On Selling My House

2013 is here to wrap us in its warm and delightful embrace, like a mad, erotic teddy bear. Before we dive into its futuristic, furry lap, though, there is one more thing I want to share about the year just departed.

In 2012 one really great thing happened. I sold a house.

The reason this made me so very happy was that it represented the end of four miserable years of struggle and tension and general rubishness. You know at the end of Return of the Jedi, where all the ewoks are doing a dance and everyone is looking up at the smouldering remains of the second Death Star? And there's a palpable sense of "Phew! That was really horrible, living under the oppressive regime of those tight-assed Imperial bastards! I'm very, very glad it's over!" Well, that.

Here's the story. Warning - it is not as exciting as Return of the Jedi. I may have over-sold it a little in that respect. Nothing actually explodes. Though I did do the ewok dance.

 

Act One - A Very Short Engagement

So. 2008. Five years ago I had a little more hair, far fewer DVDs and - most importantly for this story - I had a house. A nice, big, not-very-posh house over on Doncaster Road. I had owned the house for ten years and lived there with a wide variety of friends, thieves, artists and madmen. It was a house of music and wine, home to dozens of parties and a difficult place to keep clean. So much wine was spilt into the wooden floorboards of the living room that I imagined a beast would one day rise, composed of wine, like the guy in Hellraiser, only made of Merlot instead of blood.

It was a good house, and it was mine. But then in 2008, for reasons which now seem ludicrous and inexplicable, I fell in love. The woman, who we are going to call Edna, after the naughty animated television in Will'o the Wisp, also owned a house. Not as big as mine, nor as likely to be ravaged by an all night party, but it was hers.

Such was my passion, I earnestly desired to get married. In retrospect, not my smartest idea, but emotion was my master and I am a foolish soul when excited. I sold Doncaster Road - not a fit house for the much more adult life I now intended to live - and bought a house in the nicer part of town, a street called Bromley Mount. Lovely, it was - all clean and spacious and semi-detached, with absolutely no wine demon living in the floor.

Forgive me for mentioning money, but as it will become germane to our story, I must set a little context. I did quite well from the sale of Doncaster Road, and was able to put £42,000 into the new house. A very decent deposit, I'm sure you will agree. I also opened a joint account for myself and my wife-to-be, putting in ten thousand pounds. Such was my delight at the prospect of my new life, I didn't mind that Edna didn't put any money at all into the house, and kept her own house just as it was. Or that she only put a couple of hundred pounds into the joint account. I was happy to share my good fortune with her. Both our names were on the mortgage for the new house, and from now on we would be sharing the responsibility.

For reasons which now seem odd but then seemed logical, Edna moved into the new lovely house, at Bromely Mount, and I moved into her somewhat smaller one. Something to do with a woman's touch, getting the new place ready. Or something. No matter, I thought. Soon we will be married and I will move into the nice house too. And even if, God forbid, this quite-new relationship didn't work out, we agreed we would simply swap back, and everything would be fair.

Well, as you have probably guessed, this relationship did not work out. My foolish excitement soon ran up against a number of problems, none of which it seems fair to go into here. Suffice to say, we were not the perfect match after all, and it became clear that we should part. This was not a pleasant time for either of us. But things were going to get worse.

Me, pretending to be all bloody and

battered in 2008. How little I know.

Act Two - A House Divided

Having moved into the new house, Edna was unwilling to move out. It was much nicer than hers, and in a better place, and... well... she wanted it. Now, obviously I wanted it too, because it was mine, and I had sold my house and had nowhere else to go. Whereas, you know, she still had her house.

But.... no. She didn't want to go. Why should she?

Hmm. Well, there was the fact that I'd paid for all the moving costs, and all the legal costs for buying the house, and that my money from the joint account had paid for a new kitchen, and carpets, and decorating... all of that kind of made me want to be able to live in the place. And it seemed a bit more, well, fair. But, after a bit of back and forth on this, I thought, OK. You want the house, you can buy me out. £42,000 please.

At first, Edna simply refused to pay me back. Because her name was on the mortgage, she reasoned, she could legally claim half that investment as hers. At first I assumed she was joking. What kind of a person would take £21,000 from someone just because a technicality meant they could get away with it? Surely not this person, who I had liked so much that I'd trusted her with all I owned in the world? "People change," she said. Well, maybe. Or maybe we don't know what we'll do, until presented with the opportunity.

After a while, she came up with a calmer, less morally dubious solution. Maybe she had calmed down - it was an emotional time. Or perhaps she realised that trying to take thousands of pounds from someone is hard to get away with whilst also claiming to be a good Christian who always tries to do the right thing. Either way, she offered some other solutions.

One was that I take her house  - the smaller, not as nice one I was currently living in - as part exchange, and she pay me the rest in real money. This wouldn't have been the worst solution. I was already living in the house, so wouldn't have had to go through the arduous process of boxing up all my Doctor Who DVDs again. And it was a pretty nice house, in itself. Nowhere near as nice as the new one - the one I'd paid for, the one she was living in. But not too bad. That said, having lived in the house for a while, I was starting to understand why Edna had wanted to move out. It was a noisy street, populated by cretins who liked to shout at each other way into the early hours. One of the houses across the back street appeared to be a halfway house for the criminally insane. Another house was raided by the police, who discovered masses of dope. Yet another turned out to be a brothel.

I decided, after consideration, that I didn't want to buy a tiny poky terraced house on a street full of shouting drug dealers and pimps. I would just have the money, thanks. This did not go down well at all.

