The BBC is pretty much unfit for political purpose these days, at least on domestic issues, leaving us all trawling BBC4 and the movies section for pretty pictures and diversion.

A History of Art in Three Colours paints just such a pretty picture you might desperately hunt out for the lack of any proper news or analysis.

Professor James Fox, who has the art of whispering in libraries down to its own massively important fine Art, speaks well, writes well, and all this, because he hasn’t been told by some daft cunt at the BBC to plant both feet on the ground, breathe deeply, enunciate consonants like bullets, slurp vowels like leaky porridge and drown dipthongs so that no matter what you’re saying you sound as if you’re trying to insult the intelligence of a spoon.

Despite it’s derivative title, James Fox’s take on the history of art is really interesting.

Fox has a great pop script and is as good a specialist broadcaster as the many great communicators and entertainers who the public have dug out of the dead slots the BBC tries to kill off any talent with, and forcibly raised to prominence.

The young academic takes blue, gold, and white to educate ignorants clods such as yours truly about some of history’s maddest and most talented artists and architects.

There’s little point in going through the whole thing: just know that white is the best one.

It’s the best one partly because when old Prof Fox gets whispering in the library it gives you the sort of sensation I imagine a cat gets when you tickle it under the chin, a sort of comatose numbing almost as powerful as a girl whispering in your ear.

It’s also as good as the others in that the producers, uncaring of any budget – although they couldn’t resist the apparently untamable BBC urge to stick Philip fucking Glass under everything – also throw in some of the best bits of the soundtracks of Barton Fink, Layer Cake, and – I think – Ronin, to score it.

But it’s mainly the best because it raises a really interesting question about Art – which is this.

Can Fascist Art be good?

Anyone who’s anyone knows of course that it can. Just because an artist is a bastard, they don’t draw any less of a perfect circle.

To lie – and say a great painting or sculpture is shit because it served an evil purpose – is of course stupid, and almost fascistic in itself.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t try and dissuade dodgy political art from its purpose.

Fox is sufficiently erudite to be able to put Mussolini’s renaissance of Antique White (for a start he’s already explained there wasn’t very much antique white anyway) in context.

So when he damns Mussolini’s pure white fascist precinct outside Rome – architecture I rather like – you trust him that he’s not mindlessly spouting some – ironically – White City directive, but just kindly reminding you you wouldn’t really have liked to live in Mussolini’s Corbusier-inspired future town, because you’d have been constantly filling in forms to avoid being beaten up or lynched.

Pity no-one at the Corporation’s up to pointing out we’re about two statute books away from living in a fascist society today isn’t it?

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Published in 1925, there was no need for the deep vein of political orthodoxy that runs through modern film and art in general like the Brighton through Greene’s famous Rock: obviously it’s injected through the film under the auspices of ‘bringing it up to date’. But it’s not all bad.

In John Curran’s 2006 movie, Edward Norton and Naomi Watts make the fairly handsome partners of a loveless marriage, although if there’s one thing you can say for Edward Norton , he’s not afraid to embrace the role of an at first less than attractive bacteriologist, even if he does morph into a heroic leading man. China is beautiful, Erik Satie writes very pretty vignettes, and Toby Jones is a great character actor. But the 21st Century sanitisation of Maugham’s acerbic piece, which takes in unrequited love, bitter hatred, general arkwardness and hateful sex in the way only a 1920s book about conventional people written by a screaming homosexual can, is bloody depressing and totally pointless.

Maugham’s Painted Veil seems to have been drawn from a real Hong Kong society couple, the Fanes, who sued his first publisher for the then grand sum of £250. In the book, Walter Fane is a smitten intellectual who falls hopelessly for shallow and beautiful Kitty – who, in a cracking Maugham insight into the sex he sympathised with and knew so much more about than the average bloke for obvious reasons – marries him simply to outdo her sister.

The accident soon happens in the form of Kitty spurning her adoring hubby and spreading ‘em gleefully wide for a hunky, married assistant colonial gadabout who, if the second lawsuit to hit Maugham was anything to go by, may have been based on some turn of the Century stud revelling in the name of AGM Fletcher.

Walter finds out, is crushed, and takes his vengeance by threatening divorce and scandal unless his pretty socialite wife follows him into the depths of a Cholera epidemic.

