It’s ‘summer’ (as in, it’s June, I’ve only just turned off the heating and we’re alternating between blinding sunshine and uncomfortable heat [yesterday] and floods [today]). As a side note, next year, can we just segue straight from spring to autumn? They’re both nice seasons, which I like and feel comfortable dressing for. I still haven’t bought any summer clothes, as I’m working on the assumption that I won’t need any, as the only holiday I’m going on is to Edinburgh. Where, as we’ve established, there are many weather conditions, few of which involve sun or extremes of heat. I’m also assuming that as Britain is staging a monster sporting event, for which we’ve been preparing for years, it will piss it down with rain for most of July and August. Ergo, I can stick with my customary jeans-and-Uniqlo-top combo and avoid the sales and buying anything new to wear till autumn. ‘Dressing for summer’ will merely involve either carrying an umbrella or leaving it hopefully at home.
I digress. It being ‘summer’, the film studios assume that our brains have gone melty in the heat, and we can only cope with effects-heavy blockbusters. Which is fine, but why do they all have to be such a monumental waste of time, money and effort?
First up, I bought into the hype (the PR and marketing team deserve a massive award for creating so much expectation and desire for something so dull) and went to see Prometheus. I wanted to go and see it at the Imax, as I’ve never seen anything there, but it was sold out, so Tottenham Court Road Odeon it was, with 3D specs which they now charge you extra for! As well as charging you extra because it’s in 3D in the first place! And then they offend you further by showing that bloody advert about how cinemas might die if we all download films, or watch DVDs or something and just turn into huge sheds with seats and cobwebs in. Stop doing this when I am a/ IN A CINEMA, THEREFORE SUPPORTING CINEMA and b/ you have just fleeced me massively for doing so. It does rather make me want to watch a DVD with popcorn I’ve made myself and no-one either kicking the back of my seat, talking through the film, or constantly checking their texts and emails on their phone, lighting up a surrounding area of at least four foot as they do it, all of which is immensely annoying. Make adverts about that instead, please, it would really increase my enjoyment of spending too much money in your ‘multiplex’.
Anyway, back to Prometheus. I have the dubious pleasure of having seen all four Alien films (yes! Even the one with Winona Ryder in it). I think I’ve even seen Alien Vs Predator on TV (which, for the record, was schlocky fun). Prometheus is an event because it’s the first time director Ridley Scott has ‘returned to the Alien universe’. Even though he’s spent the last six months protesting that, really, this film has bugger-all to do with Alien. I’ve no idea why he bothered with that, given that IT IS AN EXACT REMAKE OF ALIEN. Albeit with nicer effects and scenery, but made by a man over 70 who has clearly forgotten how to make a film that makes any sense in terms of plot or characters.
So, when you decide to make an homage to Alien, here are the things you need to include:
Big spaceships!
Robots being creepy and having their heads torn off!
Sticky substances that will probably corrode your clothes!
Unpleasant things either going into, or out of people!
Shadowy people doing things for nefarious means!
A tough woman running around in her underwear for quite a lot of the film!
A crew who, whilst they only number 17, you only get to know 5 of and there are a suspicious number of deaths! (Are some of them dying more than once?)
Shit apparently being blown to smithereens, without actually killing the one guy you want/need dead!
For Prometheus, you will also need to rip off the costume department of much-derided hot sci-fi mess The Fifth Element, and have supposedly feisty heroine Noomi Rapace running around in what is effectively a bandage boob tube and a pair of bandage pants, for about 20 minutes. Having just given herself a pretty hardcore abortion/caesarean. Because having your heroine run around in a skimpy vest and some pants was, like, sooo 1979 and repressive. We couldn’t even see her abs! Practically Victorian. No, in the future, female archeologists will feel so body confident that they’ll want to take off nearly all their clothes and dash about, covered in blood and trying not to faint with the horror of it all for ages, rather than, you know, making their first post-operative priority finding an intergalactic dressing gown or something.
You will also want to include a diverse mob of crew members who have apparently never met each other before they’ve been shoved on a massive space tank and put into cryostasis for two years, (other than nearly-naked Naomi and her boyfriend, who was obviously supposed to be played by Tom Hardy. But he either had ‘scheduling issues’ or read the script beforehand, and so didn’t do it. So they’ve hired a man who looks exactly like Tom Hardy. But isn’t him. Shame, as I always fancy Tom Hardy). The crew also haven’t thought to ask what mission they’re being recruited for. Or even where they’re going. Was it like a press-gang thing, and Charlize Theron just came up behind each of them, banged them on the head and then stuck them in a pod, after taking all their clothes other than their pants? If you can be put into cryostasis for two years, why do you have to just be in your underwear? Why can’t you wear something proper? Another of Ridley’s unanswered mysteries.
