I've come for my award

As we all know, there is only one thing more important than watching movies and that is talking about movies and deciding which ones are most worthy of awards. Without awards, watching movies would be a worthless waste of our time and money. "I guess I enjoyed that," we would think as we stared blankly at the closing credits, "But how do I know if it was really any good without some external system of evaluation, symbolised through statuettes?"


Luckily for us we do not live in this terrible alternative universe where people enjoy things simply on their own merits. No. We are fortunate to have a plethora of guilds, academies and organisations who will tell us what is good. Hurrah. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some thoughts about the upcoming 2011 Oscar Ceremony.

Firstly, this tendency to scribble Oscar credits all over filmtrailers, in a bid to make us go 'Ooh! That must be good then'. I don't like it. Firstly, it makes me feel bad for the actors who don't have any credits.


'Academy Award winner Robert DeNiro'

'Academy Award winner Meryl Streep'

'Academy Award winner Kate Winslet'

' .... Ewan McGregor'


Kind of makes you feel bad for Ewan, doesn't it? There's a tacit pause before his name, a space where his accolade should be; a space that my mind silently fills with the word 'Loooooser'. And I like Ewan. He's no loser. He'd slice Winslet's face right off if it came to light-sabres.


I thougt of a solution for this yesterday when watching the trailer for Never Let Me Go. Here we have the same trick - Carey Mulligan appears and the words 'Academy Award Nominee' float across her lovely face. Kiera Knightley follows and there, again, appears the elegant script, 'Academy Award Nominee'. And then up comes splendid Mr Andrew Garfield. And... nothing. No award for you. Empty space for you. Poo on your head for you. But then I thought, in the absence of something Oscar related, why don't they just use that space for something else? How cool would it be if, as Garfield appeared, they had simply faded up the words 'Spider Man!!!' With the exclamation marks and everything. Look everyone! It's Spider Man! Woo! You may have a nomination, Mulligan, but can you shoot webs from your wrists and traverse the night skies fighting crime? No, you bloody can't.

This would have remedied one of the great Oscar-related injustices of modern times - the constant refusal of the Academy to give the award for Best Director to the man who most deserved it - Martin Scorsese. Ok, they got round to it eventually, but he had to endure years of being '............ Martin Scorsese' despite making Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and many other wonderful films. How much better would it have been if, every time his name came up, it had been legally compulsory to accompany it with the phrase      '...I made bloody Goodfellas. That's right - Goodfellas. Good. Fellas. All your films are worthless by comparison. Worthless! Goodfellas! Ha ha ha ha ha!'



The other issue I have is that this list of accolades is kind of meaningless in the first place, isn't it? The clear implication of showing off all these awards and nominations is to make us think 'Wow! This film contains some serious talent!' Directed by Academy Award Winner Ang Lee? Surely this will be as sensitive and beautiful as Brokeback Mountain! Starring Reese Witherspoone and Nicolas Cage? Wow! This will combine the emotional journey of Walk the Line with the psychological truthfulness of Leaving Las Vegas! This is going to be the greatest movie in the history of the world!


But is it? What if Ang Lee does the kind of ham fisted job he did with Hulk? What if Nic Cage brings his Ghost Rider form and Reese Witherspoonse thinks she's in Legally Blonde 3? What if this is Legally Blonde 3? Ang Lee's Legally Blonde 3, starring Nic Cage as a crazy OCD lawyer with straggly hair?


It's like saying "You like Wispas! You love Carlsberg! You're very fond of hamsters! Well, good news! We mixed them all up in a blender to make new WispyLagerFluff! What do you mean you don't like it? Why are you crying and being sick? You ingrate! These are your favourite things!"

Googling pictures of hamsters delayed this blog by 2.5 hours.

(Does anyone know who owns this excellent picture? If it's
you, please get in touch. I like using it.)

Finally, a small point I noticed yesterday in the trailer for True Grit - another film festooned with Academy Award winners and nominees. Among them is Matt Damon, who is flagged up as an Academy Award Winner. Hmm.

Now I like Damon, and I think he's a top actor, but this is a bit disingenuous. Damon may well have won an Oscar, but it's not for acting. He won it, along with Ben Affleck, for Best Screenplay, for Good Will Hunting in 1998. So, yes, technically he's an Oscar winner and yes, he's in this film, but is it really relevant? He didn't write True Grit (that would be Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen), he's acting in it.

It's a bit like me making a bid to be the next Pope and claiming that I'm very well qualified. While technically true - I've got all sorts of degrees and certificates - it's not at all relevant to the job in question (all my qualifications are in Language, Media and Culture, rather than, say, Theology or Advanced Hat Wearing).