This is where the action of the film takes place, and it’s also where the obligatory veil of saintliness and all conquering female wisdom is clumsily thrown all over Kitty who, in growing up and realising what a wonderful chap her husband is in the wider scheme of things, gets to deliver previously unheard of lines about the world according to girls, to which Walter dutifully agrees. This is the depressing bit, and Maugham hardly needs this overkill, as he’s always overwhelmingly behind the ladies team anyway, which is probably why when you do occasionally find people old enough to still have him stacked on the shelves, they’re invariably old ladies rather than old men.

Anyway, we all know people die horribly in Cholera epidemics and so it all goes.

It’s not a bad movie by any means. If you didn’t know it was based on a better book, it would be all the more impressive. But it is, so after you’ve watched it free online, do yourself a favour and splash out £3.50 on Amazon for the original.

The book blows the movie away.

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For where to see this film and news of all the rest of the week’s releases in Cornwall just visit Merlin Cinemas cracking new website.

Tinker tailor review by Cornwall Community News

Fans of John Le Carre, and fans of the BBC Tinker serial starring Alec Guiness, have long looked forward to this film. And it is very good. But it’s not as subtle or beautiful a movie as we all might have hoped. Of course cold wars and secret services are neither subtle nor beautiful, but Le Carre’s book is, and that’s what we’re dealing with here.

Much of the script of the big screen Tinker is faithful both to the book and to the iconic Alec Guiness serial, and that’s a strong point in favour. In fact I reckon audiences who don’t know either will probably enjoy the film the more for it. Unfortunately I’m such a big fan of both the book and the serial – the movie was probably always going to fall short somewhere.

One place it does fall short by anyone’s standards is the soundtrack. The Tinker trailer certainly appears to use Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack and the Alberto Iglesias number that runs through the movie could have been edgier. But that’s because I wanted a beautiful, dream-like experience and that obviously wasn’t what Tomas Alfredson was looking to create.

What he has done – very well – is get up close and personal to a dirty War that was seedy and disgusting on one side and plain evil on the other: the Cold War that went on well-defined but unseen for forty years, and goes on in variously ill-defined, terrible covert forms to this day. I’ve seen few more disturbing scenes than the graphic summary shooting of Ricky Tarr’s girlfriend in front of tortured Jim Prideaux – not least for the unexplained objects sticking in her ears when she is marched to her death: I don’t remember it from the book except as inferred (it may be in there, I don’t really have time to check) – but John le Carre’s cameo at the Circus Christmas Party would seem to imply it was approved, and if so, rightly so.

The tragedy of Tarr’s loss, the tragic madness of Connie Sachs, Toby Esterhase’s terror of repatriation, Bill Hayden’s cowardice and – what else of him? Perhaps like any weeping killer his is the most painfully scraped empty soul of all: but whatever it is, or whatever Le Carre intended it to be, Colin Firth carries it well.

You get to see pretty much all the characters tear out their poor hearts the better to serve the Circus in this Tinker , all of which makes way for Oldman’s goodly, compromised, academic – and interestingly hard-drinking – Smiley. The book leaves Smiley a tragic victor and a professional paragon; the film shows us a man whose only tragedy is his dirtied hands through years of service. Oldman’s Smiley is, famously, the first since Guiness and the first big screen classic Le Carre character since Richard Burton in the Spy Who Came In From The Cold (another great movie). Oldman’s always good, and he gives us much more of Smiley’s killer streak than Guiness did, although the original is so iconic, that however many sequels Oldman does, he probably knows he can never match it, (which is probably why he’s told interviewers he’s not trying to).

As I said earlier, Tinker Tailor in all its various forms has stayed faithful to the original and that’s a blessing at least because John Le Carre deserves it: I’d rate him up there with any classic author – everyone needs a medium, his just happens to be the spy novel, and the format doesn’t make his insights into human nature any less worthwhile than are, say, Philip K Dick’s insights about society at large, any less brilliant for the presence of space rockets and aliens. And Le Carre, the BBC, and now Hollywood all have Smiley ending Control’s terrible chess game again at the helm: errant wife back from her wanderlust, adoring clique at his back and call, and a great flat paving stone of East European manufacture firmly down before him for the sequel.

Let’s see how it plays.

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It’s a mark of just how retarded we are in the American-speaking world that André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter got mixed reviews in his home of Norway, but that we’re raving about it in the conventional West. Of course, domestic misanthropy always comes into play, and Trolls aren’t quite the novelty for the Norwegians as they are for us. It’s a bit like if somebody made a mockumentary about Piskies: Sure, in London N1, a couple of decent jokes well-played would have Kya and Xena dragging Josh and Alex down to the Screen on the Green in seconds flat, while the Penzance audience may feel a little tired of and patronised by at the whole idea.