The crew includes a geologist who is admirably straightforward about why he is there (‘I just fucking love rocks’), which also, of course, means that he is doomed, despite his ginger Mohican and intriguing tattoos. One assumes, despite his appearance, that he’s one of the clever ones, as when they go explorin’, he has some laser gizmos for mapping the large construction that they’ve wandered into. However, despite the fact he controls the mapping gizmos, he manages to get lost trying to get back to the Mothership from the large construction. Call the gizmos back and make them show you the way out! Or, the large construction being revealed to be, essentially, a giant interstellar croissant, would you not just go back the way you came?
But we need him to get lost in a Scooby Doo way, because then he can be killed off along with the film’s most annoying character, the biologist, played as a Shaggy-style stoner dimwit, by Rafe Spall. I have no idea why they cast Rafe Spall, and then made him do a very unconvincing American accent. There are tons of American actors, employ one of them instead. Whilst Noomi is supposed to be English. Just make her character Scandinavian, it’s fine. No-one cares. If you’ve spent a trillion dollars, even on a seemingly really vague mission, I fail to see why you’d employ the universe’s thickest biologist. Rafe bimbles about doing nothing much, until faced with, them being on a planet two full years away in a spacecraft from where he lives, a lifeform that’s, well, alien. Ergo, he knows nothing about how it’s likely to behave. I’d be standing well back, or at least have my helmet fully up for protection. Not Rafe, though. No, he decides that the alien – which looks, if you’re being kind, like an albino cobra with the underside of a stingray grafted onto it; or, if you’re a feminist film critic pointing out Ridley Scott’s apparent issues with women, like a vicious fanny on a stick – is very beautiful. And goes towards it cooing as though he’s just found a big basket of kittens.
Naturally, the fanny on a stick attacks Rafe for being an idiot and he falls victim to the first ‘unpleasant thing going into or out of someone’ episode.
It was a bit unclear to me whether it was him or the ginger geologist who then randomly got reanimated as an Alien zombie (which no-one in the film really comments on, despite the ensuing spat having taken out about 7 of the crew’s members. It’s fine, we hadn’t been introduced to them, so we needn’t worry that they’re dead). We also don’t need to worry about who/what killed off Not Tom Hardy (probably because he’s not Tom Hardy); why they’ve travelled two years in a spacecraft, yet choose to park it about a mile away from their chosen spot, thus meaning they have to commute back and forth in some not very high tech-looking space golf buggies, getting caught up in sand storms, etc. But not seeing Zombie Rafe Spall approaching from a mile away, thus giving them time to shut the door and stop him taking out half the crew. And why, when faced with a huge, crashing spacecraft falling vertically on top of you, you don’t, if you’re Charlize Theron, run away to the side instead of straight ahead. Or why, when you’ve driven your really-tiny-in-comparison-with-the-Engineers’-ship ship into the side of the latter at great speed, there is still loads of it left afterwards, and it’s all working perfectly well, thanks.
You’ll also need to reference your original 70s classic by including a sequence that makes viewers of a certain age think not, ‘ooh, that’s a lovely effect’ but, ‘ooh, someone watched a lot of Jean Michel Jarre spectacles back in the day, didn’t they?’
Oh, it was all exhausting. And lacking in suspense, or shocks, or intrigue. What will happen when they wake up the Engineer? Well, he’s been asleep for over 2,000 years, or something (I’d given up caring about the timeframe ages ago; it could have been two billion), so of course instead of waking up and going, ‘ooh, some lovely chums to chat to! At last! Let me tell you the secrets of the universe!’, being eleven foot tall, built like a marble tower block and feeling like a bear that’s been dragged out of hibernation, he’s really bloody grumpy and snaps everyone’s heads off. So, by the end of it, they hadn’t answered any of the questions they’d set up and were clearly angling for a bloody sequel. However, Michael Fassbender does ‘creepy robot’ brilliantly and is still acting everyone off the screen even when he’s reduced to being just a head in a bag.
In other news, I went to see Avengers: AGM, or whatever it was called. Again, boredom on a stick, just with loads more explosions, and I’ve now decided I fancy Tom Hiddleston a bit. And that it’s the law that everyone, regardless of gender, has to fancy Scarlett Johansson. The film also stars Chris Hemsworth, who, as Thor, is equipped with a massive hammer.
Hemsworth seems to be building a career around raiding the tool shed. He lost out on wielding some tools in The Hunger Games to brother Liam (perhaps bows and arrows aren’t strictly ‘tools’), but within the month, there he was in Snow White and the Huntsman, clutching an axe. Also doing battle with: a drink problem; depression because he was a widower; a Scottish accent; trying to make people care about Kristen Stewart; the fact most of the film was ripped off from Lord of the Rings; a load of famous dwarves in an unconvincing Technicolor fairyland complete with CGI badgers and foxes (just film some real ones!) and a big stag that spent all of its screentime projecting, ‘I AM NOT ASLAN. NO, I AM AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GOD-LIKE ANIMAL BEING. ALSO, I AM NOT THAT STAG IN HARRY POTTER.’