Edna tried a variety of methods to persuade me that I had to buy it - emotional appeals, angry rants, made up maths. The most hilarious of these was her claim that I was financially responsible for her house, so couldn't just leave it. 'How so?' I wondered. This house was nothing to do with me at all, being owned exclusively by Edna. Well, apparently the mortgage company had said so. According to her, they deemed me responsible for both houses, because of something to do with the way we'd got the mortgage.

Except, when I asked the mortgage company about this, they looked at me like I had asked if I could ride a horse through their office. No, they hadn't said any such thing. No, I wasn't responsible for Edna's house. What on earth was I talking about? When I challenged Edna about this, she tried to pretend that actually, thinking about it,  it was the insurance company that wouldn't let me leave. Yes, that was it. Not the mortgage company. And I couldn't check this, so it was definitely true. Weirdly, she printed this bit in red, maybe thinking that I, a colour blind man, would be unable to see it. It was at this point I stopped trying to engage with her arguments on a logical basis.

Also, I moved out of her little house, rented somewhere else and engaged a solicitor.

Flimbleby's attempts to represent me

legally were sadly not up to scratch.

Act Three - A New and Exciting Kind of Maths

We now enter a long, tedious exchange of letters, mostly through solicitors, with which I will not trouble you. The basic upshot of it all was that Edna did agree to pay me all my money back, but then didn't do anything about actually paying any of it. Quite how this happened is due to an unusual new method of maths, which evidently favours nonsense over reason.

This maths allowed Edna to spend much of my investment in the joint account - ten thousand pounds remember - on things that benefited her, but then to complain that she had put about £500 in herself and why wasn't she getting that back, eh? She would complain that I unfairly 'drew all the money out of the joint account'. Yeah. My money. Or what was left after she spent most of it. Never mind that over half of my investment had gone on surgery for her dog, a college course she never bothered going on and cosmetic alterations to the house she lived in. Edna had put in a couple of hundred pounds herself. The injustice!

The £42K she had agreed to pay back wasn't such a fixed amount, either, and suddenly, magically, turned itself into the rather more modest £15K. This, it transpired, was a much more reasonable figure for her to pay back to me. Then she got to keep the house. Needless to say, I required some elaboration as to why my rather substantial investment, which she had agreed to pay back in full, had now diminished to less than half its original amount.

Reader, it is not for me to disclose the finer details of another person's accounting. Let me simply say, without any fear that I could possibly be sued for innacurracy, that Edna's maths were, in this instance, either a) so bad they would fail a test in a primary school for chimpanzees or b) outright lies.

Don't believe me? Try this. Since I had moved out of her house and closed the joint account, Edna was now paying the mortgage for the new house. So what she did was, she added up all the money she'd paid into the mortgage. And then added some, from nowhere, that she hadn't paid. And then she revalued the house, based on what it might sell for, in her imagination. And expressed the total money she had paid as a percentage of how much we'd make if we sold the house. And voila. I was only owed £15K, really.

I did some spluttering, like an old major in a 70s sitcom when confronted with the word 'knickers'. I did some maths of my own, this time using logic, and found some things she hadn't accounted for. Like the times she didn't pay the mortgage at all, and incurred charges. And the fact that the money she had paid in wasn't actually all paying off the capital, like what my money did.

And the fact that she was living in the bloody house, while I rented somewhere else, so she owed me rent.

And, in fact, hang on a minute, wasn't she renting out rooms, in my house that I owned, and keeping all the money for herself? Shouldn't that money be in the equation somewhere?

Well, evidently all this was unfair, and, in fact, manipulative. And bullying. And... er... shut up. How dare I ask her to provide financial information?

"But..." you might protest, "but it was her idea... to try to prove that..."

Never mind.

Rejoice!

Act Four - Yub Yub

Anyway. I wasn't accepting the nonsense maths, or the paltry made-up amount of money I was being offered to let someone else own a house I bought. So we sold the place. I lost a fair bit of money, overall, but thanks to my solicitor's insistence on using actual, real maths to conduct the sale, I made a bit more that the silly amount offered above. And Edna won some money too - free money, out of nowhere, to enjoy alongside the house she still owns. Well done her.

I tell this story for a number of reasons. One, is that the story has been inside me for many years, and I want to let it out. I've tried not to deviate from the facts, nor to cast aspersions on Edna herself (though you may glean some small dissatisfaction with the way she conducted herself) but just to let the story stand for itself. There are, of course, other, more emotional versions of the story, which will paint one or the other of us as nasty, or treacherous, or unreasonable. None of that would alter the facts, though. This tale is simply what happened, as best as I can tell it.

The other reason for telling the story is that there are some blatant lies out there, wandering around the internet, courtesy of Edna herself. Those of you who know me are fully aware of the truth, and I trust you to form your own opinions. But after being silent for several years, and putting up with silly accusations, it is nice to be able to express some of what really occured. It's not nice to be called a bully, a loser, the devil incarnate, a cheat and a dickhead, when all you are trying to do is get back what is yours.



Epilogue - A Pretty Cool Hand

Many things have helped me through this last few years. Most importantly, of course, have been the friends who have stood by me, reassured me and - once in a while - prevented me from being that horrible person who writes nasty bitchy comments on Facebook and Twitter. They have made all the difference in the world, and I hope they know that. To paraphrase George Bailey, no man is poor when he has friends. I'd rather have lost all that money, than lost one of you.

And then there's this...

There was a moment, back in the first few months of this horrible situation, when the thought of struggling to get back my own money was making me very angry, and very depressed. And then I saw this clip, from Cool Hand Luke.

