doesn’t feel sappy for even a moment. That’d be amazing in its own right; but add to that the “palsied cripple” and “DOORGH”, and you have brilliance.

35. Mr Vampire
Genuinely, this is so good. The amazing thing about it is that, even though it’s a spoof – a very slapstick one, at that – it doesn’t seem to be spoofing anything in particular; almost as if the most original horror film was ever written and they just decided to make it a comedy instead (though admittedly I’m a Westerner, so I could be wrong; but it seemed to spawn its own little subgenre). Incredibly well-choreographed, hilariously acted with a perfect cast... another brilliant cult film.

36. The Shining
Overrated, yes. One of the best horror films ever made, yes. Nicholson’s being Nicholson – in other words, great – and Kubrick’s (mostly) at the top of his game.

37. Pi
It looks exceptional, and it also managed to make mathematics seem cool and mysterious to me when I watched it. Which is a massive achievement in itself...

38. Memento
A very clever backwards narrative, with a very clever ending (which some have said is ambiguous; how, exactly?). Guy Pearce’s performance is suitably subtle, and he’s helped by great support – the rest of the cast, and Christopher Nolan’s direction.

39. Traffic
Remember what I said about Sex, Lies and Videotape? The same applies here; the overarching plotlines are perfectly paced here... and what makes it truly great is the addition of Benicio del Toro’s character, who, through facial expressions alone, tells us all we need to know about an ideal world. The ending is hauntingly beautiful.

40. The 39 Steps
One of the more compelling of Hitchcock’s endless “wrong man” movies, and funnily enough one of the earliest (if not the earliest, I don’t remember). Robert Donat looks great and has some incredibly witty lines, but also manages to be a captivating character, like Cary Grant didn’t. Furthermore, there’s some incredible shots (see the Highlands), and even some amazing incidental details – such as the quick-cut implication of domestic abuse in one scene. Bloody daring, if you ask me.

41. Singin’ in the Rain
A fuckload of fun, basically. It’s possibly a bit too assured of its own cleverness – for instance, the last song goes on for far too long, as does the Reynolds/Kelly love song – but the title song and Cosmo’s ‘Make ‘Em Laugh’, are too perfect for that to truly matter. Just fun and well-made, really.

42. Gallipoli
It’s not like there’s a lack of tragic war films out there, but this is at least unique in the way that we don’t even see any actual fighting, and the boys only reach the battleground at the end. In its own way, this shows how disposable their lives are; after an entire movie of fun and games, they just die at the end. Just like that.

43. Strangers on a Train
An innocent joke leads to a horrifying murder (shot in an incredible way, I might add). As in Rope, Farley Granger’s here to provide the nervous, burying-his-feelings man, and Robert Walker “steals the show”, as they say, as the incredibly creepy yet jovial Bruno.

44. Fight Club
Throw in Ed Norton’s iconic, cynical tone, and Brad Pitt’s overbearing, buff bluntness, and watch them fight each other. Then watch them make other people fight. And there’s more fighting, and it escalates. Really, really, really good. Although with a kind of pointless twist.

45. Lifeboat
So simple, so effective; the themes are obvious, the characters are almost expected. For that reason, it’s not as brilliant as Rope, or as original. But it’s still another incredible achievement for Hitchcock.

46. Blue Velvet
I’ll rewatch this to see if it goes up for me, but the actual movie itself felt a bit uneasy to me, as if the tone didn’t quite flit from comedy to drama to underground to perfect-Americana as easily as it thought it did. Oh, and Dern’s boring. But Dennis Hopper is simply marvellous and makes up for everything, and there’s a billion other good things about it too.

47. The Birds
I know, in my heart, that Notorious, say, is a more adult and accomplished Hitchcock film. I also know that I enjoy this a hell of a lot more. And yet, it’s also incredibly artistic; the last shot is one of the most perfect last shots to a movie ever, for example.

48. Withnail and I
It’s gone up in my estimations, because I’d forgotten just how funny it really is. Utterly plotless, but that’s not at all a problem. It’s almost a virtue. “MONTY, YOU TERRIBLE CUNT!”

49. Run Lola Run
I’ve talked about this before.

50. Millennium Actress
I’ve talked about this before (I’m getting lazy, I know).

51. The Hour of the Wolf
I didn’t actually pay attention to this entirely when watching, so the fact that it’s up this high is really a compliment to how good the bits I saw were, and how amazingly Bergman sucks you into every frame. Er... even when... like I was... you’re not paying attention.

