Info and forum posts by 'Mike Mclaughlin'

RE: Question for our boys in blue (or anyone else who can help!)

regardless of the various ethnic issues buzzing around, leaving the scene of an accident is a criminal offence, albeit a minor one (and hard to prove) but your friend`s insurance status in that regard is irrelevent. the drunken individual (who, weirdly, probably has a defence in law) still has (several) charges to face as i see it. that is, of course, if it has been properly reported.

--Mike

RE: Royal Mail Thieves?

i worked for royal mail as a postman for 7 months and although i`ve never heard the term "sniffers", two people in my office got prosecuted for offences surrounding mail fraud whilst i was there so there is a system in place to deal with it. there is, to a lesser extent, also a casual disregard for the safety of your mail, although i would argue that there is not a culture of active theft. most of your sad, sorry postmen actually take your mail rather seriously (i know i did) but not for the reasons you`d expect: we`re happy for it to get soaked in the rain or left in the bay for a week if we can`t find it, but if we`ve got it we`ll deliver it... eventually. you get less grief that way. instead of your regulars screaming at you about their late giro, they smile at you, so it wasn`t in our interests to f*** up... and if we did, they would push us down the stairs.

this is, or at least should be, unsurprising: recordeds are a disaster. and i would advise anyone to avoid them because a standard practise is simply to rip the labels off and post them normally (or not, given the postman`s disposition). this isn`t just because we used to get loads of recordeds every day (my average was around a dozen... probably because it was a s*** area and i got a lot of court summons) but because we got so much obscure foreign recorded mail that was sorted as regular mail that we couldn`t tell the difference (we weren`t trained in funny labels). company policy (whilst i was there at least) put little focus on rd`s, as long as you got special deliveries signed for, management didn`t give a fiddler`s f*** about recorded`s. sad, perhaps, but true.

it`s a s*** job and there`s not a lot of parity in it. your walk is either easy or practically impossible. the union is s*** and the pay worse. i`m not defending illegal activity but it`s bound to go on. what i will say is, stop whining on a message board and report it. and don`t stop until it changes. if you call your sorting office and tell them you think your postman is nicking your dvds and explain why they will do something about it. they don`t have a choice. i`ve seen it happen. and the management have more to lose if they don`t.

--Mike

p.s. tip you postman/woman this christmas! :)

RE: The Departed

perhaps the topic header should have been: "how good is `the departed`?" i`m not keen on sweeping claims to classic status, but i feel this is a film that can be placed in that category with absolute certainty, in fact, in all likelihood (and it may just be the sheer boldness of this film that has bedazzled me to past glories) but it may well be the finest film scorsese has ever made: brazen, shocking, totally unique, its profundity discarded as recklessly as the impish antics of its characters, its themes falling into perfect synchronicity with its style, the kind of film people go on about when they talk about "the golden age of the '70s"… they wish.

at the centre there are three astonishing performances which, alone, could rule a movie: there`s dicaprios` twitchy, paranoid moral vortex (easily a career best), damon`s sterile, sleek, sociopathic narcissism and nicholson spinning the mob boss cliche on its head with the most perfectly deluded, decadent, depraved psychopath the screen has seen in years. all amounting to an amoral nexus of which no one wants a part and yet none can exist without.

however much i admire the elegant theatrics of `infernal affairs`, this is something else entirely. that still focused on the dualistic cliches of the cat and mouse plot. scorsese isn't interested. everyone is a rat in his maze, never knowing whose tail their chasing, even when it's there own. the first hour is such a dazzling convolution of elements that your head literally spins, the rest of the film barely slows down but slumbers, occasionally, into character solitude so you can catch your breath (and figure out what`s going on) and sink into the film's bleak, nihilistic trajectory.

lets put it this way, this film is so good i have to see it again just to find out how good it really is.

best film of the year by such a huge margin it makes you rather depressed... but then again...

--Mike

RE: New Anti Violent Web Porn Law - How they gonna Police this one then??

Quote:
technically yes, but for different reason. Bizarre magazine often has articles about S&M etc, and it can be technically illegal here `cos you`re hurting some-one. maybe it`s if you draw blood, even if the people are consenting. So that`s about as vague as the proposed law then

laws on consent have tended to hinge on the severity of the action. a man who tattooed his wife`s buttocks had his conviction quashed, not entirely based on the fact that his wife had consented to it, but because the action had no overtly aggressive or sado-masochistic element. in turn, s&m fetishists have gotten into legal bother because the activities they`ve engaged in (i.e. nailing scrotums to wooden boards and pouring hot wax into a man`s urethra) aren`t lawful to begin with. you can only consent to a lawful act.