Luke has recently fought a fight he cannot win, against a man much bigger than him. Every time he got hit, he got back up. He wasn't throwing punches any more, he just wasn't staying down. Eventually, the other man had no way of winning. He picked up Luke, and carried him home.

And then Luke gets involved in a game of cards...







I can construct pretty good arguments, and do pretty good maths too. But they didn't help, not here, not against someone who wasn't interested in logic or maths, but only winning a nicer house, without earning it. What got me through this was the realisation that really, all I ever have is nothing. The money... that came easy and went easy, and it will either come again or it won't. To be happy rich or poor, to know you've done the best you can, and to have your friends at the end of it - that's the hand, and that's how to play it.

2012: Movies that Rob Saw (part 3)

Hello you. Grab a cup of tea and make me some toast! It's time to find out which were my favourite films of 2012.

I've mentioned a few here and here, and I'm sure you'll all agree that those films are, for the most part, interesting in their way, but not the best of the year. Unless you are some kind of idiot - the kind of idiot who would bring a very, very cheap bottle of wine to my house in 2001 and think it was the kind of behaviour I would ever, ever forget.

I'm sorry not to have seen Seven Psychopaths, or Argo - both of which I imagine I will enjoy immensely once I drag myself away from playing Hitman: Absolution all day. And though I have seen The Hobbit, that was only yesterday, so I have as yet  no developed opinion on it. I think it would go in the 'quite enjoyable' category. It just wanders along, telling its story in a visually striking manner, as you would expect. Sylvester McCoy is great in it. Martin Freeman is perfect casting. It is too long.

So, in reverse order, here are my top four films of 2012. They are very unusual, esoteric films that you probably won't have heard of, unless you go to tiny, out of the way Arthouse Cinemas.


4th.   Skyfall

The title of which is utterly impossible to say, even in your mind, without it sounding like Adele's mournful wail. I thought this was a decent enough song, but it should have been sung by Goldfrapp. Why haven't they been chosen for a Bond theme? Answer: everyone but me is stupid.

This will be a mildly spoilery review, I think. A quick glance at the box office for Skyfall tells me that every single one of you saw this film, seven times, and in some cases you took your pets. So if you didn't bother going to see it, but are somehow also desperate not to know anything about the film, I'd skip ahead to the next film. Though what's going on inside your head I don't know.

I'm not a huge Bond fan. I've probably sort-of seen all the films, in the same way that I've seen all the Carry On films and heard everything by Robbie Williams - it just kind of happens to you. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy Bond, or that I think the films are mass produced dross. I've seen everything since Goldeneye at the cinema and I generally enjoy myself in Bond's slightly-ridiculous world of jumping off moving vehicles, punching guys in the teeth and being a smart-arse to super-villains. But I'm aware that there is a huge, passionate love for and involvement in Bond amongst his real fans, that I do not quite have.

Skyfall, though, appears to be the Bond film that everyone likes, and rightly so. From the start, it's a massively enjoyable adventure in which many exciting things occur. The initial chase is spectacular, with some great stunt work - like the motorbikes-over-rooftops bit  - and some audacious almost-too-much stuff, like using a big digger to climb up a train.

 Bond has clearly learned a lot from the success of Jason Bourne, not least the hyper kinetic realism of the action scenes. Casino Royale destroyed the invisible-car nonsense of Die Another Day the moment Bond smashed a guy's head into a sink, and brought the series back to life even as that particular guy lay on a bathroom floor bleeding to death. The trick, though, is to integrate that grittiness into the world of 007 - it's not the same world, and shouldn't be. Bond's world is slightly more outrageous and a little more playful than the bleached out, shaky realities of Blackbriar and Touchstone.

Skyfall plays masterfully within this tension. There's a palpable sense of the real world here, a world changed by the levelling influence of technology and the shattering of political ideologies. "We can't walk in the shadows any more." says Rafe Fiennes's brilliant Mallory, "There are no shadows." How do you have a secret agent, fighting for his country, in a 2012 of cyber terrorism and cable leaks? What does fighting for your country even mean any more? And what technological wizardry can you give a spy when the entire world has GPS on its phone?

This is Bond, though, and so these issues are addressed mostly through the medium of explosions and shooting. We get the best Bond villain in years, Javier Bardem's incredible Raoul Silva, who's plan is both psychologically complex (mother issues, revenge, ideological instability) and batshit crazy ("How can I be Antony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, Dennis Hopper in Speed and Matthew Broderick in Wargames all in one day?") We get destruction and death aplenty, including an awesome London set escape/battle/chase sequence. And we get the best art direction I've ever seen in an action movie.

Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins make this film an intoxicating, immersive experience. One fight scene is staged entirely in silhouette, another shrouded in smoke. Colour pallettes shift in response to the action, painting psychological themes onto the environment as if we are seeing beyond the surface of the world, into the souls of the protagonists. Never is this more evident than in the final act, as Bond and his companions wage war in a nightmare world of fire and darkness and ice.

If I have one issue with the film it is that it seems to work hard to undo some of the progress made by Casino Royale. We end the movie seemingly back in From Russia with Love, in a very masculine world. I realise there was probably a desire to celebrate Bond's origins, what with it being the 50th year and all, but this felt a little odd to me. Overall, though, this is a minor gripe. I liked Skyfall. It was good, and I look forward to James Bond returning in Death Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry. With a soundtrack by Goldfrapp, please.