Anyway, that's enough for now. Soon I will confidently make my powerful and wise predictions on who will win what Academy Award. And that will be worth waiting for.

Speech impediment

Did you see the King's Speech? Good isn't it? Think it will get some Oscars? Me too! Don't think it will get the Big Five - I suspect The Social Network for screenplay and Natalie Portman for actress - but best actor is surely in the bag, as is - if there's any justice - best supporting actor for Rush.

One award it probably won't get is the Oscar for Film Most Needlessly Vandalised by Avaricious Philistine Lowest Common Denominator Dickwads. It won't get it because the Oscar doesn't exist, but it's starting to look like we need such an award, and fast. Why? Glad you asked.

The Weinstein Company, the producers of the film, are toying with the possibility of re-releasing the film on the back of all the Oscar buzz, only with one crucial difference. They want to edit out the swearing. They want to re-release The King's Speech with all the swearing either cut or bleeped out, so they can lower the age rating and make more money.

"Hello everyone. Arsecheeks!"

Even if you haven't seen the film, you may be aware of the part swearing plays in the film. The King, Bertie (Colin 'Oscar' Firth) has enlisted the help of speech therapist Logue (Geoffrey 'Oscar' Rush) in a bid to overcome his stammer. The film follows the relationship between the two men as Bertie endeavours to deal with the expectations and torments of his unwanted position, a mental straightjacket which forbids him to speak freely.

One of the limitations Bertie overcomes, and one which gives him at least temporary victory over his stammer, is the unspoken rule that kings don't shout "Fuck fuckety buggering bollocks" at the tops of their voices, for quite a long time. It's a glorious moment, showing a man overcoming not just a disability but also a lifetime of repression. It is a moment of liberation and joy, and - better - it resonates beyond the story of a King living decades ago.

This is about lives and minds crippled by social pressures, by the constant fear of transgressing invisible boundaries drawn up by arbitrary rulemakers to hold us in place. It is about the way voices can bring down prison walls. And it is about the joy of friendship that gets beyond surfaces and expectations, and allows us to be vulnerable, and naughty, and alive.

What this film does not need, in my opinion, is to have the swearing cut out so it can grab a bit more of a post-Oscar bounce.

Maiden Voyage

January is gone! We can have fun again. Gloomy, miserable January, with its perpetual cold and eternal grey skies, has wandered off to irritate people in the next dimension and we can start to live again.

I'm not saying there weren't some good things about the month. I had my birthday, and saw a lot of friends, and that was good. And got many wonderful gifts for said birthday. I am reassured that the presents I received for my 40th birthday included an awful lot of toys, films and T-shirts. Clearly maturity is still some way off.

In fact, I seem to be regressing. Thanks to an excellent documentary on BBC4, I have rediscovered my love of heavy metal guitar wranglers Iron Maiden and have bought myself a couple of albums I last possessed in the 80s - namely Powerslave and Piece of Mind, as well as the DVD of the live concert Live After Death. Really, really enjoyable. Clever, daft and thrilling all at the same time.

I'd like to say that my teenage interest in Maiden passed in a fit of growing up, but it is not the case. Sadly, my large collection of vinyl LPs and singles, as well as some very exciting T-shirts,  went onto a big bonfire in the name of over-zealous Christianity. It seems ridiculous now, but back then I was seriously convinced that owning merchandise made by these fun loving, tongue-in-cheek rockers might open up a portal to hell. I blame my church - a bit on the right wing side - and my own rather naive approach to faith. And maybe, just a little bit, Iron Maiden for calling one of their albums 'The Number of the Beast'.

Anyway, I'm better now. I'm sure there is plenty of music that might be unhealthy, in a spiritual sense, but it's more likley to be condoning the staus quo and encouraging an isolationist, consumerist hegemony rather than dressing in a scary mask and shouting 'Yaarg'. Chew on that, idiot-panicky Christians. Except you can't, because you already read the words 'Iron Maiden' and have run away to scrub out your ears, in case they get possessed.

Suffice to say, after a January full of being ill, feeling down and not really wanting to blog, I live again. Maybe it was listening to Maiden that helped. Maybe I just needed to get through the month, in which case thank you to those who helped. You are lovely.

Various things have vexed me recently, but I will come to them in due course. For now, here are two things which cause me inexplicable worry:

i) The suspicion that, even though I know it's OK to close the DVD tray by pushing it in physically, rather than using the button, I am somehow being cruel to it.

ii) An ungovernable fear, when looking at the recommendations on my Amazon site, that I must not lie about which albums I do and do not own. Yes, I own some Bob Dylan albums. But I know that if I say 'I own it', you will take this as a sign to recommend every album he has ever made. Which is loads, and I don't want any. So why don't I say 'Not interested'? I don't know. I feel like I'm being dishonest, and that somehow Amazon will know. And it will feel betrayed. And I've already upset the DVD player.