--Mike

RE: POLL: Which Emergency/Rescue Service Has The Most Dangerous Job

dangerous jobs? bare-handed wolf-wrestling; working in macdonalds; repeatedly bouncing a beach-ball off mike tyson`s forehead; dancing with tigers in a field of fire; driving a london bus; chewing used hypodermic needles whilst stabbing yourself repeatedly in the groin with a blunt screwdriver; asking people if they need assistance in a dss office and walking up clapton road, hackney.

on balance i`d have to give it to the poor sods at macdonald`s. i`ve been in the police for 6 weeks now and i`ve already had a nasty run in with a machete nutter, but those poor bastards still get more grief than we do.

raise the minimum wage that`s what i say...

... oh, and definitely start paying the rnli... although it`ll probably just turn them into lazy bastards who only pretend to do any work... works for us.

--Mike

RE: Career Change...(one for the Police on here).

just started with the btp 5 weeks ago. so far it`s been straight-forward and a good laugh.

out of our intake of 12, half are over 35, and 3 are over 40 so i don`t think you need to worry about that as long as your fitness is okay. (and i do mean okay, you really don`t need to be an athlete.)

i`d stay clear of the met at the moment, i doubt they`ll do generic recruitment for a good few years now. you can write them a letter of interest (details are on their site) but i wouldn`t hold your breath. have a look on the main police recruitment site or ring up your local forces and see who`s recruiting at the moment.

good luck.

--Mike

RE: Quiz _ What classic film are you?

another `apocalypse now` for me. clearly a lot of existentially troubled, wrestling with dormant-demon types on this site.

--Mike

RE: Entertainment Weekly`s worst 25 sequels ever made!!!

i actually have a soft spot for `speed 2`. it`s a legitimate member of the often applied for but rarely admitted cult of the "it`s so s*** it`s great." it is a ludicrously expensive hollywood film that derails itself so completely that it`s quite a wonder to behold. even now, where blockbuster brain-cells seem to casually diminish by the second, it is the one summer popcorn flick i can think of that has literally no consciousness whatsoever.

it has the mind of a cow chewing cud in a field... and barking like a seal... with a hat with a propeller on its head... and exploding.

it's not quite s***ly great enough to be up with those truly magnificent guilty pleasures like 'hudson hawk', 'cutthroat island' and 'krull' but then again, it is a sequel.

--Mike

RE: X-Men: The Last Stand...

i have to admit, i liked jean grey`s unintentionally amusing re-emergence as a pagan goddess, melding her varicose veins in the woods and summoning boulders to her command, as well as her knack for atomically obliterating everyone in sight with her mysteriously selective super-power (the notion that this supposed "instinctual" creature wouldn`t simply telekinetically destroy the entire universe just for s***s and giggles was never explored by the narrative... more fool it.) a bit of curious nihilism never did anyone any harm but, it seems, even liberal-guilt hollywood has no time for such pleasantries and now, bizarrely, every movie with a blue gorilla wrapped in a suit has to come ready-packaged with a civics lesson and a humour lobotomy.

it`s balls. and what`s disturbing is that almost everyone involved seems to know it is. brett ratner actually doesn't know which side up he is from moment to moment, gluing pasteurised globs of insipid dialogue and crass steady-cam set-ups together like they were swabbed directly from the comic book and ramming the point home with deadened, dulled actors who seem to be collectively crashing from a course of anti-depressants.

hugh jackman looks so bored he has to keep throwing himself into trees to keep himself awake; an angel guy shows up periodically to do absolutely nothing of any relevance; vinnie jones runs around for the sake of crude humour and summary destructo-violence; assorted smug, pretty, well-groomed WASP brats run through walls and shake their arms and battle with flame and fire blah blah blah only for our silent desire to watch them all die horribly to never be fulfilled. the audience wants desperately to gasp in awe and excitement at the sheer mammoth spectacle of it all but can`t muster anything more than grim clenched teeth and cringe because the idiots on-screen invariably open their mouths and start gasping inanities in between slicing each-other's faces off and the whole sorry shower crumbles under the sheer limp crassness of it all.

what, exactly, is it all about? it's like watching every vague comic-book metaphor about intolerance, authoritarian government, dualism and ethical reponsibility implode together in one shrill soulless gasp of nothingness.

and one can`t help but feel the casual character cull is an act of selective assassination on the part of oscar winner halle berry in a transparent attempt to grab more screen time. well, mission accomplished, too bad she couldn`t have picked a better movie to steal focus... and that`s saying something given her track record.

the kind of cold-blooded hack-job you need a shower after seeing.

for what it's worth at this late stage in this discussion (and the grosses), avoid. and then burn the negative. i've never been one for re-writing history but they're getting so bad it's time to make exceptions.

