Rise Up

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is this piece of news.

Even with a degree in politics (and philosophy, but the less said about that the better), I only feel comfortable taking a strong political stance when the question seems mind-numbingly obvious. Questions like: Should MPs get a pay rise? There's a head-scratcher; should MPs, who have consistently proven themselves to be untrustworthy and incompetent, have their pay raised above £70,000 during the most savage spending cuts we've ever seen? Wait, let me get my calculator and a pot of coffee, this one's going to take quite some FUCK OFF.

In the background of all this is of course the expenses scandal, from John Prescott using taxpayer's money to repair his toilet seat twice, to John Prescott spending £4,800 a year on food at public expense. As a result, the task of deciding how much MPs should be paid has been handed to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which means that our elected representatives can have their taxpayer-funded cake and eat it too; MPs can go to the press or that bastion of democratic debate Question Time, and announce that they abhor the prospect of a pay rise, while conceding that they have no power over the decision so would have no choice but to reluctantly accept the pay rise anyway. They can score electoral points with their rhetoric, while holding a giant novelty cheque obnoxiously behind their back. It's win-win.

It's a complete false dichotomy that our MPs are to either abuse a system of parliamentary expenses or have a pay rise. As is the idea that without increased pay, they'll have no choice but to take on other jobs and business interests. Here's a novel idea: Pay them the same as other public servants, don't let them have any other employment and don't let them fiddle expenses. You know, like a normal fucking job. 

To be fair to MPs, they probably don't all sit on their arse all day. Unlike, oh I dunno, the Queen, who was recently given a 5% pay rise for doing fuck nothing and making that face. I don't think all MPs are crooks, and I'm sure some of them are genuinely there to make things better for people, such as... well I can't think of any now you put me on the spot. I do, however, think that they're disproportionately wealthy, that they're weird and creepy and that, most importantly, they should be working for us and not the other way round. And if they really need a second home closer to Westminster? Two words: Capsule hotel. 

Travelling Without Moving II: The Heretic

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is when people insist on telling you all the details of their fucking boring holiday (again).

So, I just got back from the USA. Here are the edited highlights of the journal I kept. The word "highlights" here being used loosely, as in: "Here are some highlights from today's local elections."

Day 1

• Flew to New York, managed to avoid being cavity searched in the airport. Result!
• Watched The Look of Love on the plane, here's my review: Lots of naked people. 
• Looking forward to meeting this Fiscal Cliff I keep hearing about. Apparently he never pays for a round.
• Saw this stupid advert on the subway:

Day 2

• Watched the Yankees play a game of rounders.
• Went to 30 Rock!

Day 3

• Enjoyed The Dark Knight boat trip, the Cloverfield subway tour and a go in the pram from Rosemary's Baby.
• No sign of Louise Mensch.

Day 4

• Went to the Natural History Museum where Alex discovered the world's funniest machine:

Day 5

• Got the bus to Washington D.C.
• Saw this great advert:

Day 6

• No sign of President Romney.
• Saw that white house from The West Wing, the building from Midtown Madness 3 and the bloke from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Day 7

• Saw the PreCrime building from Minority Report! AKA the Ronald Reagan Building.
• From Reagan to Regan - went to the stairs from The Exorcist! My pilgrimage is complete.

Day 8

• Saw pandas at the zoo.
• Attempted a 1000 piece Beatles jigsaw.

So that was my brief trip to America, based mainly on locations from films and TV shows. I'll leave you with an American sign, an American cat and Tubular Bells.

Metabollocks

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is films about films.

That's probably because I'm pretentious and awful, having already discussed TV shows about TV shows. A lot of cinema is about cinema, but I'm talking about films that actually revolve around the production of fictional films. So here, because I'm a complete sucker for postmodernism, are my top 5 films about films:

5. Berberian Sound Studio

The wonderful Toby Jones plays a foley artist who leaves his quiet English life to work on an Italian giallo film called The Equestrian Vortex. It's nicely atmospheric and unashamedly Lynchian, but the best thing about it is watching Jones create nasty horror sound effects by attacking the shit out of some vegetables. I know how he feels.

4. Seven Psychopaths

Martin McDonagh follows up his brilliant In Bruges with the less brilliant but still brilliant Seven Psychopaths. It centres around Colin Farrell's struggling writer, who happens to be called Marty, as he attempts to finish a screenplay, which happens to be called Seven Psychopaths. With its clever humour and impressive ensemble cast, Seven Psychopaths explains that films can treat people as horribly as they want, but the dog must not be harmed.