Joint 2nd.   The Dark Knight Rises / Avengers Assemble

Since Summer I have struggled to work out which of these films is best. Is it Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises, a magnificent, thought provoking meditiation on power, responsibility, civilisation and identity? Or is it Joss Whedon's Avengers Assemble, which features Hulk smashing Loki into the floor, and Scarlett Johanssen looking really, really lovely?

The answer is... I really don't know. They are both, nominally, superhero films, so there should be some basis for comparison, I suppose. But they don't feel similar, do they? One is a fine, complex meal - the sort where the wine complements the steak and you pause between courses to let the tasted resonate in your mouth - and the other is some awesome sausages with onion rings and wedges.

In this metaphor, Scarlett is the onion rings. Yum.

So... they both get second place, because they are both fantastic and they both demonstrate, in different ways, why the experience of cinema is important, exciting and brilliant. Allow me to elaborate.

Nolan's Batman films are, surely, the standard against which all other reboots must be measured. In a world where remakes appear to make up about 50% of cinema output, it is a joy to find a series of films that does not just rely upon a brand name to make some profit (Halloween, Total Recall, Spiderman etc), but takes an idea and really runs with it, doing something new and beautiful - something which enriches the source material, rather than sucking all the life out of it for a quick buck.

TDKR has split critical opinion, and it is easy to see why. It is massive, unwieldy and in many ways hard to love. It came after the near-perfect The Dark Knight - a film boasting astounding performances across the board, great action movie direction and a powerful, unstoppable story. Rises had a hell of a job to do, and it did not go out of its way to do that job in any kind of a hurry. TDKR feels less like someone telling a story, more like a story that is just happening regardless, rumbling under the surface of cinema, breaking out onto the screen, formless and terrifying.

This is a film I still can't quite get my head around, and for that I love it. Like all of Nolan's films, there is a lot going on that won't become apparent until we've lived through the film a number of times. I must have seen Memento twenty times or more and there's still stuff in there that surprises and excites me. The same for Insomnia, The Prestige and Inception. Generally, with Nolan, if you thought the plot didn't make sense, or that there was a bit of it that wasn't relevant, it's probably because you haven't worked it out yet.

I will need to see this film many more times. But for now it wins its place in my heart for being an awesome first-watch that affected me profoundly in both its story and its style. The last ten minutes moved me in a number of ways. Not necessarily for the characters, and the various fates that befell them, but for the power of storytelling at work in this beautifully crafted film.





The Avengers on the other hand...

I will probably watch Avengers Assemble a number of times, too. I watched it again, over Christmas, and I could happily watch it again this afternoon. But I doubt I will gain any fresh insights into the characters, or learn anything new about its themes. For while Avengers Assemble also makes for terrific cinema, it does so in a very different way to The Dark Knight Rises.

Like all art, film can move us, teach us, make us think and stir our senses. That's why I love it, and why I go on about it so very, very much. What I like best, though, is when film excites me. Yes, you can have a slow, visually sparse film in which very subtle, very meaningful things happen. But there's a part of me, when staring at a ten minute close up of someone having yet another ambiguous emotional response in a flat in Eastern Europe, that is thinking 'This is pictures! Why aren't you doing better stuff with the pictures?' If you want to express deep, subtle emotions, maybe don't throw it onto a big screen on Friday night, write a poem. And if you want to show New York being smashed to bits by extra dimensional aliens whilst in combat with brightly coloured super heroes - don't put it in a novel. Make me a big, exciting film so I can whoop and laugh.

And by Odin's beard, did I whoop, and did I laugh. So much so that some friends of mine, who had come to the cinema separately and were seated quite a long way behind me, identified my presence through the noise I was making. This is a masterfully constructed film that punches all the right buttons, and punches them hard. Snappy, intelligent dialogue. Characters broad enough to be instantly recognisable yet imbued with enough subtley and nuance to make you care. Action sequences that feel like they've burst out of the most exciting dream you ever had. Moments that catch you off guard through the power of the acting or the bravado of the film-making.

This is a film that absolutely should not work - a massive, hubristic project to bring together a super-band of film stars playing iconic characters, all apparently from different genres of storytelling. Whedon's genius is to play the team off each other with an absolute dedication to reality. So what if it's a science geek, a Norse god and a genetic soldier? They're still all guys, and they're still going to argue. There's as much joy in watching the Avengers interact in conversation as there is in watching them fight. Which is to say, a massive amount of joy.

And Scarlett... What a gift the gods of cinema have given us. I've loved her since Ghost World, with her husky voice and pouty lips. Let her be in every film ever, please. That would be good.







Which means that the number one film of 2012 is...


The Muppets

I wasn't a massive Muppets fan, though I did grow up with them as a constant televisual presence. I certainly didn't go into seeing this film with high expectations or any great sense of nostalgia. I just thought it would be funny.

Quite why 2012's The Muppets makes me so happy I cannot say. There are plenty of elements, sure. I like Jason Segel a lot - he was brilliant in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and I got the impression that this would be a similar affair. And I love Amy Adams in a very real, very physical way. She has, just, lost out to Scarlett in the battle for my heart and loins, but she remains a luminous, enjoyable screen presence and I will have her if Scarlett remains unavailable.

The songs are simply fantastic. Really smart, feel good songs that make singing along a real pleasure. Life's a Happy Song is infectious in both melody and its turn of phrase ("Life's a fillet of fish.... yes, it is!") and the Oscar winning Man or Muppet never fails to make me smile. Elsewhere, the poignant Pictures in my Head managed to make me cry, even though it was about puppets in paintings being sad, which is not something I thought I had any emotional connection with.