52. Picnic at Hanging Rock
Take a bow, Peter Weir – you’re the Australian director I actually give a shit about. This is again really rather good, with a whole bunch of underrunning themes concerning nature, sexuality, etc. alongside a very, very creepy atmosphere. Possibly too long, though.

53. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Obviously it feels fractured, because it’s anarchic, so it makes a pretty unstructured and undisciplined film. But it’s funny and clever as hell.

54. Kidulthood
“I’m just sittin’ here”... Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner made into a film, and a pretty darn good one at that. Probably destined to be a cult British film alongside Withnail and I and such in the future.

55. Paprika
The least memorable of Kon’s movies so far, but still of exceptional quality. There’s yet another rape scene in this, and it’s yet again very disturbing to watch. It plays with his usual themes of psychological warfare and... well... damage, too.

56. Ravenous
It’s either approaching “very good film”, or “completely fucked up failure”. Either way, it’s like nothing else; a low-budget film surrounded by a high-budget landscape, almost as if Peter Jackson had filmed his horror films around Helm’s Deep. Carlyle is brilliant in this, and there’s an utterly hilariously inappropriate chase scene, which I suspect was deliberate.

57. Titanic
I’m still reeling over how much I enjoyed and marvelled at this. Perhaps if I meet some irritating fan who sings ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at me, I’ll throw the DVD case into my bathtub and watch it sink with glee, but for now...

58. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
Basically, exactly what you’d want in a prequel to The Exorcist.

59. Notorious
One of those movies where my attention ebbed away at various points, yet I caught the brilliant images, the sumptuous direction, and the key character points all the same. Which leads me to believe the script was either so subtle as to be invisible, or just generally not the most spark-filled. In terms of dialogue, anyway.

60. Batman: The Dark Knight
Yes, okay. It’s overrated obviously – it can’t not be, really – but ultimately it’s the best superhero film I’ve ever seen, even if it’s not actually my favourite to watch (I’d probably watch Batman Forever or one of the Spidermans, to be honest, instead). Heath Ledger is – yes, yes, he is – incredible in this.

61. Heavenly Creatures
Profoundly disturbing and imaginative New Zealand film, made all the more interesting by a) being based on a true story, b) having a very young Kate Winslet in it (she’s in this list three times, christ. I’m not even a fan), and c) being directed by Peter Jackson.

62. Amelie
So gloriously fun to watch, and Tatou just has a way of winking at camera that makes you smile rather than want to hit the screen. Not something a lot of people can do (Roger Moore’s another).

63. Paths of Glory
Although obviously an anti-war film, it isn’t obvious what Kubrick’s really aiming for until right towards the end (which is, incidentally, perfect). Unlike Full Metal Jacket, this is a problem, because the first half isn’t the slightest bit enjoyable or memorable. A shame.

64. The Beach
Horribly mistreated; I don’t like DiCaprio in real life either, but as with Titanic, that’s hardly enough to put me off. He’s perfectly cast as the slightly-irritating American teenager here, anyway. And Boyle uses a load of his usual directing quirks to make the whole thing move.

65. Sabotage
I’m not sure why this sticks in my head so much. There’s something about the two big scenes of the movie – which I won’t spoil, obviously – that just have been implanted in my head. Tis very good, anyway.

66. Metropolis
Memorable imagery galore, and not at all boring. If it weren’t for that fucking soundtrack.

67. Breaking the Waves
Okay, well... I’ve said before what I think of this. It’s probably unheard of, but yes, I like-but-don’t-love this.

68. Time Bandits
FUUUUN! It’s a kids’ film, and a stylish, amusing, fast-paced, cameo-laden one at that. Not at all the best of Gilliam’s movies, but it’s so much fun that you won’t care. I didn’t, anyway.

69. Carrie
Liam said he felt the direction was fractured on this. I can see what he means, even though apparently De Palma deliberately switched his direction depending on what he was doing (the opening scene shows this). It refuses to let you in on a certain mood, and constantly throws things at you from the side. So it’s frustrating, but ultimately worth it – particularly the ending, which I wish had happened to Travolta in Grease too.

70. Batman Forever
“What, over the other Batman movies?!” you cry in despair. Yes. Yes it is. It’s the first time we properly see under Batman’s mask, it had the most capable girl yet (though admittedly that’s not saying much), and Jim Carrey is playing the fucking Riddler christ. Pity about Tommy Lee Jones, mind.