3. The Artist

Talking of which, The Artist follows silent movie star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and his dog Jack (Uggie) as they attempt to save a career destroyed by the introduction of sound in cinema. Famously, filmgoers in Liverpool were refunded after complaining that The Artist was a silent film. But when I demand my money back because The Great Gatsby was too loud, nothing.

2. Mulholland Drive 

David Lynch's confusing masterpiece follows an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) as she arrives in Hollywood and auditions for a film called The Sylvia North Story. And there's some weird stuff with a blue box and a lesbian.

1. Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Having already redefined the horror genre at least twice, Wes Craven returns to Elm Street for the seventh, and second best, instalment in the iconic franchise. New Nightmare sees the cast of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street terrorised and tormented by Freddy Krueger (credited as "Himself"; Robert Englund plays Robert Englund), who seems to be breaking out of the films and into the real world. It's up to Heather Langenkamp (Heather Langenkamp) to stop him, with the help of Wes Craven (Wes Craven) who is apparently writing the script that they are following. It's all fascinatingly self-aware, at once celebrating the franchise and criticising its over-commercialisation over the years; "the story gets too familiar, or too watered down by people trying to make it easier to sell," to quote Wes Craven (Wes Craven), who redefines the genre in the process. He would go on to redefine the genre again with the even more postmodern Scream. Incidentally, Wes Craven's twitter feed is a glorious mix of horror films and birdwatching. I love him.

And here are 5 more that I chose not to include:

5. Adaptation

Charlie Kaufman's super smart but super smug Adaptation follows Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) and his twin brother (Nicolas Cage) as Charlie struggles to adapt The Orchid Thief into a film, self-referentially writing his script as the events unfold.

Why I didn't include it: Aren't you reading? It stars Nicolas Cage. Twice.

4. Inland Empire 

Three hours of Lynchian madness including rabbits, dancing and another actress, this time in a film called In High on Blue Tomorrows which is cursed, or something.

Why I didn't include it: It makes Mulholland Drive seem straightforward.

3. Scream 3

If you hadn't guessed, I would have loved to include a Scream film but the only one that actually centres around the production of a film is the third, and worst, instalment in Wes Craven's franchise. Ghostface is back and this time the victims are the cast of Stab 3, the franchise-within-a-franchise based on the events of Scream. It sounds confusing, but Wes Craven did redefine the horror genre.

Why I didn't include it: It's written by Ehren Kruger, who insists on doing to Scream what he did to Transformers.

2. Hitchcock

This shouldn't really count, as the film-within-a-film is not fictional, but Psycho. But unlike that Hitchcock classic, this sucks, not to mention being completely overshadowed by the excellent TV movie The Girl starring Toby Jones as Alfred Hitchcock.

Why I didn't include it: Scarlett Johansson.

1. Timecode 

The interesting thing about Timecode is that the screen is divided into four quadrants, each showing a continuous 90-minute take, following some incredibly boring Hollywood people trying to make a film.

Why I didn't include it: It's shite.

Thanks for reading! The title of this blog comes from the Slipknot song Metabolic. But you got that. 

  

Neverending Tory

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are three more of them.

I've now finished the politics part of my degree, and can confidently answer the seemingly complex question: What is politics? It's a bunch of cunts being cunts. But apparently you can't write that in an exam. This week saw these three instances of cunts being cunts:

3. Nigel Farage made the fatal mistake of opening his stupid mouth, and from the saliva-filled black hole of self-awareness came the accusation that the Scottish protesters were "yobbo fascist scum." These protesters had besieged the UKIP idiot in Edinburgh's Canons' Gait pub, which is incidentally where I first saw the brilliant Robin Ince perform. In fairness to Nigel Farage, it can't be easy constantly refuting claims that your party is racist when all its candidates keep getting caught doing Nazi salutes and denying the Holocaust and being racist. But as its website so speedily asserts, UKIP is a "non-racist party", so who cares about all the pesky evidence to the fucking contrary? With all that in mind, you'd have thought the cunt from Kent would think twice before throwing around the accusation of fascism. The hypocrisy of Nigel Farage, a man so mindlessly nationalistic that his policies include a five-year freeze on immigration, calling the Scottish nationalists "fascists" is simply laughable. Haha.

2. You'd have thought self-awareness couldn't plummet much lower than that. But this is British politics, so it definitely can. An anonymous source close to the Prime Minister has apparently described Tory activists as "mad, swivel-eyed loons." This angered Tory activists, who totally disproved the remarks by demanding a "full-scale inquiry", their loon eyes swiveling like mad.