I was actually close to tears throughout a lot of the film, though tears of what I cannot say. A kind of sadness, yes - the idea of friends you just kind of drift away from without really noticing is a powerful one. But also tears of  joy and gladness. This is a film that puts simple, beautiful emotions at its heart, and I think that's where it really touched me. There's an uncomplicated silliness to the film that rejoices in its own ludicrous nature. It is self aware without being self important, and exhalts a child like love for the world and everything in it.





At the end of the year, there is a tendency to try to make sense of what happened, as if our lives were great narratives, full of meaning and portent. What they really are, I suppose, is a collection of random. nonsensical events, within which we bounce around trying to find meaning. More and more I am realising that the meaning, for me, is appreciating those events while they are happening. The sheer joy felt by Walter, the muppet who might be a man, upon meeting his heroes, moved me beyond words, because I suppose that's what I want -  to love things with that simple, stupid love I had before I learned to evaluate everything in terms of art, and narrative and worth. All that stuff is good but really... basically, life's a happy song. That'll do.


See you in 2013.

2012: Movies that Rob saw (part 2)

The end of the year is fast approaching, and you are faced with a problem. You'll be looking in magazines, or watching TV, and the people there will be mentioning all the films that have been on at the cinematorium, and talking about them like you've seen them. And you'll feel bewildered, and lost. "What are these films?" you'll think. "I don't have any opinion at all!" Or maybe your friends will pop in, for a croissant, and they'll say to you "So what about all those films there's been? What did you make of those?" And again that cold hand of fear will grasp your heart. What are they talking about? Best kill them!

Well, fear not. Your friends can live, and you can hold forth in a seemingly intelligent way. For here is all you need to know, about all the films of 2012.

That I've seen.

Not including the best ones. I save that for New Year's Eve.

Also, there might be some from last year that I didn't get round to seeing then so I've mentioned them here.

I'll be honest, if it's a thorough account you're after, I'd look elsewhere.


The Artist

In an age where films are waving their 3D nipple-tassles in our faces, desperate for attention like a drunk dinner lady in a Wetherspoons, it is pleasing to see a film do so well by being so resolutely unfashionable. There was no end of applause for The Artist and it was rewarded by Oscars, box office and all manner of people going "Good show!" as if they too were in black and white.

Passing opinion on The Artist is tricky, as the taste police have outlawed both disliking it ("you CGI hungry  philistine") and liking it ("you bandwagon jumping pretentious prick"). It put up a ton of barriers to the regular cinema crowd through its black and white silent-ness, while irritating people like me by winning a bunch of Academy Awards. There's nothing like an Oscar nomination to put me off a film.

Well, anyway, I liked it, and the reason I liked it is because it is good. It's funny, well played and has an awesome script (which you can find here.) Best of all, it is forced to communicate character, narrative and emotion through visuals alone (well, nearly) - a constraint which brings out the best in cinema as it is forced to look back to the brilliant, inventive pioneers who invented the language of the moving image before sound came along and made it all too easy.

Looper

Joseph Gordon Levitt waits. alone in a big, desolate field. After a while a guy materialises out of nowhere, and Joseph shoots him dead. For this Joseph gets lots of money. Why? Because the suddenly-appearing guy has been sent back, from the future, by guys who want to get rid of their enemies without any evidence. It's a bit like The Terminator would have been if he had thought to draw up a business plan.

One day, the person Joseph has to shoot is his future self - played by Bruce Willis. Oh oh! There follows an exciting adventure, full of timey-wimey paradoxes, creepy confrontations and exciting chases. It's a smart, effective thriller with one great moment after another and a couple of enjoyable lead performances. The science fiction ideas are handled just right - introduce them fast, forget about the details, get on with the story. There's some powerful film making here, and only a slight predictability towards the end stopped Looper being in my absolute top films of the year.

Cabin in the Woods

Some kids go on holiday to a cabin, in the woods, to do drugs, have sex and make cool pop-culture references to other horror films. They are well written, believable characters who venture into an insane, unbelievable world.

And then...

Every review of the film you will read, beyond the information I have just given you,  will say "Whoah, man! I can't tell you anything more about this! Oh wow! Oooo!" And they are sort of right - there are lots of things in the film that are best left discovered as you go along, and I'm certainly not going to spoil them here. But don't go into into the film thinking, as some reviews lead you to believe, that there's some kind of awesome twist that will, like, blow your mind. There isn't.

There's a fascinating central premise to Cabin in the Woods which slowly uncurls as the film progresses, becoming apparent very early on and revealing more and more of itself as the narrative develops. It is immensely satisfying and hugely enjoyable, with an almost unbearable cascade of joys and surprises.

Unless you don't like blood. Or watching people get killed in inventive, fantastical ways. If you are one of those people, I'd stay away.

Prometheus

I really, really enjoyed this. It isn't great, exactly, and the plot leaves a lot to be desired. But I loved being in the world it created - I enjoyed how real it all felt. This was a film of sensation over narrative, and in that spirit, I commend it. Sure, there was some ropey dialogue. And some of the things the characters did made no sense. And there were some moments where my suspension of disbelief said "What? Really?" But on the whole, Prometheus is a well designed, interesting film with enough interesting ideas to make it worthwhile. So it's not Alien. What is?

The Amazing Spiderman

Perfectly enjoyable and really well cast, but too similar to Sam Raimi's one ten years ago. I sat through every plot beat, just waiting to tick it off. He will get picked on. He will meet the girl. He will get bitten. He will learn how to use his powers. He will be stroppy and unwilling to accept his fate. This certain character will die. He will vow to avenge him. And so on.