71. Shallow Grave
I’m not sure why Liam rates this so highly, but it is a very likeable cult film, that manages to be spooky and funny at once (erm, like the best horror films, really). Eccleston and McGregor shine.

72. Twelve Monkeys
Missing much of Gilliam’s warmth, but the design is incredible, and he keeps his shots busy, as always. Anyway, Willis is always fun. And Brad Pitt is funny, too.

73. Rocky
Very simple, quite effective, and probably the best sports film I’ve ever seen. There’s something nice about the main character being genuinely stupid, too.

74. Pulp Fiction
Vaaaastly overrated. A bag of fun. Not as cool as it thinks it is. More emotionally affecting than it thinks it is. Overall, a strange one. I think I took out of it things I wasn’t supposed to.

75. A Fish Called Wanda
“You’re the vulgarian, you FUCK!” That’s my review of the movie, right there.

76. Die Hard
One of the rare action films I’ve seen that’s genuinely really good on every level. Bruce Willis is a godsend; a completely different kettle of fish (LOL! THE LAST FILM WAS ABOUT FISH! LOL!) from “the man”, Arnie.

77. Shadow of a Doubt
A very well-made Hitchcock, with great acting and great scripting. I liked it at the time, and now can’t remember a thing about it, hence its placing here, I’m afraid.

78. Young Frankenstein
Funny, but ultimately overrated. Sorry.

79. The Elephant Man
If this weren’t a Lynch, but was still somehow shot the same way, I wouldn’t be disappointed. But as it is... it’s not funny for a second, there’s no jovialness to it, and it possibly tries a bit too hard to grab our sympathetic strings. Luckily, it’s incredibly well-made.

80. Rebecca
If this weren’t a Hitchcock, but was still somehow shot the same way, I wouldn’t be disappointed. But as is... it’s not funny for a second, there’s no jovialness to it, and the main girl’s an irritating sap. Luckily, it’s incredibly well-made... like the previous was.

81. The Vampire Lovers
Surprisingly well-made... for a Hammer Horror. Oh, to hell with it; I watch this because it’s hilarious. “YOU MUST DIE! EEEVERYBODY MUST DIE!” is just a wonderful line. It’s full of very amusing acting, too.

82. North by Northwest
Definitely a good movie. Unfortunately, I’m a Bond fan, so I can’t help but feel like I’ve seen it all before, even though that’s the wrong way around. Still, some great one-liners and scenes, and it’s obvious why the Bond blokes originally thought of Cary Grant.

83. Batman
Burton’s trademark gothica, contrasted with Jack Nicholson. Let’s be honest, without Nicholson – whether he’s shooting to a circus tune, or to Prince – this wouldn’t be great. But he’s in it, and he’s great. So there.

84. Batman Begins
A highly competent and interesting kickstart to Nolan’s bunch. Despite the ever-cool Cillian Murphy playing the Scarecrow, I only really found him good on a conceptual level, and not much to watch. It ultimately falls short of its aims. But then, most superhero movies do.

85. Scream
Veers between irritating postmodernism and genuinely clever postmodernism without warning. Fractured, but ultimately a whole bag of fun. Mind you, the killer needs to brush up on his knowledge – Norman Bates doesn’t have a motive, yes, but only because Mother does.

86. Adulthood
Less memorable, to be honest. Still good.

87. The Royal Tenenbaums
Possibly I don’t “get” this, although I don’t think it’s the eccentricity that puts me off. Wait, I’m not even put off. It’s more that I just don’t find it funny. Yep! Obviously well-done though, and the suicide scene was really good.

88. The Thing
Bluntly, I don’t give a shit about anyone in the movie, and it’s clichéd and dull. Bluntly, I liked watching the effects. That, and the ending, are the reason it’s even up this high. But, y’know. They were good effects.

89. A Nightmare on Elm Street
Dreams = fun imagery, so at least the usual slasher elements are counterpointed by genuinely twisted stuff. Freddy’s not as funny as he’s hyped up to be (though maybe this happens over later films, I don’t know), but he’s effective enough.

90. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
It’s utterly bizarre, and I suspect I’ll end up enjoying it as a cult favourite, in the way that Ravenous is bloody high up the list. At the moment however... here it stays.