--Mike

RE: Mission: Impossible 3

chewie, frankly, i think that all people who don`t like or don`t watch `alias` (i am indiscriminate with the tarring brush) are mad, and i try and tell myself that they`re the one`s missing out... and then i see the ratings.

i suspect, as it is with any good serial, your continued involvement in the series is wrapped up in never getting tired of it at all. so if you get bored, that`s pretty much the spanner in the works. no retrial, no second chance, just casual severance and flipping onto something less demanding of your patience, time and general good tidings. `alias` isn`t that show. it takes no prisoners in terms of non-initiates and hence its imminent public execution.

still, to answer your question, should you keep watching, yes. but only because i would never, ever recommend anyone stop watching `alias`. for any reason. ever.

if you`re still considering ditching it, here`s a spoiler-free summary: series 3 persists to its fist-chewingly cryptic cliff-hanger with an infuriatingly labyrinthine plot-string so frustratingly intangible that you feel you`re scrambling semi-conscious through a kaleidoscope factory. series 4, in typically wanton american style, skims over some of the more difficult plot tendrils, and settles on the conventional spy action one-off plots that made the first show a hit (presumably in an effort to recreate said "hit")... and then, with reckless abandon, out come rimbaldi, third derevko sisters and the end of the universe thanks to a giant.... oh, nevermind, just watch the marvellous f***ing thing.

i can`t speak for season five, because as a non-broadband user i don`t have the equipment and have to wait, pleb-like for its conventional availability.

i suppose what i`m saying is, if you`re really struggling to keep going out of some misguided duty to "appreciate" it, for its culty cache then it`s not worth struggling with, firstly, because nothing good ever came of that odious process and secondly, because the series becomes so twisted and confusing that it almost feels like work (like the best job ever, but still work.) and, it can`t be said enough, almost nothing in the world is worth struggling over. in fact, as i sit here, i can`t think of a single thing.

still, if you get the show, it`s the best thing in the world. if you don`t it`s like all those other overrated things on the planet that simply fail to row your boat. and just for the hell of it, my top 5 overrated things of all time, right now are: babies, memories, sun-bathing, pornography and the ancient greeks.

--Mike

RE: Mission: Impossible 3

i was disappointed. i wanted to like it a lot, (and when you hear that tune, you can`t help but lower your defences) but even though it`s full of sobbing and screaming and running around, there`s still no emotional investment whatsoever, it ends up being another expensive hollywood picture with lots of crap going orange in very noisy surround sound.

as a certified, and probably certifiable `alias` nut, i wasn`t impressed by what jj brought to the table. pegg`s cameo is stupid and displacing, jj thinking, presumably, that he could repeat the fabulous bit of business he did with ricky gervais in `alias` but with nothing to back it up. it`s also woefully predictable from a man who has made a career out of mind-bending twists. there are blatant attempts to craft an ensemble piece out of this tom cruise show, but they are crass at best: maggie q and johnathan rhys myers nattering about prayers in an suv has to be the dubious highlight of attempting to invest a 2 hour movie with the character dynamics he`s honed in tv... better luck next medium.

the opening does work, proving what we all knew already, that hoffman can do anything convincingly. and the vatican spy game is a gleefully confident spoof of the genre`s inherent silliness and also the attraction of its suspense. trouble is, even at its best, the film only reminds you of how great `alias` is and how widely, and expensively, he`s missed the mark.

--Mike

RE: Can`t wire a plug?

i have absolutely no idea how to wire a plug. i`m 24 now but when we were taught how to do it in school i managed to screw it up 6 different ways... without ever getting it right by accident. i`ve never had to wire a plug and i suspect if i really thought about it, i could do it without much trouble. i just can`t be arsed. also, i`m a sucker for morbid ironies and suspect that one day my life will depend on my ability to wire a plug and thus the prophecy will be fulfilled.

--Mike

RE: Drugs Trial goes bad

I hope they all recover and sue the company for millions.

with the risk of repeating similar hateful remarks that i have already rescinded, i hope the drug companies sue the students. for being twats.

i thought i`d gone a bit off-piste with my student rant, but i never anticipated an animal rights backlash to come spooling into a completely unrelated issue. still, they do tend to prick up their ears whenever the word "testing" is mentioned. even in an entirely unrelated context. try it. shout it in a high street the next time you`re there. it`s like a f***ing starter`s pistol.

oh the animal rights activists. to me, they are the most deluded of do-gooders. mainly, because they love animals but absolutely despise humanity and yet utterly fail to see the irony in the concept. the true irony of course lies in the fact that most ordinary people don`t really care if 500 beagles die tomorrow. we don`t care. most of us would casually swing said beagle by its meagre tail for 15 consecutive hours, perhaps playing its head off a rudimentary drum-kit constructed from twigs and a wet car-bonnet, if we thought it might lower our council tax bill… in some way. we`ve got other, more pressing things to worry about, you know, things that involve our species.