Few films, of course, are totally original (You could attribute Inception to Lewis Carroll if you really wanted to be insanely over-critical) and Troll Hunter is no exception. Everybody’s banging on about the Blair Witch Project but it reminds me more of Man Bites Dog, the extraordinary Belgian mockumentary which kind of set the tone in 1992.

It must be great to be Belgian. Nice jolly blonde girls. Waffles. Spoorloos presumably running 24/7 on cable. Proper Kriek. Mind you – that’s probably what the Belgians say about us. ‘It must be great to be British. Gorgeous, winsome Kate Winslets everywhere. Bacon and Eggs every morning. Remains of the Day running 24 hours on Channel Four. Proper Bitter.’ Then they turn up on holiday and get run over by a bendy-bus in the middle of a riot.

Anyway, Belgium: 1992: Man Bites Dog. Man Bites Dog is an amazing film which anyone who enjoyed Troll Hunter and is a reasonably unimpressionable adult should see next. You spend lot of Man Bites Dog wondering who, if anyone, survives, and, maybe I’m gullible and slow-witted, but Troll Hunter was the same for me.

One of the best things about Troll Hunter is the acting, which if anything is better than the good stuff in Man Bites Dog. They’re all great, and it just goes to show again how many of the best actors, stage and screen, are comics. I’m thinking Peter Sellers, Cary Grant, with Harry Enfield, Rik Mayall, and that tit with the beehive as obvious embarrassing exceptions, although whether Russell Brandt is even a comic, let’s just all hope History will soon judge.

Otto Jespersen is great, Hans Morten Hansen is like a funny Simon Pegg, Tomas Alf Larsen and Johanna Morck make fantastic childish students and Robert Stoltenberg’s walk on as an industrious Polish bear-catcher (Why make problem when there is no problem we want make?) is a knock-out.

Anything missing? Well, it’s not all that exciting – but unless you’re pre-teen and easily lured into believing in Trolls – which would be ironic given the premise of the film – you’re not going to teeter too keenly on the edge of your seat at something intended as a knowing joke from start to finish anyway. The Norwegians aren’t known for sophisticated humour – if I’m still even allowed to say that in our age of global corporate Fahrenheit 451 inspired conformity – and it’s probably worth quickly noting as I itch to get the hell out of the office and play Tennis, that for people who don’t know Norway or any Norwegians, the existence of Trolls is the standard national gag. Some gags are best in translation. And, of course, you should never explain one afterwards.

Hmmmm….

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It’s tiring writing skits every time you watch a film, and anyway, nobody appreciates or cares that criticising a movie, and justifying all your criticisms or trying to do both that and render them amusing enough to read, is actually, if not by any fair definition hard work, then at least time consuming.
It’s infinitely easier just to say that all films are quite nice than it is to explain why they’re lazily made and not worth the millions of pounds invested in them, just as it’s easier to assume that judges are just, nurses angelic, and ugly people nasty, than to fight the entire world to prove that the opposite is the case, in order for no-one to listen until fifty years have passed, you’re stone dead, and anyone who lazily agreed with the orthodoxy you exposed is now busily expounding the new orthodoxy you pre-empted, and claiming always to have believed in it.
Which is why on this one occasion, because it’s fairly unimportant who funds a piece of entertainment, and while newspaper readers deserve the honesty about the arts they’ve been denied for decades by the Fox/News International/Sky stitch up, (Sun/Times et al) patronising local corporate media cowardice (Boring Guardian, Yesterdays Boring News and so on), bourgeois bigotry (All the broadsheets), and needlessly moronic lowest common denominator mass-market crap (all the rest of the tabloids) – I’m going to just say that Weekender is quite an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours – although by no means the most entertaining way I can think of as I gratefully doze off having watched it.

If Weekender warranted a skit – it would be of a group of Drama students sitting about and allocating each other the films roles. Because if you’ve ever known the students of a Drama department – you’ll recognise the lot in Weekender.
TBH it’s really less of a film than a long soap episode screened after the watershed. You can almost hear the fuming Withnails gnashing their teeth in the back row and bitching about the rumoured sexual perversion the successful cast endured to secure big screen exposure. And if I were to pick a likely out and out Julian Clary style Queen in the Drama Department that populated Weekender (every Drama department has one) it would have to be Stephen Wight as ‘Gary Mac’, the intense but heroic chirpy Cockney who plays the ‘goodie gangster’ of the piece, although I’m quite sure whatever Stephen Wight’s sexual preferences – and who cares – he’s very unlikely to have had to compromise himself to secure the role, having a good few much better movies to his name already.