91. Night of the Living Dead
This really did look pretty. I got bored, but I think I was just tired. Such is the way.

92. Poltergeist
I don’t actually mind Spielberg – he can be darn entertaining when he wants to be – but it’s hard to see this as anything but an inferior Exorcist.

93. The Silence of the Lambs
This is only here because a) Jodie Foster is in it, and b) Anthony Hopkins is in it. Otherwise, it’d probably not even make the list.

94. The Exorcist III
More confident, psychological, and all-round competent than its predecessor, and yet missing the fun. Both sequels managed to miss something of the first film, I think.

95. Exorcist II: The Heretic
Yeah okay, I’m jumbling up the Exorcist two here as well, but I like them nearly equally, despite III being obviously superior. I’m very confused. Maybe it’s just the sight of Linda Blair tap-dancing. I don’t know.

96. Colour Me Kubrick
An incredibly fun movie, and essentially a camp autobiography, one that Noel Coward would probably be a fan of. Still, it is what it is, I suppose.

97. To End All Wars
Interesting to see a WWII film about the Japanese, and with only one American, and a bunch of Australians and Scots. And Carlyle’s in it. And uh... that’s all I remember.

98. Batman & Robin
Despite boasting a terrible performance from Uma Thurman, this gets away with it due to the astounding visuals (I know, I can’t believe I’m complimenting it for that), Schwarzenegger, and the fact that it actually isn’t boring. Funnily enough.

99. Batman Returns
Frankly, bollocks to the gothic Burton-ness; this is just simply so utterly dull. Everything, from Batman, to the Penguin, to the Catwoman, is black and gothic, and also over the top. Worthless.

100. Sin City
An impressive artistic achievement... and a totally irritating male-wank all in one. And you thought only Warhol could achieve that.

101. Wild Things
Often described as “iconic”, it’s really only watchable for a) the badness, and b) Bill Murray. But that’s enough for me.

102. Wild Things 3
Ridiculously enjoyable, in all its craptasticality.

103. Wild Things 2
Hmm. Actually, this should probably be 104, but oh well! Too late to change now. This is just horrible on every level, and not even enjoyable like the other two.

104. The Brothers Grimm
Despite being a Gilliam film, this is second last, because I just got so utterly bored during it. The most bored I’ve been in any of the movies in this list, and that’s saying something.

105. Friday the 13th
I’ve already said before why I hate this so. I still hate it.

There’s actually a lot more, but that’ll do for now. There’s stuff not in the list, such as Wild at Heart and Exorcist: The Beginning, but I can’t be fucked correcting it now. And Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, actually. I missed a Gilliam and a Lynch!

...I wonder if I should post this on my blog.

...I’ll give it a bit. I should sleep now, it’s 10 and I’m tired. YUP!

G’night, retardedly-written autobiography.

Comicide & "Emoness"

2008-11-01T04:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve been rather neglectful of this Journal of late, and – no, no, no excuses. Because this time, I don’t care. Hooray! Seeing as this collective-Journal-thing is over half a million words already – I could have just said “over 500,000”, but the “million” makes it sound larger somehow – I hardly need to write as regularly as I thought I did.

Even though Jack Bz will be very disappointed. Yeah well, fuck him and his stump. Fuck them good.

David Tennant’s leaving Doctor Who, god almighty. It’s all so amazing.

Thing I just realised: I’ve been nodding vaguely over the last few years whenever I’ve seen someone say, “Isn’t Monsters Inc. such an amazing idea? I mean, revealing that monsters are really like us, that it’s their job to scare children.”

And only now, just now, did I remember: Aaahh!! Real Monsters.

Note to those critics: if Pixar makes a movie that’s totally from the POV of a bunch of babies, and you praise it as being original, I will sic Reptar on your evil arses.

And The Incredibles leads me onto...

I’m starting to wonder just how much I really like comics. By which I mean... well, back in 2007 (it’s always “back in 2007” with this Journal, isn’t it. I wrote a shiteload back then) I talked about the snobbery of seeing comics as an inferior medium to books, to TV, to film, to any other bloody medium you can think of. How vibrant, how intelligent, how interesting they can be. The advantages of them; more access to internal monologues with characters than film, yet more ability to use imagery and images than books.

...and yet... how many comics do I actually like? I’m willing to be convinced that lots of superhero comics, for instance, are intelligent/well-made/simply fun/whatever, but... even though Marvel, and to a lesser extent DC, feel iconic to me, they do in a mythical way. They do in the way that the Viking gods do, and yet I find Thor a boring character in everything I’ve read/watched bar Hitchhiker’s, ridiculously enough. In fact, I’ve only ever really held up two genuine superheroes as exemplary figures – Batman, and Spiderman.