yet on and on they go, shoving letter bombs into the houses of scientists whose standards are the highest in the western world and whose ethics are constantly challenged by their moral dubiousness of their work, when what they should probably be doing is walking down the high street and idly mowing down dozens of average citizens who couldn`t give a toss whether monkey a or monkey b died of small-pox or inhaling too much "eau du pimp".

but keep talking. it`s good for the lungs. and we all used to believe in things when we were young. just don`t bring it up in the pub. you`ll bore your friends senseless.

--Mike

RE: The hills have eyes

i have to agree with wossname, i didn`t think there was anything shrewd or incisive going on politically in this picture, and, if anyone knows what that is, i`d be happy to hear about it as my ears were too blocked from endless screaming and my eyeballs too filled with blood to notice much of anything else.

i never thought i was squeamish about violence in movies, and i`m still not, but i still never thought i'd stumble into the cinema, expecting to see a crappy 'wrong turn' style slasher cheapy, and then see little sister get raped in a camper van, as older sister got her skull blasted off. as mom watched... and then got gut shot and slowly died... and later eaten by ravenous mutant folk.

I also suspect there's an element of geek fantasy in the appraisal of this film: with the bespecled liberal nerd-boy basically transforming into schwarzenegger times 12 for the sake of paternal anxiety and going from not being able to confront his father in law over cell-phone usage one minute to repeatedly cleaving an axe into someone`s head under the flimsiest of pretexts the next. liberating for some, perhaps, but stupid for all, yes.

and some people on these forums are calling for an "uncut" version. you`ve certainly shattered my delusions that i was a sick puppy. i can now fill my sink and drown these abducted kittens guilt-free.

--Mike

RE: V for Vendetta - Anyone else been to see it yet?

was anyone else sitting there, stewing in their seat, as hugo weaving first opened his mouth after rescuing evey from the authorities and out spilt a foaming torrent of babbled alliteration eerily reminiscent of the architect`s inane pseud ramblings from `the matrix reloaded`? it was perhaps the most dispiriting 90 seconds i have ever spent sitting in a cinema, and i would have probably left, but i was too embarrassed to get up from my seat.

luckily, it was the worst part of the film and the rest just about works.

i always cringe a bit when major studios try and sell anarchy like so many pairs of trainers, but it`s so full of subtext it`s practically haemorrhaging. in fact, it`s a fault of the film, it`s too topical for it`s own good, it hits abu ghraib, avian flu, 7/7, iraq, stockwell, and everything and anything in between. Anything political in the last 5 years that cares to blink itself into the political consciousness is packed in for the sake of posterity.

it`s impressive in a way, to see a hollywood film so eager to embrace contemporary issues, but v is treated in such an unambiguous manner, that it makes it hard to take the film seriously. sorry, I'm no comic book aficionado, but isn`t this guy just a little bit crazy? and isn`t his little twist on evey`s psyche more than a little bit sick? and doesn`t he shed just a little too much blood for the sake of a non-fascist future for comfort?

it also has a crucial dramatic flaw which i suspect comes directly from the comic book: evey does nothing. she is a completely passive protagonist. stephen rea and v do all the narrative shoe leather and she just stands around pinching her vowels and looking pretty. it`s dispiriting that even at this late stage in the gender game our "anarchists" can`t think of anything more exciting to do with their female characters than dangle them off window-sills and shave their heads.

i think i liked it though. it has guts and is never boring. it certainly didn`t feel as long as people have said it is. i just think it`s a bit of a cheap shot, a bit desperate, a bit undernourished. but at least it feels like it was made by human hands, it`s chilling and disorientating and doesn't star queen latifah which is more than anyone should have hoped.

--Mike

This item was edited on Sunday, 19th March 2006, 06:37

RE: Drugs Trial goes bad

to be honest, i read over my previous post this morning through gritted teeth. instead of making light of something quite horrible i stepped over the mark and it just seems tasteless and idiotic. it appears i am a very angry man: apparently venting my spleen online is what i do when drunk instead of stumbling down the street, spluttering incoherently and stoving people`s heads in. i apologise wholeheartedly for anyone who reads it and takes offence, i`d be more than happy if it was removed and burned in a gigantic web furnace, but i don`t believe in changing the past so that`s someone else`s call.