The rest of the cast, with the exception of a bit-part policeman Dave Williams, who appears to have no credits on IMDB but has definitely been in something, come from the early rungs of the showbiz ladder, or below them, and while they do all put in good performances: it’s never enough to suspend your disbelief. This is of course much more down to the direction of Karl Golden, which is rotten, than any acting, as it is with all movies good and bad.

Although, actually, meandering off for a bit, there are the odd exceptions to that rule. Kevin Spacey was one: Kevin Spacey was once such a good actor that he could do Hollywood, and then play the lead in the Iceman Cometh in London – a really amazing play you should clock if you ever get the chance – and steal the show. But then…..then he went A-list, came back to play Shakespeare, and was terrible, ceding the stage to elderly bit part TV actors who put him to shame. So maybe it’s a reciprocal thing. Maybe Hollywood, and having too much to do, and all taking the same horrible drugs, and doing the same terrible things to each other, just takes its toll on anything creative after a while. Maybe that’s why Harrison Ford, Hunter S Thompson and Paul McCartney all live in the Desert. Not together. That would be weird.
Paul: ‘Can you pass us the salt Hunter?’
Harrison: ‘He’s dead you fool.’
No – that would be odd. I mean maybe that’s why they all – individually – spend most of their time out of the loop. Because social scenes of all kinds invariably just are, or will go, bad.

Which is handy – because that’s what Weekender is all about.

In fairness, it’s a film that probably looked good on paper. And sounded good as a ‘Player’ style opening silly-pitch.

Studio Writer: ‘It’s about growing up’
Griffin Mill: ‘Rites of Passage…ok…kind of ‘Breakfast Club’
Writer: ‘But it’s a UK thing..drug culture
Mill: ‘Good’
Writer: ‘It’s Trainspotting…meets The Acid House…meets Layer Cake..meets East Enders.’
Mill: ‘East Enders?’
Writer: ‘It’s a Brit thing. Cheap. Millions of viewers.’
Mill: ‘I like it already’.

Plus, lines like frazzled happy-house DJ ‘Captain Acid’, played by comic actor Tom Meeten, despairingly remarking ‘He’s only going down the road’, after an ecstasy inspired group hug of the number two character when he announces he’s getting a new flat, all probably made it look like a fast-paced, witty, realistic take on the ‘I’ll have an E please Bob’ late Thatcher era of crap prime-time TV and exciting new underground culture. But for that – you need a top director, and probably a big budget. Weekender has neither, and while all the cast are good, there aren’t any Kevin Spaceys or – given that the closest the film comes to is probably Layer Cake, although it steals from Trainspotting and probably other movies I’ve not seen – Colm Meaney or Michael Gambon. (In case you’re wondering – no, I didn’t rate Daniel Craig. He’s a great Bond, but the great Bonds are just that – I mean look at Sean Connery).

The cast is just too young to carry the crap script. They all do a startling job individually, and I hope Jack O’Connell – already well known – goes on to greater things, along with most of his fellow actors. No-one should have been forced to act that last scene on the bridge where he makes up with everyone, it’s thoroughly inhuman, and he should put in to Amnesty International, or seek compensation or something. For the rest of the movie he was fantastic, as were Zawe Ashton and most of the rest.

(Why am I banging on giving these people marks? Are any of them going to read www.cornwallcommunitynews.co.uk? Does their next contract hang on my verdict? I think I’ll go back to skits next time – this is taking ages and I sound like a primary school teacher end of term.)

Special award for extra effort though goes to Ben Batt – who plays the baddie, admittedly, but could still have screwed it up. The Shameless stalwart’s already been spotted and even got a part in Captain America – but it would be a lie not to say his is the best role and the best played role in the whole film. He’s exactly like the psycho-twat we’ve all met who’ve lived any life in Bwoken Bwitain, and this movie would have fallen to pieces much earlier than it did, in about the last ten minutes, without his performance. And even he barely survived the hopelessly derivative LockStock/The Sting/Goldfinger/Layer Cake baddie plays golf scene.