When we saw this at the cinema, there was a trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, which excited me so much that I demanded to watch Batman Begins once we got home. This we did. Now, there's how to tell an origin story. A generation of cinemagoers, expecting the familiar beats of the Burton/Keaton film, are confronted by a bearded, angry Bruce Wayne, fighting monks in the snow! The dirty tone of the film, with its corrupt officials and violent deaths, is so far from Burton's dark whimsy as to feel like an utterly different story. The Amazing Spiderman was just... the same story, told slightly differently.

It was OK. If it is on TV at Christmas, I will watch it an enjoy it, and declare anew my love for Gwen Stacey. But it wasn't good enough, I'm afraid.

That'll do for now. Come back soon for more exciting highlights of the year they'll soon be calling 'last year'.

2012: The Photograph of Doom

This is the tale of a fool who put greed and pride above personal integrity. It is also the story of a large, generous group of friends who helped me despite having never once met me. It is the story of The Photograph of Doom.

This is not the photograph of doom. But it 

is a photograph. And it is 'of doom'.

Earlier this year I got an email, out of the blue, from a man who we are going to call Dick. Dick was a professional photographer, and he was unhappy. Apparently I had, in this very blog, included a link to an online image that, technically, belonged to him. I had used the photo to illustrate some hilarious point I was making about badgers, and had not credited him, nor sought his permission.  I hadn't known it was his - there was no credit on the photo whatsoever, so I couldn't have contacted him if I wanted to - but the fact remains that this was his work. Fair enough, really - this man made his living by selling photos, and there was me using one without his say so. He made me aware of the damage that could be done to his reputation, not to mention his livelihood, if his rights as an artist were not respected.

I fired off a reply, apologising for my unwitting use of the image, and I immediately removed the offending link. I sought out the going rate for using the image and, even though I make no money from this blog whatsoever, offered to pay him  for having used the photo, rounding the amount up a little by way of an apology. I also offered to put a link to his website up here on Pancakes for Davros, so that he might benefit from the enormous customer base that comes to look at my entertaining thoughts on Doctor Who and kittens.

A photo I took. Do not copy it. Unless you want to. 

In which case, do.

In response, Dick acted like a total... well, dick. He refused to accept my attempts at reparation and demanded I pay him over 8 times the asking price for the photo. This, I thought, was a little unreasonable. I'd taken the image down, offered to pay, said I was sorry. I explained to Dick that I respected the rights of the artist, but had been unaware that I was doing anything wrong. Now, part of this was my own ignorance. I had believed, as most people seem to, that images on the internet are fine to re-use in a non profit making capacity. A quick scoot around some copyright law sites made me aware that I was completely wrong about this. Oops. Lesson learned. Move on?

No. Ignorance was no defence, not to this guy. His protestations of artistic integrity melted away pretty quickly, leaving a clear and unambiguous desire for money. I tried to reason with him - asking why the amount was so high, pointing out that I couldn't have credited him if I'd wanted to, assuring him that I now had a better idea of copyright and would certainly not make the same mistake again. In response came a long, nasty, legal sounding letter, threatening all manner of retribution, giving me seven days to pay up.

Did I take this photo? Or willingly steal it, to 

annoy someone? Only Jesus knows.

In retrospect, his demands were ludicrous. At the time, however, it all seemed very unpleasant and upsetting. I went into the weekend in a foul mood, annoyed with myself for my poor understanding of copyright, angry with this photographer for being so unreasonable, upset at the prospect of losing a good deal of money.

Two things helped.

As always, one of them was Caroline's idea. She was well aware that I wasted much of my time arguing online with other Doctor Who fans on the internet forum 'Gallifrey Base'. Often she would call upstairs to ask why I was shouting 'Cock brain!' at the office computer, or have to sit through a thrilling account of how I had angered someone I had never met with my theories on how the TARDIS worked. She wondered if I might avail myself of the massive diversity among the online Doctor Who community to shed some light on my problem. Surely some of these obsessive science fiction fans were also photographers, who may have a strong opinion on the morality of the case, or solicitors, who may help me understand copyright law?

Online I went, grumbling that it definitely wouldn't work and what did she know about Doctor Who or the internet or anything. I posted a quick description of my situation, asking if anyone had any advice. In particular, I wondered if any photographers sympathised with Dick, and thought I should just pay up. I resolved that, if the general tenor of the response was one of disapproval for my accidental infringement, I would swallow my pride, pay Dick his stupid fee and chalk it up to experience.

Copyright Rob 2012. Oh yes. 

There are around 64,000 members of Gallifrey Base, from all over the world. A lot of our time is spent getting into petty arguments about Doctor Who trivia. We certainly disagree about what we like, and will put a lot of energy into fighting for what we consider to be 'proper' Doctor Who. Our ability to disagree goes beyond mere television however; we are just as likely to attack each other over politics, sexuality or grammar as we are over the correct dating of 'Terror of the Autons'. The community is one I find both immensely frustrating and wonderfully interesting, often at the same time. What would they make of my conundrum?

Many, many people responded to my story. Solicitors, artists, photographers, lecturers in law and people who just had an opinion. People I'd never met and didn't really know, in the conventional sense. A discussion blossomed, drawing on a wealth of case histories, personal experience and some strongly felt moral arguments. The conversation, of which I was only one small part, was courteous, intelligent and fascinating. Most of all, it was good hearted. Even those who questioned the rightness of my actions did it with compassion, understanding and a desire to find a fair way through.