Anyway, it is diverting, if, like me, you enjoy watching a woman deranged by her own beauty and power turning into a flock of crows, and being a bit like a fantasy version of Loose Women (ie constantly bitching and raging about other women being younger, prettier and nicer than you).
It does make me worry about what Chris Hemsworth’s next film will be, given that it will have to include a/ an accent that is not his own (heavy Australian) and b/ tools.
Chris Hemsworth’s Agent: Hi Chris!
Chris Hemsworth, Wielder of Tools and Accents: G’day, mate!
CHA: Er, g’day! Yes. Hi! Anyhoo, I’ve got a lovely new job offer for you! It’s got all your favourite things in it! It’s got an unwieldy title, you’ll be doing an accent, AND it’s got tools! It’s soooo you!
CHWoTaA: Ripper! What is it, cobber?
CHA [brightly]: It’s Avengers Self Assemble: The Ikea Story! You’ll be playing a character called Bjorn! There’ll probably be a sequel, which will involve the pun ‘Bjorn Again’!
CHWoTaA [raising Aussie eyebrow quizzically]: Sounds good, but what are the tools, mate?
CHA [quietly]: A really big set of Allen keys.
CHWoTaA [with a heavy sigh]: Where do I sign?
Friday 29 June 2012
Wednesday 27 June 2012
I'll Have What She's Having
Despite the ongoing brilliance of Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman, these are sad times for ladies, I find. The daily tyranny of the Daily Mail’s online sidebar of shame, cataloguing who is a tiny bit fatter/thinner/happier/more sad/wearing too much and ‘covering up their curves’/wearing a bikini and ‘flaunting their curves’. ‘Curves’, of course, being newspaper and magazine shorthand for ‘unfortunate lady measurements that mean you will never be Gisele, and which, therefore, should make you constantly neurotic about your looks’. Although, confusingly, in fash mags, Gisele is described as having ‘curves’ because in model terms, she has a semblance of a cleavage. There is also a subtext that because she is Brazilian, and all Brazilian women are apparently enviably ‘curvy’ – the Daily Mail struggles with this because they are both curvy and foreign, obviously – she goes in and out in a way that is remarkable. To my eyes, she is as curvy as an ironing board, but there we go. Model standards have changed. I count myself lucky to have spent my teenage years admiring the original ‘supers’, such as Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell, who had curves that no-one could dispute. That shot of them all together in George Michael’s Freedom video makes them look like Amazonians compared with the current crop of Avatar-tall coathangers striding down the catwalks.
Other evidence that these are sad times for ladies: Fifty Shades of Grey being dubbed ‘mummy porn’. Well, that and the fact that such a stratospherically bad book has sold nearly 400,000 copies. In a week. Actual, physical copies, not even ‘I could be reading George Orwell for all you know’ Kindle copies! Have you no shame, women of Britain? Given the acres of coverage about what a phenomenon it is, it’s in many ways a good thing that someone came up with the snappy moniker of ‘mummy porn’ for it. (Perhaps this is one of the very reasons that it has totally taken over newspapers, radio and the interwebs – people love being able to use the word ‘porn’ but undercut it and make it seem tame by teaming it with the word ‘mummy’). After all, if they hadn’t come up with that, they’d have had to call it ‘embarrassingly poorly written erotic literature’, which isn’t nearly as catchy. And takes you four times as long to type.
‘Mummy porn’ annoys me in so many ways. Why not ‘mum porn’ for starters? Because women, even mums, for heaven’s sake, have to be infantilised. ‘Mummy porn’ makes it sound like a silly, giggly pleasure. Like sneaking a cream bun when you’re on a diet. Nothing to do with actually getting your rocks off and then subsequently having sex. Probably quite kinky sex, based on the BDSM themes of the books. It’s also, what, porn for middle aged women? Based on what? The dubious ‘heroine’ is in her early 20s. Are blokes reading it? Generally if something’s selling that many copies they are (even if only out of curiosity). What are they supposed to think of the fact that they’re enjoying ‘mummy porn’? What about the legions of women who are reading it who aren’t mums? Is it going to transform them into Laura Ashley skirt-wearing women, fretting about their non-existent children and whether or not they’ve got their ‘pre-baby body’ back? (Again, per the Daily Mail, this is all mums are supposed to be concerned with). It’s all so fecking patronising, like erotica for women can’t really be termed proper porn; that proper porn can only be created by men, for men.