So whose fault is it that, although an enjoyable two hours in front of a polished soap, this is another Brit-flick without any suspense, proper comedy, horror, tragedy, or edge-of-your-seat emotion associated with the dream-like experience of being swamped by surround sound and technicolour that we should all expect from a £7 film? Well, whenever directors get gongs they always bang on about the tremendous effort of all the team don’t they, so let’s be generous and say that Karl Golden and all his team deserve to be taken out and force-fed their own cellulose until they beg to be allowed to go away for the rest of their lives and get jobs in – I don’t know – events management or something. A bit of original scripting and about a hundred per-cent more effort in the direction and with this cast, he could have had a cracking film out. As it is, even if you were in your twenties in the nineties (as none of the cast were – which makes their efforts all the more impressive), this tale of two lovable crooks who hit the jackpot setting up illegal raves only to end up running for their lives when gangsters muscle in leaves the sort of taste a mid 90s raver might have savoured in their mouth after being sold veterinary drugs instead of MDMA.

Dodgy.

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Scene Black – an ominous rustling.

Audio: A door creaks, footsteps echo. A match is struck and a middle-aged film director lights and turns up a gas lamp to reveal…

Abrams: Dr Spielberg!

Spielberg turns in alarm, clutching a wad of different papers of which many flutter to the laboratory ground. Adjusting his spectacles he peers to recognise his assistant.

Spielberg: Abrams! Oh Abrams..our work – my work – soon..soon my son, all will be complete. All will be revealed..

Spielberg rushes towards his colleague, a great cloud of multi coloured scripts blowing up around him.

Spielberg: My perfect creation – a miracle

He stands back to proclaim

Spielberg: Not a film – not an ordinary movie: but a super-film – an indestructible monster film constructed entirely from the dismembered themes of all of my life’s work.

Spielberg’s little round glasses glint a mad glint as he raises a fistfull of script to the air in triumph, before turning on his heel back to his editing suite

Abrams follows across the damp cobbled floor, wading through great piles of old script from ET, The Goonies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and at one point, Jaws. Battling shock, he fishes amongst the debris and openly boggles at a torn and faded direction from Duel. He turns to his master.

Abrams: Steven – what have you done?

Spielberg: Done? Done? Why, what have I not done? What do I not deserve? The world, my son! The world is ours! And with my indestructible patchwork monster, I will create a race of atomic supermen, that will conquer that world!

Abrams peers around Spielberg’s editing bench and, frowning, picks up a stuffed toy of Sebulba from Star Wars perched on a Transfomers DVD

Abrams: What the…?

Spielberg: Oh don’t worry that’s just the face. But wait – wait until you see the rest of it…

Striding across the laboratory to a central plinth, Spielberg stands rapt beside a dusty canvas blanket.

Spielberg: Behold – Super – 8!

Spielberg whisks off the cloth to reveal a cooking-book size film script. Abrams joins him and picks up the strange looking offering. Visible stitch-marks can be seen all through its pages where characters, scenes and ideas from all of Steven Spielbergs biggest budget films have been forced together to create a hideous, mis-shapen, but stupidly powerful monster movie.

Abrams recoils as a sickly, glue-like substance sticks to his fingers while he turns the pages.

Abrams: What’s this?

Spielberg: Schmaltz. You need that. The whole thing would fall apart otherwise.

Abrams, reading: “Joe, a heroic child of ten, stands alone before..”

He traces his fingers across one of the script’s enormous, clumsy stitches..

“A vast spider-like monster with the face of Sebulba and the spider-like antennae mouth of..”

He flicks past an apparently blank page

“Ridley Scott’s Alien..Steven you can’t market this film to children it’s terrifying!”

Spielberg: You think? Kids..they can hack anything these days..you’re getting old..

Abrams (leafing back to the synopsis): “Super-8: a group of young kids inadvertently film the escape from a high-security air force train of an imprisoned alien. The films charts their growing pains and a pre-teen love story as the central character Joe, tracks down and helps the confused, but basically sympathetic, man-eating, reptile spider-like alien to freedom in the stars, while coming to terms with the death of his beautiful..My God…”

He breaks off in frustration to rifle through the collapsing document, before stumbling upon the wardrobe instructions and background directions.

Abrams (now openly mocking): “Wardrobe: Let’s just use the one from the Goonies to dress the kids. (now deeply sarcastic) We can use the same irritating kids – it’ll be fine – that’s what kids are like.”

Spielberg – grinning – “Goonies. I loved that film.”

Abrams: “Set directions: make the family homes all a bit too chaotic and unsavoury like it was in the Seventies when I was growing up. You know, like the family in Close Encounters.”

Spielberg: Sure. Realism man.

Abrams (now balking at every word): “Men: men will be outwardly rough and evil, but basically troubled saints. Women: the women in Super-8 will be angels, or super-angels – or dead.”