Sigh. Maybe when I'm 50 this will all make more sense.

See you soon.

Star Wars triva: N and O

Sorry... haven't blogged for ages... will do soon. For now, this: more in my wise and trustworthy Star Wars alphabet.

N

Naboo.

Having done sand (Tatooine), snow (Hoth), the sky (Bespin) and forests (Endor), Lucas hit upon a great theme for his new planet… pointlessness. A bunch of idiots in silly clothes, some fountains, a lot of grass and somewhere a bunch of underwater wankers. The Trade Federation sensibly decided to destroy it, but were unfortunately thwarted by… er… you know, I cannot for the life of me remember. Oh, was it that Anakin… pressed a button… or something...? And there was… a big blue thing that fizzed.


Sorry, I’ve lost the will to live.


O

Ozzel, Admiral.

Ozzel is brilliant for a number of reasons. Number one is that he’s played by Michael Sheard, now sadly deceased, who also played not only Hitler (in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) but also Mr. Bronson, in TV’s Grange Hill. He’s also brilliant because he chokes extravagantly to death behind Piett, recipient of Vader’s irritable mood swings.

Vader was cross because Ozzel brought the Imperial fleet out of hyperspace early, thus making the rebels on Hoth realise that millions of Imperial Star Destroyers were about to blow them to pieces. Ozzel thought surprise was wisest, apparently. But what does that mean? Surely bringing the fleet out of hyper-space is precisely what alerts the rebels to the Imperial presence. So how does that constitute ‘surprise’? Answer: it doesn’t. He deserved to die.



Old Ben Kenobi
(an acrostic)

Oh, since before you were born, I’ve been
Living here, in this little flat, in
Denial of the terrible things I have done

Better not tell you
Exactly how your father met his end
Nor anything about Yoda, midichlorians, Leia or
         the fact that I used to hang out with these two
                     droids right next to me

Knight of the Old republic I may be
Even the last of their kind
Not going to let that stop me lying about absolutely everything
Or hiding the fact that this here
Bird in the hologram, who you clearly want to have sex with
Is your sister

Goodbye, Kobayashi

The New Year brings with it the unwelcome news that weird faced, top actor Pete Postlethwaite has breathed his last, and I for one am sad.

I first came across Postlethwaite's ghoulish visage in the 1989 television series 'Tales of Sherwood Forest'. As I recall, the premise of the show was that Postlethwaite played a bar owner, Eric, who loved the film Casablanca and wanted to model his bar on Rick's place, renaming it The Blue Parrot. I think. Although in retrospect I wonder whether I'm not wrong about that, as surely he'd have wanted to call it Rick's Cafe Americaine?

Either way, he never got the place renamed, and it remained 'The Sherwood Forest' for the duration of the series, much to Eric's chagrin. I remember thinking that this was a shame, as Eric did look quite a bit like Bogart. I guess that was the idea behind the programme.

I don't recall anything else about the show, and the internet steadfastly refuses to help me. There are, apparently, no video clips or pictures from this show anywhere on the world wide web, and if you do searches for 'Tales of Sherwood Forest' it just gets confused and offers you holidays in Nottingham, or  pictures of Jason Connery. A shame, as I really liked the show, and every time I saw Mr Pete afterwards, I went 'Oh, it's that guy from the Blue Parrot thing'.

Whatever Uncle Pete was in, he made better. He had a natural dignity that elevated every role he inhabited. He turned up in all manner of films, suprising you as his bulbous nose or droopy eyes appeared from nowhere. Here are some of my favourites:

Romeo and Juliet

All-rather-silly adaptation of the Bard's most famous "cock-up" play, suddenly invaded by the skull like countenance of Mr Pete as his weird-as-some-bats Friar Lawrence gave Leo some iambic advice.

Alien3

What's one more bald, freakish looking individual in this peculiar space sequel? Well, if it's Mr Postlethwaite, I'll be happy to watch. In fact, this film has a great British cast, and is well worth catching if you can grab the director's cut.

Brassed Off

The one he'll probably be remembered for. Who wouldn't want a friend/father/guardian angel like this?

The Town

Here playing a really horrible piece of work, making full use of Pete's ever more unusual features. One of the many tragedies about his death is that we'll now never get to see just how cartoon like his face would become as he travelled into old age.





The Usual Suspects

My favourite, of course. The suave, oddly accented Mr Kobayashi, both humble and subtly threatening. Of course, that probably wasn't his real name...

So goodbye, Uncle Peter. You were brilliant. Intelligent, compassionate and shot through with warmth and wit. We will miss you.