Ugh. Anyway, the thing that made me particularly sad for ladies today was hearing that Nora Ephron had died. Will there ever be another romcom as good as When Harry Met Sally? I could still happily watch that film at least twice a year. It’s brilliant. And judging by the happy relationships of quite a few of my friends who have got together with their best male chums, it clearly had a lasting effect on my generation. I persist in going to see modern romcoms, in the hopes that they will make me feel as warm, fuzzy and hopeful of falling in love as When Harry Met Sally does. Unfortunately, writing them appears to be a lost art. Studios seem to spend all the money on hiring whoever is in them instead of investing in a really corking script. Which means that now we have Jennifer Aniston and her Hair (which I think gets paid a separate fee), just with a different leading man each time. She stands/sits/walks and we look at her hair. And we think, ‘Why is Jennifer Aniston deemed to be our romantic role model? Does anyone still want to be Jennifer Aniston? Her hair is really boring. I am sick of her face. I am sick of the fact that she never says anything interesting in films. Or not in films. At all. I find her utterly emotionally unengaging. Oh god, why won’t she leave me alone?’ I feel persecuted by Jennifer Aniston’s blandness.
My most recent foray into romcommery was The Five Year Engagement. I like Emily Blunt (she seems nice and down to earth, and a laugh). It has a chap called Jason Segel in it, who I think I’ve probably seen in other things. He looks to be tall, with a nice face (I have such low standards! Seriously, why am I still single? I’d probably be happy with someone of average height, with a nice face! Where are they?) Tall, nice-faced Jason Segel wrote the film, which is perhaps where its problems start. Women know what they want from a romcom – a nice man, a likeable heroine, some reasons for the two to be apart, then a big finish in which the man sets out all the reasons he loves the woman in a dramatic speech – usually involving a combination of rain, airports or train stations and/or one of them turning up somewhere massively inappropriate, like in the middle of the Leveson enquiry when the other is presenting evidence, or at the Olympics, right before Tom Daley is about to do his last dive, which might get him a gold medal, something like that. She goes gooey and says, ‘I love you too’. We all melt a bit, wishing life were actually like that. The end. That’s why women should write romcoms. Men like films in which cars/bridges/The Empire State Building blow up and lots of other men go ‘grr’ or beat each other to a bloody pulp. They do not like seeing romcoms, ergo they are not well versed in their tropes.
Therefore, despite Lovely Emily Blunt, The Five Year Engagement marks a new low in romcoms in that it seemed to contain neither rom nor com. For two hours! It’s rare that you see a film and think, ‘That should have had an hour taken out of it’. They made arranging a wedding seem akin, in terms of negotiations and compromise, to the Northern Ireland Peace Process. When a friend of mine got engaged in February, and is getting hitched at the end of September. In a church. With a marquee in a field. All of that – proper, organisational stuff, which requires both time and effort. Done, in six months.
The obstacles to them getting married are:
They move, because Emily Blunt has been offered a really good job, from San Francisco to somewhere which snows a lot (the five years that elapse are demonstrated by shots of snow, interspersed with shots of green-leaved trees. That’s pretty much it). This is not, in itself, much of a hindrance. Pick a date in Spring! Or not, I mean, you might want to wear a big cape or something and have a Narnia theme.
Emily Blunt has a better job than Jason Segel when they move to Snowsville. Jason Segel gets a job, but feels it is beneath him. (He is a fancypants chef, who ends up in a less fancypants place). So, do it for six months and then find another job, Jase! That’s what people do! No, Jason decides to be miserable and resentful at Emily having a better job than him and forcing him to move to Snowsville. He also grows the world’s worst stuck-on moustache and beard combo, and takes up hunting, making homebrew and wearing hideous knitwear. Again – a shave, an outfit change and drinking proper booze instead would sort that out. No need to stop planning the wedding.
He becomes so miserable that he has to move back to San Francisco, and break up with Emily. (This, conceivably, is actually a bar to them getting married). They both have to have terrible new relationships, to prove how much they should be with each other. Emily’s is with her boss, played by Rhys Ifans. He is a creepy, patronising, controlling professor. We know he is creepy because he spends quite a lot of the time wearing a poloneck. We get he’s not right for her! Stop making him wear a poloneck! It’s overkill! She has marked the end of her engagement by having an unflattering fringe. Jason is going out with a quite unnecessarily awful 20-something blonde. Who in reality would never have given him a second glance, let alone, from the passage of snow to green leaves and back again, seem to have gone out with him for over a year.
There is then an agonising period of time in which Jason sets up a business (I know! You practically have to sit through him going to the bank and talking them through his business plan and profitability predictions for the next five years). Why he didn’t decide to do this in Snowsville is anyone’s guess. So, he’s running a business, albeit one that involves him selling tacos from a truck. He’s hardly working 24/7 creating the next Apple. He could take some time off. You know, to get married. That bit only takes a day.
The plot also deems it necessary to kill off, I think, three grandparents. For no other reason than to illustrate how hopelessly tardy these two are at organising their nuptials. It is resolutely unfunny, no-one ever refers to the sadness of losing said grandparents (to whom they all seem close) and it does nothing to move the plot forward, other than when one of Emily’s grandparents dies, and she has to go to England for the funeral (she is English, for no apparent reason, and her accent wanders around a fair bit; plus her sister, also living in San Francisco, appears to be American). Thus we have our Dramatic Declaration of Love moment, when Jason makes the effort to fly over there, unannounced. Even then, she’s still talking about going back to Snowsville when the ‘semester’ starts. Despite the fact that her boyfriend is a PATRONISING POLONECK WEARER.