--Mike

This item was edited on Thursday, 16th March 2006, 09:21

RE: Drugs Trial goes bad

(note: this is cruel, and i apologise in advance, but i`m assuming overt sympathists and the participants` loved-ones have better things to do than read it so here we go.)

it will take a lot more than this to make me feel sympathy for students in general. as for those who sell their bodies for science, well, they`d need to dangle weeping bunnies over a sulphuric inferno whilst twirling terrified babies tethered to their ankles and i`d still blink, shrug my shoulders and ignore their plight. they are twits.

no doubt families and friends are already prematurely planning a post-mortem law-suit strategy, in which case i`d like to advise them to play down the fact that their sons/boyfriends whored themselves for money, bloated with a boozy, jocular confidence that they would make a fistful of cash just for lying around on a gurney being poked by a nurse they secretly fantasised about drugging with rohypnol later. the sad thing about this whole story (apart from potential deaths... obviously) is that they do it all the time, when i was at uni, i couldn`t breathe without "stick pure crack bubbles in my eye" spams, and nothing EVER happens. now it has, drug companies will get the blame, not the idiots who offer their bodies to heartless pharmaceutical companies the way we throw chicken bones into a bin.

no doubt said law-suit fans will say that the drug companies are exploiting "vulnerable" people. vulnerable? come again? aren`t these supposed to be the country`s elite? the country`s discerning, brain-swelled, high-flying intelligentsia? aren`t they too busy kicking sense into the atom, sticking pig-s*** into the human genome or planning an anti-amaray case protest to let some braying techno savage shove poison into their veins? no. it`s easier to get into uni than it is to get arrested. try it. i promise it is true. just wonder if anyone else is really to blame but the pricks who signed the form for easier cash than any form of crime (save the relatively unknown practise of casually removing rich people`s skin.)

if it was me, i wouldn`t test drugs on them, i`d offer a 10 grand bounty to throw individual students into an arena composed entirely of gnarled shards of broken glass and force them to wrestle with 50 rabid wolves. to the death. of course.. for the purposes of science, obviously. there would probably be 7000 greedy, ironically amused applicants. and to all you yoghurt-eating `observer` readers, lets just say that at least it would mean we wouldn`t have to start another conscripted world war with which to thin out their ranks... which no doubt they`d find a way to skive out of anyway.

top 10%?

--Mike

the proposition

interesting film, and i`m curious what other people think. although having just watched `the hills have eyes` before it, i genuinely believe the next person i see is either going to cave my forehead in with an axe, rape my girlfriend or turn me into a cold-blooded homicidal killer... or maybe all three. sorry, but what is it with all this brazenly sadistic ultra-violence spewing across our screens at the moment? during `hills`, when mom was being eaten (having been gut-shot earlier) i swear pure gore-vomit came out of my ears.

even the trailer for `hostel` makes me want to either lock myself in a cupboard forever or kill everyone else in the entire world so they can`t get me... but maybe that`s the point: make you sharpen a screwdriver, order dvds, threaten the postman and never, ever leave the house. a self-sustaining circle-jerk of pure self-destructive terror. at the moment, my local multiplex feels more like a gothic slaughterhouse than a celluoid sanctuary. the next pixar fiasco will feel like a blizzard of calm when it arrives.

anyway, i highly recommend this film for the patient viewer, as it contains some really extraordinary performances: ray winstone has always annoyed me, his binary extremes of sobbing man-child and impulsive bestial mensch were boring about 15 years ago, but he tries something different here and it`s probably the best performance he`s ever given. emily watson and danny huston haunt the mind also, and david wenham is camply perfect as (from what i could discern) an authoritarian lizard.

the violence i already mentioned, but it remains in the mind, perhaps because it is, for once, truly violating (as it was in that notorious midnight trailer scene in `hills). not just a judder or a stiffled scream but genuine disgust. if you liked `a history of violence`, you`ll love this aussie-western-spin (i`ve just chewed my own fist off saying that, and am now typing with one hand, whilst staunching the bleeding by gnawing the severed stubs between my gritted teeth. hey, i think i have an opening scene for `the proposition 2: martha`s revenge!`)

--Mike

RE: Was the NotW right to publish the pics of soldiers beating iraqis?

it`s a curious question. it`s moral back-tracking. it`s like saying "we all wouldn`t feel so bad if we never knew it existed". to answer your question, of course they are right to print the pictures: they are (as far we know) true depictions of actual events and it is in the public interest to see them. would you rather you didn`t know? are you an ostrich?

i understand the argument that it puts troops in danger, but burying such potent evidence as this does something so much worse, it buries credibility completely, buries the truth and disclosure, buries everything we`re supposed to stand for. i hope that putting things out in the open, presenting administrative transparency in the matter, will help quell angry sentiments. to admit: this is something that happened and this is what we are going to do.

obviously the news of the world printed it for money. that ain`t news. but to argue that our national press isn`t allowed to report on the issues at hand (however conspicuous the timing) is akin to propagandising the media for ideological gain, and that`s something i`m not sure any of us has the guts to stomach.