How much of that is to do with the movies based on them, I’m not sure. I do definitely remember liking Spiderman as a kid, for various reasons. Well, in fact, as a kid, it was because he has a genuinely brilliant costume, and he can take to the skies without flying. That last point is something that’s stayed with me even now; I find the idea of gliding, of being able to take to the skies in a limited capacity, far more impressive and free than flying. Because if you’re flying, you can do anything, and if you can do anything then it becomes second nature. Like stabbing food with a fork. Gliding, or taking to the skies, would be like trying to master chopsticks. There’s a lot more risk involved, but a hell of a lot more fun.

Batman can’t fly either. Even though he’s based on a winged creature. Notice a pattern here?

But I did like those superheroes as a kid. And, in fact, many more. I liked Cyclops, purely for his ability – even though it’s nothing yer-generic-alien can’t do with a gun – and of course Wolverine is ever a favourite. Or was – I don’t find him as fascinating now as I did as a kid, and he doesn’t leap to mind anymore when I think of superheroes I genuinely like. He’s primal, but he’s ultimately too much of a barstard. He does look cool though, admittedly.

And anyway, the Spiderman movies came later.

I think what I like about Batman and Spiderman, looking at them now, is how real they feel. No hang on, don’t mistake me here; comics, obviously, don’t have to be real to be good. In fact, I’m certain a very realistic comic would be interesting but ultimately dull. Imagine Law and Order (which is “reality-based”, I should say, not at all “real”) as a comic, and shudder. Law and Order: Gotham City. Actually, that could be a really great black comedy.

Anyway. Comics can be told in grand strokes, in massively vibrant art, in fantastic images and the sheer “cool” factor, if we’re going to get more teenage here.

And yet... I’m not sure if the characters should entirely fit into that. The superheroes, anyway. I’m not sure if they should be “cool”, that they should be out-of-this-world. I’m treading dangerously close to saying “we should identify with them” here, but it’s not that; it’s just that we should understand them.

Look at Bruce Wayne. His parents died when he was young, and he’s a billionaire. Now, how many members of the audience will be able to identify with both of those, let alone even one? Not very many. But we understand what goes on in his head, we understand why he does what he does.

Superman, on the other hand... bearing in mind that being a reporter is just about the most shit-obvious job for any character to have in the world (though that didn’t stop Tintin [who admittedly seemed to lose this job], or Sarah Jane, or countless others, from being fun/interesting), Superman is an alien from another planet who suffers extreme reactions to an alien substance. Now, erm... y-what? Why is he so eager to help humans, why does he have to take a reporter’s job, why does anything in that universe happen? Just... just why? It’s not grand and mysterious for this alien to protect humans, like the Doctor is, it’s just rather vague and undefined when you look at it, like Goku is. Goku protected humans because, y’know, he suffered a bump to the head. Uh-huh.

More to the point, I’ve never talked to a Dragonball Z fan who actually liked Goku, let alone gave a shit about him. He’s too straight-laced. He’s good to have from a moralistic point of view, but we just don’t understand him, even though – ironically enough, considering he’s “more alien” – we understand Vegeta, for example, perfectly. Or even Piccolo, for chrissakes.

(Here we go Bz, another reason why I personally like the Cell Saga so much; because when Gohan defeated Cell, it felt like a great bit of character development. I cared about Gohan, and it was also the first time a new level – Super Saiyan 2 – had been attained. But Goku defeating Buu a couple of times? And going to Super Saiyan 3? Hmm. Yawn)

And anyway, on top of that, Superman just looks ridiculous. Let alone the fact that I can’t figure out why no-one connects Clark Kent to Superman, considering the major difference is their outfits. Unless everyone around them are all the progeny of Trinny and Susannah.

Spiderman, of course, is a lot more easy for the audience – particularly the target audience – to “identify” with. He’s a normal bloke, a bit talented and a bit brainy but otherwise a bit lame, who holds down rather unremarkable jobs and likes his family. And is in love with a girl. But this isn’t just about identification; I also understand him as a consequence, I understand what he’s going through. Even if I haven’t gone through it myself. Because it makes sense.