Given the number of deaths, it might as well be called Arranging a Wedding is a Terrible Bore. Funerals? Less so.
By the end, I not only felt as though I had lived through their entire five year relationship, but that I never wanted another relationship in my life as the whole thing seemed so boring and so much hard work. I’d wager that the anticipated result of a romcom is not for the viewer to think, ‘Oh, thank GOD I’m still single.’
The last ten minutes are funny, though, if it’s ever on TV and you fancy doing the televisual equivalent of a child refusing to eat broccoli and just going straight for dessert by only tuning in for that bit. Instead, I am going to indulge in a marathon Ephron tribute session with a large stack of DVDs and dream of marrying either Billy Crystal or Tom Hanks. Here’s to you, Nora, you were really something special.
Other evidence that these are sad times for ladies: Fifty Shades of Grey being dubbed ‘mummy porn’. Well, that and the fact that such a stratospherically bad book has sold nearly 400,000 copies. In a week. Actual, physical copies, not even ‘I could be reading George Orwell for all you know’ Kindle copies! Have you no shame, women of Britain? Given the acres of coverage about what a phenomenon it is, it’s in many ways a good thing that someone came up with the snappy moniker of ‘mummy porn’ for it. (Perhaps this is one of the very reasons that it has totally taken over newspapers, radio and the interwebs – people love being able to use the word ‘porn’ but undercut it and make it seem tame by teaming it with the word ‘mummy’). After all, if they hadn’t come up with that, they’d have had to call it ‘embarrassingly poorly written erotic literature’, which isn’t nearly as catchy. And takes you four times as long to type.
‘Mummy porn’ annoys me in so many ways. Why not ‘mum porn’ for starters? Because women, even mums, for heaven’s sake, have to be infantilised. ‘Mummy porn’ makes it sound like a silly, giggly pleasure. Like sneaking a cream bun when you’re on a diet. Nothing to do with actually getting your rocks off and then subsequently having sex. Probably quite kinky sex, based on the BDSM themes of the books. It’s also, what, porn for middle aged women? Based on what? The dubious ‘heroine’ is in her early 20s. Are blokes reading it? Generally if something’s selling that many copies they are (even if only out of curiosity). What are they supposed to think of the fact that they’re enjoying ‘mummy porn’? What about the legions of women who are reading it who aren’t mums? Is it going to transform them into Laura Ashley skirt-wearing women, fretting about their non-existent children and whether or not they’ve got their ‘pre-baby body’ back? (Again, per the Daily Mail, this is all mums are supposed to be concerned with). It’s all so fecking patronising, like erotica for women can’t really be termed proper porn; that proper porn can only be created by men, for men.
Ugh. Anyway, the thing that made me particularly sad for ladies today was hearing that Nora Ephron had died. Will there ever be another romcom as good as When Harry Met Sally? I could still happily watch that film at least twice a year. It’s brilliant. And judging by the happy relationships of quite a few of my friends who have got together with their best male chums, it clearly had a lasting effect on my generation. I persist in going to see modern romcoms, in the hopes that they will make me feel as warm, fuzzy and hopeful of falling in love as When Harry Met Sally does. Unfortunately, writing them appears to be a lost art. Studios seem to spend all the money on hiring whoever is in them instead of investing in a really corking script. Which means that now we have Jennifer Aniston and her Hair (which I think gets paid a separate fee), just with a different leading man each time. She stands/sits/walks and we look at her hair. And we think, ‘Why is Jennifer Aniston deemed to be our romantic role model? Does anyone still want to be Jennifer Aniston? Her hair is really boring. I am sick of her face. I am sick of the fact that she never says anything interesting in films. Or not in films. At all. I find her utterly emotionally unengaging. Oh god, why won’t she leave me alone?’ I feel persecuted by Jennifer Aniston’s blandness.
My most recent foray into romcommery was The Five Year Engagement. I like Emily Blunt (she seems nice and down to earth, and a laugh). It has a chap called Jason Segel in it, who I think I’ve probably seen in other things. He looks to be tall, with a nice face (I have such low standards! Seriously, why am I still single? I’d probably be happy with someone of average height, with a nice face! Where are they?) Tall, nice-faced Jason Segel wrote the film, which is perhaps where its problems start. Women know what they want from a romcom – a nice man, a likeable heroine, some reasons for the two to be apart, then a big finish in which the man sets out all the reasons he loves the woman in a dramatic speech – usually involving a combination of rain, airports or train stations and/or one of them turning up somewhere massively inappropriate, like in the middle of the Leveson enquiry when the other is presenting evidence, or at the Olympics, right before Tom Daley is about to do his last dive, which might get him a gold medal, something like that. She goes gooey and says, ‘I love you too’. We all melt a bit, wishing life were actually like that. The end. That’s why women should write romcoms. Men like films in which cars/bridges/The Empire State Building blow up and lots of other men go ‘grr’ or beat each other to a bloody pulp. They do not like seeing romcoms, ergo they are not well versed in their tropes.