--Mike

RE: Munich

i think it`s his best film in a while, which, given that his last two were the worst films he`s ever made, probably isn`t saying very much.

i agree with chewie that the weirdly baroque ending is totally wrong, but then again, spielberg has always been a colossal dunce with conclusions. on reflection, the only spielberg ending for me that totally works is `amistad`, as it seems conspicuously free of his usual sentimental interjections. the thing about `munich` that is interesting is that the interjection isn`t sentiment, but something he thinks is "art".

it`s a fail-safe, and he`s kidding himself. which is a pity because most of the film is pretty great. you can feel kushner`s savage, witty intelligence in the script (i would argue it is the finest dialogue spielberg has ever shoved his camera into) and the violence has a pitiless edge that leaches off of the most surreal moments of `saving private ryan` and then runs with it. chewie was right again to highlight the female assassin sequence which is probably pointless, but completely haunting.

it`s a troubling film in every respect, but it is mature, rapturous and intellectually engaged. spielberg`s challenge is to marry his new-found ethical concerns with his proven cinematic wizardry. he hasn`t yet done it, but he`s come pretty close with this.

--Mike

RE: Jarhead

it`s a grim portrait of the human condition, but no less impressive for it. at times it almost has the dream-like remoteness of `full metal jacket`, but it never quite moves away from being gimmicky, episodic and rhythmically atonal: there`s way too many pop needle-drops, and glib editorial smirks, so that when the film does broach into a cinematic representation of the sparse poetry of the book, it doesn`t quite have the resonance it should. still, mendes, steeling himself from art-porn indulgence for the most part, delivers some quietly devastating aesthetic corkers: the oil-fields at night sequence is eerie, haunted and unforgettable.

the performances are almost universally pitch-perfect, and whilst it's too clipped and stylised to really encapsulate the "boredom of war" that `das boot` did so memorably, it does capture something more disturbingly contemporary: an unnervingly honest glimpse into modern male aggression. the film is only really an indictment of the marines in so far as it's an indictment of the contemporary male, whom, after all, wanted so desperately to be sanctioned to kill long before he arrived at boot camp. regardless, although it is a pretty harrowing film to engage with in some respects, hopefully the audience will shiver in recognition at some raw, primal emotions that war movies have previously staunchly ignored.

--Mike

RE: Why a partial NO SMOKING ban will never work

it`s interesting, but ever since i became a pariah (and as a smoker, in my second home: the pub, that was about 6 months ago) i`ve started acting out on those who go out of their way to chastise the practice. it's turned a once placid social smoker into an utterly hostile vigilante. once, i would quite happily stub it out if a friend or even a stranger protested but now, now that you've all decided to rise up against it, you've made an unwilling militant out of me.

last week, i was sitting in a pub with 4 friends, myself being the only person who smoked. a woman sat down at the table next to me and made a point, in this very smoky, bleak, unforgiving, crowded hole, of wafting my gorgeous plumes of intoxicating cyanide away from her with a blatantly dismissive back-handed palm-off. i did what i feel any self-respecting smoker should do in such circumstances: i blew a thick trail of smoke, casually, in her general direction.

she coughed and spluttered meaninglessly, knowing immediately to never overtly complain again should she wish to repeat the process, (because, you know, smoke is viral death-dust and will kill you even if you mention it out loud) all-the-while knowing, in her boring middling superiority, that her righteous indignation will win in the end. because smokers all know that their days are numbered. our glory years of lounging around in dizzying cauldrons of nicotine, the smoke rising from tendrils into a still, stale, oddly beautiful formation just above everyone's heads are as dead as our atrophying internal organs and are lungs that apparently resemble something you just chipped off a coal mine.

but unlike other "oppressed" groups, our weapon still remains, and once all these tedious bans come into force and stalinist stormtroopers decree that we can only drink one thimble of rye on a leap year easter sunday and only smoke half a malborough light in a cave in poland lest we have our chins clubbed by dead seals. just take pause, light up, spot the nearest tessa, tabitha or tobey bore, harking on about platinum lampshades, obscure pasta swirls or the latest omega3-boost seafood wrap, and exhale a mushroom cloud of cathartic gutter smoke in their smug, terrified-of-death faces. as they spurt and spit, and maybe set their well-trained doberman of a caveman boyfriend on you, just know, as he slabs a loose pathing stone into your face, that whilst you'll die slowly and horribly at some perversely young age, they will live together in perpetuity. forever. but just look at the company they'll be keeping: 190 year olds with bad skin, ludicrously lithe bone structure, endless conversations about how boring it is to be 190 and farts that could wipe out the entire universe.

well, for me, that will keep a smile on my face, as i roach my butts on a steaming vent of magma in hell, which as a smoker is where, presumably, i'm going to end up.