Spielberg: “But hey listen – the Pops will be bringing up the kids! Not the Moms! Like it?

Abrams: Jesus what’s so strange about that…(losing his rag)..Steven have you lost your mind? Who is going to watch this movie? It’s too scary for kids. It’s too stupid for grown ups. The critics are going to…have…a commemorative bile party…we’re doomed…I had like this totally new idea about – you know, about the glow in the dark killer fish, and you just…’

Abrams breaks off and the two men turn to stare as they hear the sudden footfall of steps on stairs. The dungeon door swings open and a plastic click floods the basement with neon light. Blinking, the two film icons turn to behold a matronly elderly figure in a pinafore. She is expertly balancing a silver plate of weiner schnitzel while pushing in her hip with her free hand and displays a kindly but scolding face.

Mrs Spielberg: Now Steven – I’ve told you before about working in this horrible, dank, dark room. You come up here this minute and get some fresh air and some food inside you.”

Spielberg: Yes Mom

The two film icons trudge despondently after the old lady, swapping frantic criticisms and conflicting film ideas sotto voce as they do so.

Mrs Spielberg (muttering): I don’t know: neon fish and killer – why don’t you just make nice films, like you used to, what about that nice little alien who wanted to phone home?

Spielberg: (breaking off from arguing) I did, mom, that’s what you asked for

Mrs Spielberg (shaking her head): And that wonderful Goonies movie – those children – so sweet and funny..

Spielberg: I did that too

Mrs Spielberg: And of course you need a bit of terror – well, to keep them in their seats of course..

Spielberg (despondently): I did that too. Only JJ doesn’t like it.

Mrs Spielberg turns and coos down at JJ Abrams. ‘JJ – you’re not rowing with Steven again are you? And I thought you too were such good friends.’

Dim soundtrack. Abrams and Spielberg exchange rueful glances.

Spielberg: ‘We are Mom – it’s just – sometimes – it’s tough for kids – you know – to catch the hearts of audiences by falteringly grasping at adult emotions they’re only beginning to understand..’

Mrs Spielberg turns beaming and ruffles the two young lads bowl haircuts

Mrs Spielberg: ‘Come on you two: I’ve a special treat for tea’

The boys exchange excited glances and rush into the kitchen where an enormous bowl of steaming cash sits on a homely kitchen table

Spielberg and Abrams: Monneee-y! Hooray!’

Mrs Spielberg (winking to camera): Always follow the money.

Music swell. Sunlight floods kitchen. Neighbourhood explodes. Alien invader battles evil army in street. Millions of Americans file direct to local cinema.

The End

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by Felix (11)

X-Men First Class combines history, adventure, and comic book action -plus a cameo by Wolverine.

It’s a whizz back to the Sixties, revealing some new information about old characters and some completely new ones.

The film features Havoc, Banshee, and a female ‘Angel’, and explains the origins of Mystique and Beast.

Using cutting edge special effects, and great dramatic music, ‘First Class’ charts the battle that tears the X-Men apart: to say any more would be to spoil the thrill!

(With thanks to Merlin Cinemas who have backed your favourite indy free press all the way and whose Magician logo we are going to stick on our reviews as soon as we get it )