1.  Surely self-awareness can't sink any lower? Oh wait, here comes Philip Hammond. The creepy fucking children's nightmare complained that gay marriage upsets too many people. Why can't those selfish gays stop their fight for equality and just think about all the Tories they're upsetting?! Look Philip Hammond, gay marriage is definitely going to become legal despite your party's best efforts. Why would you keep reasserting your bigotry? Just shut up; you'd be doing a favour to yourself, your party and most importantly, me.

Thanks for reading, I'll leave you with the Catch 22 song from which this blog takes its name. And talking of third wave ska, Greece should have won Eurovision. Hey, do you think Nigel Farage was secretly watching?

Money For Nothing

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and here are three more of them. 

Another trip to the cinema (Dead Man Down, crap), another bunch of awful adverts and trailers.

3. 

Everything about this advert is loathsome; their smug fucking gurning, that awful ad-rock music, the weirdly disgusting name Freederm...

2. 

"Wouldn't they sound better facing the right way?"

No. 

1. 

Just when I thought I'd found this year's film with the dumbest premise (Upside Down), along comes this big pile of stupid. Why would making all crime legal for one night a year make unemployment fall to 1%? How would it stop people committing crime the rest of the year? What stupid fucking government would do that? Apart from ours maybe. It just seems like the makers of this film haven't stopped to think about it for a single second.

Oh, ok.

Yep, got it. 

Then I watched the fantastic Stoker, and my faith in the world was (partially) restored. Here's Dire Straits. 

Tower Seven

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is films set in tower blocks.

Last year there were (at least) three films set in tower blocks, presumably because they make good settings for confined action, while making a comment on broken promises of post-war affluence. Or something. So here are my top 7 films set in tower blocks, because of the name of the Thievery Corporation song. 

7. Dredd (2012)

Karl Urban's chin fights its way up a 200-storey tower block in this explosive comic book adaptation that's loved by people who haven't seen The Raid. 

6. The Negotiator (1998)

Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey star in a gripping thriller about a hostage negotiator who ends up taking hostages himself in, you guessed it, a tower block. According to IMDb, Sylvester Stallone was meant to star but turned it down, as part of his ongoing refusal to be in good films. 

5. Tower Block (2012, again)

This aptly-titled British thriller sees the residents of a decrepit tower block (where else?) trapped by a sniper. It's a nicely tense piece of writing by James Moran, who joins Caitlin and Dylan in the ranks of great Morans. 

4. Attack the Block (2011)

Joe Cornish's debut feature is a quotable comedy in which aliens invade a South London bungalow. Just kidding, it's a tower block.

3. Shivers (1975)

A sexually-transmitted parasite spreads through a Canadian tower block, causing rampant sexual desire and icky bodily mutations in its residents. This was the breakthrough film for the master of body horror David Cronenberg, and bizarrely was co-produced by his friend Ivan Reitman, who would go on to make weird comedies starring Arnold Schwarzenneger. Actually, the films of Reitman and Cronenberg aren't so different; Twins is like Dead Ringers (which was even going to be called Twins until Reitman bought the title from Cronenberg), Kindergarten Cop is like Eastern Promises (spoiler alert) and Junior is like The Brood (and practically everything Cronenberg has done). 

2. Die Hard (1988)

I don't need to say anything about Die Hard. Bruce Willis, tower block, increasingly shit sequels. Next!

1. The Raid (2012, again, again.)

The best tower block film has to be this head-hammeringly violent Indonesian martial arts movie, about a police squad's brutal battle up a run-down high-rise. Watch it. Your jaw will be in your throat and your heart will be on the floor. I can't wait for the sequel - and that's a sentence I never thought I'd say.

Thanks for reading, and there's a prize for whoever can spot the odd one out, visually speaking... I'll leave you with the Thievery Corporation song responsible for this whole sorry affair. Next time, my Shed Seven!

  

You're Gonna Pay

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is adverts. Again. Again. Again. Again. The word has lost all meaning.

Blah blah blah here are three more shit adverts. I didn't get much sleep...

3. 

"Over 2,000 visual effects" boasts Iron Man 3, another meaningless brag about quantity that's almost up there with Movie 43's "The biggest cast ever assembled". But not quite. 

This idea that only spectacle and special effects are "worth paying for" is complete nonsense and is basically insulting to films that actually give a shit without having "an amazing stunt team." Films like Good Vibrations, which actually deserves your money and, best of all, doesn't star Gwyneth Paltrow. 

2. 

The advert is fine, it's just the music. That boring fucking noise of nothing that can only be described as Ad Rock. If your rock music can be used to sell BlackBerrys, you're doing it wrong.

1. 

Fuck off.

Here's The Toasters.