Therefore, despite Lovely Emily Blunt, The Five Year Engagement marks a new low in romcoms in that it seemed to contain neither rom nor com. For two hours! It’s rare that you see a film and think, ‘That should have had an hour taken out of it’. They made arranging a wedding seem akin, in terms of negotiations and compromise, to the Northern Ireland Peace Process. When a friend of mine got engaged in February, and is getting hitched at the end of September. In a church. With a marquee in a field. All of that – proper, organisational stuff, which requires both time and effort. Done, in six months.
The obstacles to them getting married are:
They move, because Emily Blunt has been offered a really good job, from San Francisco to somewhere which snows a lot (the five years that elapse are demonstrated by shots of snow, interspersed with shots of green-leaved trees. That’s pretty much it). This is not, in itself, much of a hindrance. Pick a date in Spring! Or not, I mean, you might want to wear a big cape or something and have a Narnia theme.
Emily Blunt has a better job than Jason Segel when they move to Snowsville. Jason Segel gets a job, but feels it is beneath him. (He is a fancypants chef, who ends up in a less fancypants place). So, do it for six months and then find another job, Jase! That’s what people do! No, Jason decides to be miserable and resentful at Emily having a better job than him and forcing him to move to Snowsville. He also grows the world’s worst stuck-on moustache and beard combo, and takes up hunting, making homebrew and wearing hideous knitwear. Again – a shave, an outfit change and drinking proper booze instead would sort that out. No need to stop planning the wedding.
He becomes so miserable that he has to move back to San Francisco, and break up with Emily. (This, conceivably, is actually a bar to them getting married). They both have to have terrible new relationships, to prove how much they should be with each other. Emily’s is with her boss, played by Rhys Ifans. He is a creepy, patronising, controlling professor. We know he is creepy because he spends quite a lot of the time wearing a poloneck. We get he’s not right for her! Stop making him wear a poloneck! It’s overkill! She has marked the end of her engagement by having an unflattering fringe. Jason is going out with a quite unnecessarily awful 20-something blonde. Who in reality would never have given him a second glance, let alone, from the passage of snow to green leaves and back again, seem to have gone out with him for over a year.
There is then an agonising period of time in which Jason sets up a business (I know! You practically have to sit through him going to the bank and talking them through his business plan and profitability predictions for the next five years). Why he didn’t decide to do this in Snowsville is anyone’s guess. So, he’s running a business, albeit one that involves him selling tacos from a truck. He’s hardly working 24/7 creating the next Apple. He could take some time off. You know, to get married. That bit only takes a day.
The plot also deems it necessary to kill off, I think, three grandparents. For no other reason than to illustrate how hopelessly tardy these two are at organising their nuptials. It is resolutely unfunny, no-one ever refers to the sadness of losing said grandparents (to whom they all seem close) and it does nothing to move the plot forward, other than when one of Emily’s grandparents dies, and she has to go to England for the funeral (she is English, for no apparent reason, and her accent wanders around a fair bit; plus her sister, also living in San Francisco, appears to be American). Thus we have our Dramatic Declaration of Love moment, when Jason makes the effort to fly over there, unannounced. Even then, she’s still talking about going back to Snowsville when the ‘semester’ starts. Despite the fact that her boyfriend is a PATRONISING POLONECK WEARER.
Given the number of deaths, it might as well be called Arranging a Wedding is a Terrible Bore. Funerals? Less so.
By the end, I not only felt as though I had lived through their entire five year relationship, but that I never wanted another relationship in my life as the whole thing seemed so boring and so much hard work. I’d wager that the anticipated result of a romcom is not for the viewer to think, ‘Oh, thank GOD I’m still single.’
The last ten minutes are funny, though, if it’s ever on TV and you fancy doing the televisual equivalent of a child refusing to eat broccoli and just going straight for dessert by only tuning in for that bit. Instead, I am going to indulge in a marathon Ephron tribute session with a large stack of DVDs and dream of marrying either Billy Crystal or Tom Hanks. Here’s to you, Nora, you were really something special.
Friday 8 June 2012
Plastic Fantastic
The good thing about freelancing is that sometimes you get offered some quite leftfield gigs. When I was a professional loafer a few years ago, I did a stint working on short films for my sister at the National Film and TV School, which was great, other than having to get up horribly early when actually filming. Weirdest thing: having to phone a department at London Underground and ask if we could borrow a load of their lost property for one of the films. They said yes, were lovely about it and gave it to us for free. When I tried asking a supplier of industrial shelving if I could borrow some for a few days for free - bearing in mind we'd pick it up and return it - he gave me very short shrift, despite my protestations that we were students and had no budget. C'est la vie. I also got to meet Phil Daniels, who was in the lost property film, who was lovely. I had to largely avoid talking to him, though, for fear that I was going to get an attack of Tourette's and shout, 'PARKLIFE' in his face by accident.