And here’s the interesting thing about Spiderman; in a climate where the code for reinventing superheroes is to make them angsty, the three Spiderman films didn’t do this at all. Sure, he cried, he was emotional, but he was also far too normal to be brooding, mainly due to Tobey Maguire being perfect casting (I really must see him in Pleasantville, that’s another perfect-sounding example of casting right there). Even the third wasn’t like this – I’ve seen the portrayal of Spiderman, particularly in his black outfit, referred to as “emo” by a lot of people. This is, in short, ludicruous. Ignoring the fact that he’s blatantly more confident and outgoing than he ever was before in these scenes – look at the way he eyes up every girl, nodding smugly to himself (and crucially, also note how over half of them think he’s a twat, communicated purely through facial expressions alone), but more to the point, it wasn’t that Spiderman became “emo”, it was that this “emo” side of him was something that fundamentally wasn’t and shouldn’t be him. In any other comic adaptation about a teenage superhero, the hero would actually be more like Eddie Brock, all angsty and jealous, but ultimately a good person underneath the rage. Parker’s actually better than that.

And so, reinventing the Batman franchise to make Wayne more emotional than he was in the comics, in the 60s jokey-TV show, and the Burton films (not necessarily the Schumacher ones, mind) – cool, good idea, if done well. But were someone to reinvent Spiderman as an emotional, angsty character, it would just not fit. It’d be horrible.

...interesting, this, though. Because I just “wasted” about three paragraphs talking about Spiderman, and I could easily go on about Batman if I wanted to, particularly in his film outings. But Superman? I’m personally turned off. Daredevil? What? The Fantastic Four? I’m sorry?

Even the X-Men bore the shit out of me... even though I still really, really like the whole mutants vs. humans idea. I don’t know, I really don’t. I don’t know why.

So what non-superhero comics do I like? Well, there’s, erm...

And that’s the problem. I see them as a fascinating medium, particularly one that has so much untapped potential for me personally (cos, y’know, I haven’t read a lot), but, well, I haven’t read a lot. Bluntly, the comic I’ve kept up with the most over the last few years is Garfield, which says a hell of a lot.

Garfield seems to be beaten up a lot recently, but here’s the thing; it’s a one-off thing. By which I mean, you glance at it in the paper, you laugh (or don’t, depending on the week), and that’s that. It’s built on archetypes and repetitive jokes, but they’re understandable and often funny jokes (jokes like “Garfield is bad to Jon”, by the way, not “Garfield hates Mondays and likes lasagne”). It’s unchanging because it doesn’t need to change.

Webcomics are a different matter, because you can flip through them – which is why a comic that was like Garfield, online (erm, barring Garfield Without Garfield, of course), would be incredibly dull. You know how television pre-approx.-80s was disposable, was never intended to be repeated or recorded or kept in an archive, and that’s why recaps, and cliffhangers, and lots and lots of episodes are frequent? And how shows now can have as much detail crammed into little spaces of time, because everything will be captured on DVD, they don’t need to wait around, they can just move on as quickly as they wish? It’s the same with comics. Archiving online is a wonderful thing, but it really does make older, pre-internet comics look incredibly staid and shite in comparison.

Oh hang on, I said a comic like Garfield, online, would be shite – that isn’t exactly true, because Cyanide and Happiness tends to work on the same principle, i.e. the “one joke a day, laugh then leave” kind of thing. At least, that’s how I tend to look at it. A daily dose of cyanide and happiness. But the reason it looks “bad” in comparison with Achewood is that its function as a strip is very different. Even though there are occasional running gags, it’s really a deliberately character-less joke-a-day strip. Something like Achewood is more about character interaction, and is more complex.

...but possibly less funny?

And apart from Garfield, then, there’s... well, there was Maus recently. Oh, and Tintin sort of counts, even though I admittedly like it more as a TV series. I think that’s true in general; I like comics, but tend to prefer seeing them adapted to screen, as I do with books. Maybe it’s just that film is a language more immediately accessible to me. I’m not sure.

And then... well... there’s Berserk (which, again, I prefer as a TV show – something that seems to be heresy amongst certain fans I’ve seen). And there’s... Doctor Who comics. And Faction Paradox.

Oh, blimey, where the fuck do I start. Someone help me out here.

(Oh, I’ve read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, actually)

Tell me, how would you describe webcomics? They are...