Some people went as far as putting me in touch with advice groups, or used their legal expertise to draft replies to Dick's demands. Some found useful examples of precedent and summarised them for my benefit. It changed my weekend from being one of despondency and gloom to one of feeling included, cared about and supported.

The conclusion we came to was simple. Dick was probably right to criticise me for using his image, and had every right to ask me to take it down. But by asking for a ton of extra money he had stepped out onto shaky ground, both morally and legally. I sent him a reply, refuting some of his wilder claims (claims which, when I'd calmed down, I realised were bonkers scaremongering and had no basis in anything sensible or legal) and restating my willingness to pay him the standard rate. Dick never got back to me.

The moon surface, yesterday. Photographed by me.

I don't know if Dick realised the massive collective effort that went into my reply or not. Perhaps he's reading this now, searching hopefully for further naughty uses of his work, so as to make a little more money. If so, hello there Dick. Hope the business is going well. You'll notice I've taken down any photos from my blog that aren't allowed by copyright law, so well done - you made a difference for artists everywhere. I'm not being sarcastic - I really have learned something.

Maybe you could learn something too. If you hadn't been such a prick in our initial exchanges, you could have had a bit of money for your work, without any stress or argument. You could have retained my respect for your work, and for you as a person. I understand it must be frustrating, living in an age where your work is so easily copied, but maybe next time, try to be a little friendlier. Copyright law is complicated, and lots of people don't really understand it. Maybe, rather than seeing that as a chance to make money from non-profit making bloggers, you could see it as an opportunity to educate people. Most of the time, we're not trying to rip anyone off, we're just trying to be creative, like you.

And if you are one of the people from Gallifrey Base who took the time and effort to lend support, expertise and ideas when I was feeling low and confused - thank you. It's good to be part of a community that can disagree, debate and fight over the smallest things, but pulls together when it matters. You made a huge difference.

Anyway. That was one of the best and worst weekends of 2012. And hopefully we've all learned something about art, community, copyright and how not to be a prick. See you next time, for... I don't know. Probably a review of a biscuit I ate or something.



(Oh yeah. I said there were two things that helped, didn't I? Well... I'll get round to that later. It's not that exciting.)

(or is it..?)

2012: Amazing, Recommended Television

Once upon a time it was quite easy to upset me. I was a thin skinned child, easily wounded by the thoughtless barbs of others. I did, to be fair, offer up a multitude of opportunities for mockery - I was small, skinny, bespectacled, terminally geeky and utterly unable to interact sensibly with the world. Also, brilliantly, I had the tendency, upon becoming upset, to turn bright red, opening up further hilarious opportunities for abuse.

As I have grown older, I have generally got better at coping with those who disagree with my (correct) perspective on the world. Real criticism - the stuff that comes from people who know me, that contains some grain of truth and knowledge - can knock me down, but that's as it should be. That's the kind of criticism that matters, and should be acted upon. But most attacks and arguments aren't like that. Most of the time, if someone is being nasty about me, it says more about the attacker than it does about me. Small minded childish insults are the province of those who lack confidence in themselves, or the intellect to develop a true line of thought. Except when I called that guy a penis in my last blog. That was just hilarious. 

There was one thing someone said this year, however, that really annoyed me. It was not an attack on me, rather an attack on something I love. It was a simple sentence, and the sentence was this:

"TV isn't art'"

Oh dear. 

Really? 

Gosh.

TV isn't art...OK. It's 1954 then. Back to bed. Close the blinds. Not art. Right.

There is a discussion to be had about this which references the massive body of existing debate on the subject, going back to Benjamin through Duchamp and Warhol etc. But really... there's an easier and more interesting way of proving me unassailably right. 

Here are four television shows I saw this year. They are art.

The Thick of It

I've always liked comedy when it tries to do something more than make us laugh. I'm fascinated by the tension between humour, which relies upon a subversion of expected patterns and outcomes, and political discourse, which must have clear structure and a definable point. Stand up comedians who have a point to make tend to get less funny as they get closer to making their point. 

The Thick of It clearly has a number of points to make about the way Britain is run. Its comedy is a terrifying fairground mirror, showing us grotesquely distorted characters who manifest the truths we suspect about our so called leaders - they are selfish, duplicitous and basically unworthy of office. It has become celebrated for the character of Malcolm Tucker, the foul mouthed spin doctor brilliantly made flesh by a blistering Peter Capaldi, who confirms everything we think we know about how power really works.

In this last series, however, The Thick of It has become more than satire - more, really, than comedy. There are moments of darkness and introspection that you rarely see in any art form, let alone on television. Characters reveal themselves not as hilarious exaggerations of real life politicians, but as real people. They are weak, like we are. They are compromised beings, horrified on a daily basis at the gulf between what they thought they could achieve and what they are actually capable of. And they are terrified, finding themselves fleshy and  vulnerable among the whirling steel cogs of media hysteria, political chicanery and pure dumb luck.

Beneath the satire, this is a psychological horror story, challenging us to watch the slow unravelling of human beings in a world more absurd than any science fiction dystopia. Brilliantly plotted, executed with masterful storytelling and beautifully played by its cast, The Thick of It can make you laugh while filling you with horror. Incredible stuff.

The most intelligent commentary on Hackgate you will see, anywhere.