I also sat in a Brick Lane gallery for the better part of two weeks, keeping an eye on an exhibition which no-one had really given me any information on. People weren't sure if they could come in for free, or what it was there for (if you saw the episode of this series' Apprentice when our favourite money muppets were flogging 'upcycled' furniture and tat in empty spaces to Hoxton-finned numpties, it was in one of those. Large, blank spaces with huge plate glass windows and no signage are confusing).
Despite the fact that all I was doing was sitting behind a table all day, and was free to read books or otherwise entertain myself, it was one of the most psychotically boring episodes of my entire life. It was the closest I've come to solitary confinement. And some bastard came in and stole my mobile while I was trying to fix the perpetually dicky sound on the 'sound installation' that was part of the exhibition. I spent most of the day with it on mute, but would, from time to time, panic that the artist would randomly drop by and have a hissy fit that it wasn't on, which was what used to happen to the guy who was baby sitting the other part of the exhibition in a different space across the road. He spent six hours a day being tortured by horrible wailing noises. The artist came by several times and complained that he'd turned it down.
I spent a day as an extra on a TV shoot (the final episode of White Teeth, which I hadn't read, so the scene I was in, which involved people bursting into a science lecture and shouting, was confusing. Especially as, I seem to recall, James McAvoy was playing twins, so lots of it had to be shot twice). My friend was working on it (hence the gig), and when I arrived merrily informed me that he'd 'put me in with the principals'. I'd assumed I'd be 'milling around at the back', safe from any sort of televisual coverage. 'What, so I'll... be in the shot?' I queried. 'Yes!' he replied chirpily.
I decided to draw on my stellar career of school plays and pretend I could act, despite the fact that in every single school production in which I'd ever featured, I'd played a man. (All-girl schools have a lot to answer for when it comes to feeling like an attractive laydee, when you're typecast as a bloke). Still, I had a costume for this and everything! Yes, as it was set in the 80s, and I was supposed to be an academic, I got kitted out with a navy blazer and a natty Tie Rack scarf. Essentially, we all had to look shocked as a kerfuffle unfolded in the middle of our nice science lecture (being given by nice Robert Bathhurst, from Cold Feet and the like). I looked extra shocked as someone came clambering over the seats and used my left shoulder for leverage.
Despite all this, I still assumed I wouldn't actually be on screen at all. There are, however, two quite lingering shots featuring me, if it still exists somewhere on YouTube. For weeks afterwards, every time I saw my mates, they'd go, 'Ooh, watch out, here comes THE TV STAR'. It's a very good job I never did want to actually be on telly as a job.
However, even with these varied and exciting forays into disparate parts of the arts, today's offer of work was properly unexpected. A friend has put me forward for copywriting (yay!). For a website (ooh! I usually only do six-word taglines for four-sheet ads). The website is for a group of plastic surgeons. I know! The dilemma of course is: should I ask to be paid in Botox and fillers instead of cold hard cash? After all, it's not like I want to be an actress; no-one's paid me to look worried, flustered or frowny since my TV debut all those years ago. With the world going to hell in a handbasket, perhaps it's time to have the top half of my face frozen so that I can just look blandly happy all day.
I also sat in a Brick Lane gallery for the better part of two weeks, keeping an eye on an exhibition which no-one had really given me any information on. People weren't sure if they could come in for free, or what it was there for (if you saw the episode of this series' Apprentice when our favourite money muppets were flogging 'upcycled' furniture and tat in empty spaces to Hoxton-finned numpties, it was in one of those. Large, blank spaces with huge plate glass windows and no signage are confusing).
Despite the fact that all I was doing was sitting behind a table all day, and was free to read books or otherwise entertain myself, it was one of the most psychotically boring episodes of my entire life. It was the closest I've come to solitary confinement. And some bastard came in and stole my mobile while I was trying to fix the perpetually dicky sound on the 'sound installation' that was part of the exhibition. I spent most of the day with it on mute, but would, from time to time, panic that the artist would randomly drop by and have a hissy fit that it wasn't on, which was what used to happen to the guy who was baby sitting the other part of the exhibition in a different space across the road. He spent six hours a day being tortured by horrible wailing noises. The artist came by several times and complained that he'd turned it down.
I spent a day as an extra on a TV shoot (the final episode of White Teeth, which I hadn't read, so the scene I was in, which involved people bursting into a science lecture and shouting, was confusing. Especially as, I seem to recall, James McAvoy was playing twins, so lots of it had to be shot twice). My friend was working on it (hence the gig), and when I arrived merrily informed me that he'd 'put me in with the principals'. I'd assumed I'd be 'milling around at the back', safe from any sort of televisual coverage. 'What, so I'll... be in the shot?' I queried. 'Yes!' he replied chirpily.