2008-10-25T01:27:00.000-07:00

If I'm having girl troubles I feel bad (and don't have a son), I've got 500 Movies but La Chienne ain't one

2008-10-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday 04 October 2008
8:05pm

Going to Newcastle tomorrow. Daylight saving, lose an hour, lose some sleep, talk like I’m narrating Fight Club. Etc.

I watched Tideland today, which was not at all what I was expecting. I’d probably misread the info on it (good; it’s always best to be intrigued but wrong about what it’s going to be) and assumed it would be Alice in Wonderland but perverted. Not at all, really. It was also brilliant, and I’d very much put it in my revised Top 45 or whatever number I choose Films list (which would also include Dancer in the Dark, and uh... I dunno, other things).

I also started watching Pan’s Labyrinth due to the apparent similarities of the two. Bad idea. I was bored halfway through and switched off. Which is probably very unfair to it, considering how much it’s been lauded. And anyway, “boredom” is hardly the best criticism. I’d need to watch the whole thing first before giving an opinion. And thus, expect my opinion in about twenty years, when I also get around to watching Lost Highway, Get Carter... and loads of other films I’ve started but haven’t bothered finishing.

So, instead; I learned, via looking at someone’s profile on IMDB (he shall remain nameless, mainly because I don’t know his name and it’s not like he needs the publicity of being mentioned on my blog), that Empire have now done their Top 500 Movies (voted by the public, o’course). This guy on IMDB also posted a few thoughts on some of the entries.

I’m now going to do that too. The full list is below, because I’m anal, but I will hardly be commenting on all of them...

EDIT: No I won't, because what I wrote was genuinely stupid. I've removed it because it pains me to even see it.

OH LOOK, I FOUND ANOTHER UNPOSTED ENTRY:

Obligatory mention: Nina’s birthday yesterday.

O’course, she’s now 14. Which means [SNIP! Again, ask for it and I'll give it]

Speaking of which, for the wedding on Sunday, I had to shave. First time I’ve shaved since... erm, being taught to shave (and promptly forgetting) back in late 2006 (from memory. And yes, that memory is poor). And so far, no-one has commented on that... apart from [SNIP! Sorry, I'm snipping too much]

‘Course, I’ll never know for sure. I’m currently talking to Michael Sandford, who’s just been asked out by a girl. At 15. That’s incredibly lucky, or more likely she just doesn’t know protocol. Because, as it happens –

Oh yeah, and here’s an irony, because he’s asking me for advice. This is another thing that happens fairly regularly and I’m not sure why. Maybe most people just assume that I would’ve, y’know, had a girlfriend at some point.

– I’ve never been asked out by a girl. In every instance where something has(n’t) happened, they’ve waited for me to ask them out, or to at least hint that I’m interested in such a thing. This is silly. And no, I’m not that fucked up that I’m blaming them for this. In fact, I’m actually in a very good mood as I’m typing this.

What I meant is that girls are, obviously, much better at reading this sort of thing than guys are. Face it, girls, you’re smarter. You’re more aware of the world around you. So yeah, it’d make more sense for you to initiate something if you’re really interested, rather than the clueless guys like us. Or something.

This is why my Journal is full of lots of references to a couple of girls – because I try and limit this kinda thing after the very-embarrassing-to-read-but-then-again-I-was-happier 2006 entries – but inevitably, unless I’m somehow clever and prophetic enough to have mentioned who I’ll “end up with” about a million times in this Journal (which would be... erm... Kate), any romances will suddenly pop up out of nowhere.

Who am I kidding? WHAT ROMANCES, DOM.

Yes, I heard you, no need to shout.

I’m thinking of restarting Tds4a Tardis, and just making it snippets of thoughts I’ve had rather than full-blown reviews. Even though a part of me wants to write a full-blown review of Torchwood series two. Maybe I’ll eventually do those too, who knows. I’ll mix it up.

And yes, I’m aware that I’ve been thinking about restarting it before, and yes, I’m aware that I might not have written that I was thinking about restarting it before in this Journal before and therefore that aforementioned thing migh-*explodes*

LINK TO THING I JUST POSTED: http://tds4atardis.blogspot.com/

It’s telling that I spent far more time today thinking about potential Torchwood storylines than about women. Or indeed, about getting complimented – if it even was a compliment. I – no, wait, I don’t even need to point out that this is obviously why I don’t have a girlfriend, even though that’s exactly what I just did. And so-*explodes again*

That Dom's Some Bitch You Know, She Keeps Calling My Phone, Won't Leave Me Alone

2008-10-18T22:38:00.000-07:00

Too much work. I’ve had too much work recently.