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BLOOD ON THE CARPET

M Night Shyalaman. Meeting Notes. Production 10

Mr Chairman: Will the delegates collectively known as M Night Shyalaman please assemble and enter your ID cards. (Pause) Thank You. Be Seated.
‘Ladies. Gentleman: I think you will agree we face – once more – something of a crisis: despite – once more – combining apparently surefire hit ingredients for our most recent venture, our borderline popularity remains unstoked, to say the least.’
Secretary: ‘Unstoked? Is that a frat film I haven’t seen?’: ”
Treasurer: ‘Is a borderline popularity like – a personality disorder or something?’
Chairman (loudly): “In view of this – I have convened this meeting as a matter of urgency and in order to give you all a chance to retain your positions..’
Scripting Delegate: ‘Sorry Brad: Glengarry Glen Ross: seen it.Not fazed.”
Chairman: (louder still): “And redeem our worth in the eyes of the Board.”
Executive Producer: “Sounds like Blasphemy Brad: can we inject some into the next project please? I’d like to make my money back this time. Blasphemy sells like – Hot Porn.”
Chairman: (grinning unpleasantly): “As you say Niall, Blasphemy does indeed sell like hot porn and hot porn is how we intend our next foray onto the silver screen to sell.”
Secretary: “Where did we get this guy? Can somebody not beat him to death with an Oxford Grammar and we start again?”
Chairman: (gesticulating): “Starting again is all very well Chet, but starting again is how we started before, nine times before to be exact and starting again is what we are going to have to do again now only this time we are going to have to start again.”
“Treasurer (to secretary) ‘?’
Chairman: “Now – what do all Americans love?”
Secretary: “Traffic?”
Treasurer: “Money?”
Executive Producer: “Hot Porn?”
Chairman: “All Americans Love God.”
Gaffer: “I love Hot Porn.”
Chairman (preaching and gesticulating wildly): “All Americans Love God and God Loves All Americans! Which is why the mass appeal of our forthcoming venture will be provided by..”
All: “God!”
Chairman: “Satan.”
All (to all): Appreciative Nod.
Secretary: “Is he available? I heard he was tied up, contracts, legals..”
Chairman: (ignoring Secretary) “All Americans either publicly or secretly lead evil lives and dread the myth of Satan and all his works which is why our next venture will present Satan and present all Americans and present their public and their secret lives and present their dread of the myth of Satan.”
Treasurer: “The biggest word you ever heard and this is how it goes – OH – Super-cali-fragi’- Sorry.”
Chairman (ignoring Treasurer, leaps on desks and spreads hands): “The scene: A Lift.”
Gaffer: “Nice. Simple lighting.”
Treasurer: “Cheap. I like it.”
Chairman: “Five actors – unknowns. Every men”
Treasurer: “I’m sold.”
Chairman: “All have secrets – all – have souls.”
Executive Executive Producer: “Ladies and Gentlemen Vincent Price has left the building.”
Script supervisor. “So the lift st..”
Chairman (interrupting): “The lifts clangs to a halt. They’re stuck. The lights go out.”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Chairman: “A horrible noise of mutilation.”
Stage Direction: A HORRIBLE NOISE OF MUTILATION
Chairman: “The lights go up..”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO UP
Chairman: “And the first of the five – is dead.”
Gaffer: “Has anybody seen the Treasurer?”
Executive Executive Executive Producer: “Brad – this is like, totally Hollywood and everything, but..”
Chairman (interrupting): “The spartan script, written in the language of a pre-teen thriller, rolls on: The lights go out.”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Chairman: “A horrible noise of mutilation.”
Stage Direction: A HORRIBLE NOISE OF MUTILATION
Chairman: “The lights go up..”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO UP
Chairman: “And the second of the five – is dead.”
Executive Executive Executive Producer: “Brad – Brad..what’s happened to my arm..I feel faint..I..”
Chairman (interrupting, eyes gleaming): “Phase 2: the audience get bored – we introduce gore…”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO OUT
Chairman: “A horrible noise of mutilation.”
Stage Direction: A HORRIBLE NOISE OF MUTILATION
Chairman: “The lights go up..”
Stage Direction: THE LIGHTS GO UP
Chairman: “And the third of the five – lies spangled in the blood spattered carriage.”
Script supervisor (picks Secretarys brains from sleeve): “Spangled? Eaten by – sweets? Brad – what exactly is the plot of this…”
Chairman (quickly):”The lights go out/THE LIGHTS GO OUT A horrible noise of mutilation/A HORRIBLE NOISE OF MUTILATION/The lights go up/THE LIGHTS GO UP..
Chairman: “And the script supervisor – is dead.”
Chairman: (rising to his full four feet five inches): “Until finally – The lights go out..A horrible noise of mutilation
Stage Direction: A HORRIBLE NOISE OF MUTILATION
Gaffer: “The lights go up..And the Chairman – is dead.”
Remaining personnel cheer in unison, grab neighbours by hips and proceed to Conga over bloody corpses of former colleagues.
Cue Soundtrack (to fade) “Come on Baby – Let’s do the Shyalaman Twist’ by Chubby Chequebook
Executive Executive Executive Executive Producer (to Gaffer): Nice move – sure the studio won’t mind the mess?
Gaffer: “Nah – they like a bit of blood on the carpet.”

THE END

The concept of Inception is that psychic adventurers can harness some mysterious and really shamefully silly looking near-future technology prop to invade your mind and fabricate a dream, which they then star in and manipulate in order to nick all those multi-million pound ideas you have (like a film about psychic adventurers who can harness some mysterious near-future technology to invade your mind and fabricate a dream, which they then star in and manipulate in order to nick all those multi-million pound ideas you have)

So Inception opens in a dream. It’s an odd dream in which the cast are trying to steal an idea, until they wake up and find it was all a dream. When they wake up, the man who hired them to show him they could steal his dream idea wants to know what went wrong and is about to let slip what his dream idea was when he realises he’s still in a dream, upon which they all wake up – and it was all a terrible dream.