--Mike

This item was edited on Friday, 13th January 2006, 00:53

RE: King Kong (my review)

i will say that i did have to watch this with a locusts' swarm of the most nauseating posh-toff adolescents in the history of the universe. word of warning, if you ever get thursday off, on the 15th of december, never, i repeat, never, go to hammersmith cineworld to see `king kong` or any derivation thereof. i suspect my greatest disappointment of this film is that kong himself did not reach into the audience, grab a few of them by their loosely draped ties, stylishly dishevelled hair or well-fed throats and peel their ribs from their chests as his teeth gradually scraped their smug, caviar, roast-suckled partridge eggs and lime-grass soaked bone-marrow into his rumbling stomach-lining. pricks.

anyway, it`s a pretty pitiful show all round really: we sternly endure an eternity of getting-to-know-you-s*** as the Venture casually circumnavigates the globe (presumably in real time). when the beasties are finally unleashed, the film has the relentless bravura of a spielberg/zemeckis/cameron and, i don`t think i`m alone here, kong ripping open a dinosaur`s faces and stamping on the ruined carcass never, ever gets old. ever.

sadly, the grimly gratuitous, beast on beast action doesn`t last, and we`re forced to endure yet another strained james newton howard romantic sting, and the 4-hundredth longing glance of naomi watts who, i swear to god, must have been having a stroke throughout the shooting, given how many times she turns her head to give her peripheral vision a scant view of an incoming, slathering, toothsome monster gob.

it should also be said that this is the crappest screenplay ever conceived: not only does it contain at least half a dozen ludicrously clumsy plot developments, purely in order to string out another action scene, it features quite the most sinfully awful dialogue i`ve ever heard in a wannabe blockbuster. every time jamie bell opened his mouth i wanted to strangle myself with a scart lead and throw myself into a chasm.

and so it rattles unconvincingly to its conclusion. incidentally, we can only assume watts sustained a severe head injury, concussed within kong`s knuckles as he bumbles along, as she otherwise inexplicably exudes startling empathy for the sociopathic hair-ball whose lightest expressions of levity still look like a fist wrapped in guts. but anyway, she and he go darting up the empire state in a futile bid to escape bi-plane-induced fate, but kong still meets the same grisly, predetermined end. i`m sorry, but i didn`t buy this when i was 7, and i definitely don`t now: he`s a giant ape for f***`s sake, p***ing bullets at him is like firing bat-s*** at a radiator.

but still he falls, in the film`s only truly virtuoso shot: a slow-mo, god`s-eye-view twirl so awesomely fake and hallucinogenic that it makes your head spin. we never get to see him go splat, but what we do get is at least seventeen times worse: jack black, in a take so terrible, I can only think of mr. burns in el spielbergo`s version of his life story, the one of him falling of the horse and being dragged around was the best one: "it was beauty that killed the beast", he flatly offers us, without the faintest trace of irony. in an age of mindless pixel-preening and digital f***ery-foo it`s meant to sound like a nostalgic hark to simpler, preachier emotional resolutions. the kind that said, "hey it's the depression, but we still need to teach you proles a lesson or too… you drab, poor, sewer-water lapping little s***s." sadly it just makes you so embarrassed you want to stab yourself in the eye with a shard of broken popcorn.

horribly, stupidly inept. intermittently maniacally amusing (seriously, ripping open a t-rex's mouth… still not old) but mostly just self-indulgent, empty destructo-decadence. for a film that claims to have a weeping heart of empathic gold, it`s as empty as a cave on the moon.

--Mike

RE: Which director do you completely trust?

Quote:
I loved Forrest Gump (a beautiful film - and out of all RZ`s movies, it`s my favourite!)

yes. the worst film ever made IS `forrest gump` and yes, it`s the only reason i don`t trust zemeckis (although admittedly i never saw `polar express.`)

suffice to say, i`m not getting drawn into another interminable, inevitably one-sided `forrest gump` conversation as that review is as much time and energy and loathing... and disgust, and self-destructive, nihilistic hatred that i ever want to
espouse on anything, ever... no, lets face it, none of us. NONE OF US have nothing better to do than discuss `gump`. so lets never speak of him again.

ever.

--Mike

RE: Which director do you completely trust?

you`re quite right, you can`t "trust" a dead director. what`s to trust?

the list of directors who have never made a film i didn`t like (and therefore trust to continue the formula) is a short one:

david cronenberg
anthony minghella
terry gilliam
michael winterbottom
terence davies

and, although he`s made a film i loathe more than any other, i`d still trust robert zemeckis with a camera long before i`d hand one to el spielbergo.