Him and Her

This is a hard show to recommend. I really didn't like it for the first three episodes, and this appears to be a common reaction. Whenever I tell someone to watch it they say pretty much the same thing as everyone else: "I tried watching one, but it just wasn't funny." And then I say, "Well, once you've watched about four, you start to get it." And they look at me like I am mad. You're thinking it now, aren't you? You watched one episode, and thought 'Nothing is happening and these people are annoying', and now you are thinking that I'm wasting your precious time when you could be Google Image searching random phrases to see what comes up. Is there such a thing as a nazi kitten? Did Zooey Deschanel ever do any nude work? Has anyone ever drawn a picture of the TARDIS control room in the style of Escher? Well, go look for those things if you must, but then come back here and let me try to persuade you to watch Him and Her.

Back? Right.

Him and Her was best summed up by Caroline thus: "They never leave the flat." Steve and Becky, the eponymous him and her, lounge around in a flat, occasionally getting ready to go somewhere but never actually achieving it. They are visited by a number of friends and relatives, all of whom exhibit some level of irritating behaviour. There is Dan, the dirty, bearded loner who lives upstairs and comes down to steal their food. There's Laura, Becky's evil sister who is bitchy and selfish while remaining convinced that she is the centre of everyone else's life. There's Paul, Laura's dim, trapped fiance. None of them are ever welcome, all of them are always there.

So far, so sitcom. People trapped with people they don't get on with, humour arising from conflict and misunderstanding. What makes this better - what will make you eventually realise the worth of this beautiful show - is the stuff under the surface. Like The Thick of It, this is a show with real characters - people who present a face to the world to avoid letting spill the dozens of competing desires within. The descriptions I gave above are all true, but they are only part of the story. Dan, for all his unsavoury, thieving weirdness, is a gentle, lonely character with real beauty in his heart. Paul is still, at his core, a child - rejoicing at Christmas, moved to angry tears when things go wrong on his birthday, utterly uncomprehending at how he has got trapped in an engagement with this horrible, stupid woman, Laura.

Ah, Laura. One of sitcom's great monsters. Her grating voice, her preening self love, her utter lack of perspective - all you can do when watching is urge the other characters to punch her in her stupid face. But then there are the little moments when the facade slips... when you sense a girl who doesn't know who she is, trying to construct herself through feeling attractive, planning a wedding, getting pregnant. She is a creature only defined when being observed by others, constantly trying to shape the way she is perceived by bigging herself up and putting others down. There is an incredible moment in series three when we are left alone with her for just a few moments. Unobserved, she slips into a brief, silent scream, tears held desperately in, before pulling herself back together so the world might continue to adore her.

These are characters in whom the tragedy and the comedy is the same: they cannot articulate who they are. All except Steve and Becky, who love each other because they've found somewhere they can be themselves: a tiny flat, with someone else who who wants nothing more than to eat in bed and watch Morse. This is a strange, brilliantly funny little show which will reward your time.

Laura - horrible, manipulative, a bit evil - arrives

American Horror Story

Over Halloween I bought myself the entire series of this new American show and devoured it over the course of a week. It is mental. The tenor of the show, as you might guess from the title, is one of genuine spookiness and fear. Its episodes are perverse, darkly sexual and often horrific, yet shot through with a macabre humour.

I do not recommend it without reservation; there are some of you who may find its blend of psychotic eroticism off-putting. If you are unsure, try the following:

A fat man is staring into a mirror, in a darkened bathroom. He is shaking with fear. He calls out to his reflection. "Here, piggy piggy." Nothing. He gulps, and calls again. "Here... piggy... piggy." Nothing. But the third time is the one, isn't it? That's the one that summons... the thing. One last time, the fat man summons the courage. "Here... Piggy... Piggy." A sudden squeal from behind him. He spins around, mouth opening to scream. Out of the darkness lurches the squealing head of a pig, but it's body is that of a man. Before we can register the incongruity, the man-pig swings a machete, slicing into the neck of the fat man, severing his head...


Now, how did you find that? Was it

a) Thrilling and exciting - that sounds like the kind of mental stuff I'd enjoy in a programme.

b) Not my kind of thing - that's a bit too graphic for my tastes

c)  I am a friend of the person who just read that. I found them unconscious on the floor in a pool of their own vomit, a look at horror etched on their face. What have you done to my friend? You sick, sick man!


If you answered a, then you will probably enjoy American Horror Story. If you said b, then probably not. If the answer was c, then you have a friend with a very low tolerance for fear. I would exploit this by hiding under beds, dressing up as ghosts etc. 

The premise of the show is simple and ingenious. A family is on the edge of being torn apart by internal tensions, not least of which is an extra-marital affair. They attempt to solve this by moving into the most haunted house in the world. Over the weeks they meet a variety of weird and wonderful characters who may or may not be the ghosts of previous residents. We slowly learn the history of the house, visiting moments from the past that shaped the ghostly present.

The show is bold, imaginative and compelling. Brilliantly, it pulls its triggers fast: a mystery set up in week one is likely to be resolved by week three, only to germinate more questions. The cast are clearly having a ball and play their characters just the right side of camp. Visually stunning, directed with real style, this is one of the most involving and exciting things I've seen all year.




Sherlock

It is almost a year ago now, but I remember it with clarity. I turned from the screen to my viewing companion and said, "We are, right now, watching one of the best things that has ever been on television." Sherlock series 2, The Reichenbach Fall in particular, demonstrated a deep understanding and love for the art form that is television. Elegant in construction, bold in execution, absolutely enthralling.




There's plenty of television I did not see this year.I will, no doubt, spend next year trying to catch up on Dexter, Mad Men, maybe even Homeland and Game of Thrones. This year, though, TV gave me enough sustenance to last a long, long time. It was beautiful, and it was intelligent, and it was art.