Now the client – somewhat extraordinarily – has the ‘dream engineer’ dragged off and apparently killed because he engineered a dream that he could tell was a dream, and blackmails the dream team boss into working for him in the dreams of a corporate rival.

The client wants ‘Inception’ – the planting of an idea in another man’s dream. And off they go, ambushing the target by drugging him on a long haul flight and plunging him into a dream from which he awakes to find it was all a dream before being told by the dream team big cheese he’s still in a dream but not to worry because the dream team are here in your dream so we can defend you against imaginary dream stealers by steering you into a weirder and weirder dream which actually we designed all along in order to plant an idea that will take root when you wake up from your dream.

It was at this point in Christopher Nolan’s film about a dream within a dream within a dream that I fell asleep and dreamed I was asleep in front of a film about a dream within a dream within a dream and dreaming the exact plot of the film about the dream that I fell asleep in front of and started to dream during. In the film in my dream the characters woke up and realised it was all a dream before realising they were still in a dream and then waking up and realising they were actually actors in a film – in my dream – and they had to pretend to be in a film about a dream in which the characters wake up and realise it was all a dream before realising they’re still in a dream only to wake up and realise they were actually dreaming a dream within a dream and now they have awoken from their first dream they must get back to their dream jobs as a dream team of dream stealers and go straight back to sleep so they can get into another mans’ dream and reveal to him that he is in a dream before deceiving him that he has awoken from his dream and then re-revealing that he is still in a dream only to re-deceive him that they are again a dream security dream team in his dream with a dream scenario to defend him against the real dream stealers – dreamed up by the real dream team on the spot, in the dream within a dream – while in fact steering him into a weirder and weirder dream into which they can plant their dream idea. And then in the end of the film they plant their dream idea and they all wake up and realise it was all a dream, unless – maybe – they’re all still in a dream – in a film – in my dream.

And then I woke up and Tom Hardy was gay. He was gay in the film too – he looked gay, he sounded gay, he acted gay – but when I woke up he had told the DAILY MAIL he was gay, the Daily Mail being of course the Bible of responsible and relevant public interest journalism and it being incredibly important what an actor does with their cock. Unless – I’m still dreaming – and in my dream a gay member of my dream stealing dream team has gone into Tom Hardy’s dream and planted the idea that he is gay so he will wake up gay and then the gay dream stealer can go and be gay with Tom Hardy and live his dream. No, look, I didn’t say there was anything wrong with being gay, I just said maybe Tom Hardy went to sleep and woke up gay. Well because maybe a gay man went into his dream and made him gay by planting the idea that he was gay so he could wake up and realise ..oh forget it.

Ends

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So the cinematic fanzine barnstorms on from strength to strength.

Who’d have dreamed pop-film could be this good back in the day? Not me, as I struggled painfully through the 1980s with Maximillian the maroon robot and Bib and Bob the Wordy clones or whoever from Disney’s Black Hole as the sole childish cinematic heroes worth collecting stickers of in over-priced self-sealed packets full of fetid floured Panini bubble-gum: call me anything you want, I don’t care, I love film in the 21st Century. I reckon it’s only when you had to put up with Sylvester Stallone and Jon Belushi as mainstream stars that you appreciate seeing actors like quirky junkie Rob Downey Jr bring  icons like Iron Man to life and pug-nosed caulifower eared drama queen Daniel Craig render James Bond almost believable. 

And AC/DC. All the way through. Wow. When I recall the Hell of sitting through soundtracks scored by cocaine-dulled rock composers for geriatric has-beens like Rod Stewart or Tina Turner, it’s just great. And I don’t care how many leeks she eats or what a full-of-it hippy she is, Gwyneth Paltrow is hot.

You don’t want to know what happens in Iron Man 2. It’s a comic. It’s exactly like Iron Man, but with not quite such an incredibly cool ending. Totally worth £6 – or £4 if you spend £20 on one of those little plastic season tickets Merlin Cinemas do, and listen – at Redruth you can down a beer while you’re watching.

Man, I remember when you had to  smuggle a bottle of Merrydown into Honey I Shrunk the Kids to watch a film drunk. Roll on the next hundred years of Hollywood.