--Mike

This item was edited on Friday, 7th October 2005, 18:39

RE: compensation for terrorist attacks

I wouldn`t like to say for sure, but it sounds like a fail-safe in case a victim or family member went running to an ambulance chaser and set precedent against TFL or the respective borough council for a hell of a lot more than 11 grand, thus cueing a potential landslide. I`m very likely wrong, and frankly I hope I am.

--Mike

RE: Layer Cake

It rolls along pleasantly, and you have to appreciate its unwillingness to succumb to gratuitous violence. But it`s crippled by that British obsession with making everything seem more American; which converts, pretty much directly, into weird delusions of grandeur: note to Matthew Vaughn, cinemascope and Lisa Gerrard do not an epic crime saga make. But for a novice, posh, English bargain basement Michael Mann, he equips himself okay until utterly bottling it with an ending so bad it's like he just gave up.

Daniel Craig is excellent of course, and lets just say it's better than Guy Ritchie`s entire back catalogue rolled up into one tight bundle ready to be hurled with considerable glee into the bin.

--Mike

RE: Citizen Kane puzzler

"Rosebud", as any true lover of 'Citizen Kane' knows, means nothing (or, if not quite nothing, it could just have been a very, very rude joke.) But that's the whole point. It's a film about nothing. Sure, it's about the matrix of power, greed, guilt, family and desire, but really, it's about a man who is nothing, a man who would vanish back into that white blanket of idyllic snow if you stripped away all the things that other people say about him. It is the first, and probably last, great film about a monumentally powerful non-entity.

I feel like I`ve said it so many times on other posts over the years that I`m becoming hoarse with the prospect of repeating it, but `Citizen Kane` isn`t interesting because of its technical bravado, or its rather glib satirical swipes, or, even, "because everyone says it is." I`m bored with the faintly smug recitations of its aesthetic innovations. Save the torrid library knowledge for your film theory tutorial, everyone else is truly, and correctly, bored stiff. I've always been horrified that 'Kane' has become a "nerd's film" (the person who said this is quite correct, and the way most people talk about it only reinforces the stance). It's become this ghastly totem for unimaginative people to promote their intellectual one-upmanship, and if you fall for that, here's another: thinking for yourself is fun and easy.

I'll tell you one thing, I appreciate the honest, intelligent p***-taker of 'Kane' infinitely more that he who spews from whatever reverent scroll he happened to consume this term.

It is great because for a film made almost 64 years ago, it still feels more modern, more exciting, more brazenly, recklessly bold than just about anything you can watch today. It has a screenplay of dazzling wit and ingenuity: a narrative that begins with a jokey journalistic probing, morphs into psychological insight and finally shrivels into its own perfectly tuned pessimistic coil that declares (to quote a favoured film school source) that Kane is `a maze without a centre.`

What`s funny, is that it becomes a better movie the older it gets. The more films that are made, good or bad, seem to highlight what Welles seemed to know all along: the limitations of the medium. The difference is, he knew them before we did, and instead of packing it in, bemoaning them, or making more and more s*** films as filmmakers seem to do endlessly these days, he made it the topic of his first. It`s a fake biopic about a man we never learn anything important about, and what could be more modern than that?

It also strikes me that we all seem to be forgetting what a bloody entertaining movie it is. True, on the 6-pack stakes the last half is a bit of a drag, but the first hour has more drop-dead cracking lines than any political sitcom on Earth. Come to think of it, `Citizen Kane` might be the only "great movie" any normal person can stand to watch.

Oh, and for the record, who cares if someone doesn't like 'Citizen Kane', the only sadness is that they're missing out.

--Mike

This item was edited on Wednesday, 3rd August 2005, 17:22

RE: My very own DVD listed on Reviewer... :D

All things considered, it's probably a bit tough, but I didn't write it in ignorance of the other reviews and felt that a less varnished approach was necessary to really represent the film fairly, given what else had been said. I don't doubt for a minute the honesty of those earlier reviews, but I decided that (for lack of a more sober euphemism,) harshness was the best course of action. Meanness, which has been mentioned, is a side-effect of bad reviewing, for which I apologise. I may have gone over the line, but I take that as my, and any viewer's, prerogative when faced with anyone's film, whether 16, or 60.

I'm sure Rik will go on to better things, where there's a will there's a way... and when there's a will and a way there's usually a green light.

--Mike

RE: LIVE FOR THE MOMENT now available for legal download

Still excitedly waiting for the solid physical mass of a reviewable copy...

--Mike