I’m also boiling hot at the moment, so I’ll just take my shirt off. Hang on a tick.

Alrighty. Hi guys! Welcome to my now shirtless journal!

With my shirt off, I can now drive around and call everyone I see a faggot, it’ll be awesome.

[SNIP! I just cut some personal stuff. If anyone desperately wants to read it - i.e. Bz - just ask, and you shalt receive]

...I don’t actually have anything to talk about, I’ve just realised. Bugger. Bugger. No, let’s think. There must be something. I need to write something cool and bloggy for my blog. And yet something not personal like the previous sentences I just threw in. Hmph.

Maybe I’ll go the easy way out, and discuss something nostalgic. That’ll do.

Actually, something that’s been concerning me recently. Everyone who has read this entire Journal – yes Dom, I’m looking at me – will remember that I once spent two weeks in Sydney, whinging about how much I hated business. What concerns me is that, when doing these transcriptions, which’ve been about Westpac and online banking... I mean, banking... I’ve been far more interested in the detailed interviews than the customers. So customers saying things like “I bank and the people are happy!” is intensely boring, whereas a banker saying, to steal straight from the transcriptions, “For a start, with the credit card piece, one of the key advantages about online banking is that you can look at all the transactions you’ve done, so we might feel more inclined to use our credit card in places we might not have before, like online. But if I was actually speaking to you, we’d probably be having a discussion about how we’d have a credit card used to pay for a home loan, and you need to be able to see that working, and online banking helps with that, we could use the example of having the credit card pay for everything. Then they could go online banking and see the reduced interest that they get in the following month to the month when they weren’t using that model”... is somehow interesting when I’m listening to it. And I bet that you, reading that, actually skimmed it.

And yet, here I am, reading Terry Pratchett’s Making Money during my break in work, a book that makes fun of how dull banking is. And I’m finding it funny because we all know that banking is dull. Well, except for when I’m transcribing about it, right?

Oh, never mind.

Still looking for something nostalgic. I’ll run out of endless silly childhood stuff soon.

Oh, mind you, I once transcribed a ten minute video about a guy who was in love with gold digging. For all that that sounds far more romantic than banking... a ten minute video bored the shit out of me, whereas literally an hour of a sales rep talking about banking interested me.

What have I become?

Speaking of money... [band] (I won’t mention their name in the blog version of this, because I’m still too in love with my balls to want to risk being castrated) have a song that, as far as I can make out, is about the Newcastle flood that happened last year. One of the lines in it is the ever-powerful sounding...

“It takes its toll”

...except, if you look at the word “toll” literally, then it starts to look silly. To me, a toll is that thing you pay when you’re crossing a bridge that doesn’t have a troll under it, and therefore the lyric makes me imagine the flood rising from the beach, slamming down towards a street, and then knocking on the peoples’ doors in the manner of a repo man and saying, “Excuse me, sorry to bother you... but I’m going to have to take your car, your furniture, your pets... in fact, just your house in general. Possibly your lives too. On the plus side, you’ll get your pool filled, free of charge.”

Note to self when writing lyrics in future: a lyric that somehow makes a natural disaster sound like bureaucracy is a really bad lyric.

And to continue the theme of ridiculous language being used, I was in Big W yesterday and a guy described his new computer as being “pretty epic”. And he wasn’t even a nerd, he was a jock.

I was looking at the TAFE list of courses yesterday, and there’s no suitable media course, or anything that approaches it, in Newcastle. I’m shattered about that. This means I’ll have to go back to Uni, FUCK.

Although Joeon said that if I was staying next year, he’d put me on some kind of training procedure that’d make me a senior staff. I uh, yeah. Hmm. Apart from the fact that I detest the idea of serving customers because I’m a scared little shit, good idea!

How many words is this now, barring the probably-personal stuff? Hmm, close to a 1000. This’ll probably do, unless I find something interesting to talk about. Anyway, Bz didn’t post the blog he said he was going to, so he can’t blame me for a relatively shit one on my own.

Actually, about banking – if you put a deposit of $100 on your savings account, and transfer that online t-nope, not interesting bz.

EDIT: I know! I can also paste the Empire thing, which I neglected to do before. Yep! That’ll be – nope not interesting OH SHUTUP BZ SHUTUP SHUTUP ALL OF BZ etc.