I decided to draw on my stellar career of school plays and pretend I could act, despite the fact that in every single school production in which I'd ever featured, I'd played a man. (All-girl schools have a lot to answer for when it comes to feeling like an attractive laydee, when you're typecast as a bloke). Still, I had a costume for this and everything! Yes, as it was set in the 80s, and I was supposed to be an academic, I got kitted out with a navy blazer and a natty Tie Rack scarf. Essentially, we all had to look shocked as a kerfuffle unfolded in the middle of our nice science lecture (being given by nice Robert Bathhurst, from Cold Feet and the like). I looked extra shocked as someone came clambering over the seats and used my left shoulder for leverage.
Despite all this, I still assumed I wouldn't actually be on screen at all. There are, however, two quite lingering shots featuring me, if it still exists somewhere on YouTube. For weeks afterwards, every time I saw my mates, they'd go, 'Ooh, watch out, here comes THE TV STAR'. It's a very good job I never did want to actually be on telly as a job.
However, even with these varied and exciting forays into disparate parts of the arts, today's offer of work was properly unexpected. A friend has put me forward for copywriting (yay!). For a website (ooh! I usually only do six-word taglines for four-sheet ads). The website is for a group of plastic surgeons. I know! The dilemma of course is: should I ask to be paid in Botox and fillers instead of cold hard cash? After all, it's not like I want to be an actress; no-one's paid me to look worried, flustered or frowny since my TV debut all those years ago. With the world going to hell in a handbasket, perhaps it's time to have the top half of my face frozen so that I can just look blandly happy all day.
Friday 1 June 2012
Children: Much Like Yoda, They are Small and Wise
I have undertaken my first ever stints of babysitting, for my godchildren (twin girls of seven and their older sister, who is 11). I know, everyone else did it when they were 16, but if you live miles away from anywhere in the countryside, then babysitting's not much of an option for you. Either the parents have to come and pick you up then drop you home, or your own parents have to do it. Which is a right old faff. Hence, the idea of looking after other people's children fills me with an undeserved degree of fear.
What if they fall over and break an arm? Or if they somehow manage to mix rat poison in with their post-tea time yogurt? Or, and this is the more likely outcome, I am so devoid of grown up gravitas that they refuse point blank to go to bed, and are still racing around when their parents arrive home at midnight, to find me tied to a chair with a ball of yarn in the corner (trying to teach them knitting, crochet or some other wholesome activity), covered in crayon and bits of drying papier mache? I don't know what it is about being around children that makes me want to revert to the 1950s. I think it's their obsession with computer games and electronic technology.
Mind you, the three I'm looking after are a charming mix of ancient and modern. Whilst they love playing an F1-style game that sees them zapping round a computer screen at alarming speed, they're also fans of curiously old skool films. Their most recent obsession is with the 70s Bond villain/anti-hero Jaws, so the first time I went, I was treated to a screening of Moonraker, in which the metal-toothed monster tried to kill Bond about seven times, then fell in love with a Heidi-style buxom wench with glasses and pigtails before jetting off into space and joining forces with 007 to thwart the planet-annexing ambitions of his former boss.
The girls were thrilled when I said I'd met Jaws at a party, but as it was probably about 15 years ago, all I could remember about him was that he was really, really tall and that he was a Geordie. Yes, he had the teeth in. No, he wasn't very menacing, actually, he seemed rather sweet. It's not the world's greatest anecdote, is it? Especially if you're seven.
So instead, they reverted to their default questions. There are three which they seem to ask me, no matter how short or long a time has elapsed between my visits. They are:
1/ Why do you dye your hair? Their mum doesn't dye her hair. They themselves have beautiful hair. So it is an ongoing mystery to them why I should choose to eschew my natural locks in favour of unnatural ones. I still haven't come up with a better reason than that I find my own hair colour 'boring'. They find this mystifying. I might have to invent a reason like, 'Having red hair gives me magic powers'. Which could backfire.
2/ The oldest god-daughter always asks me if I was 'chunky' when I was a child. I'm not sure where this comes from - if her mum has disloyally informed her of how utterly dreadful I was at sport when we were at school together, and, things being as they are, it is still the fat kids who are picked last for teams, so it's her assumption that I was more bag-of-potatoes than french fry. Either way, I never know quite what to say, and why she wants to know.
Yes, I did feel I was chunky when I was younger. Albeit with small arms and perfectly OK legs; I used to routinely refer to myself as 'an orange on cocktail sticks'. Heck, I felt like I was pretty chunky up until I paid Cheerful James to whittle me down a bit. But I didn't get bullied for it or anything. The only real issue I had was people who hadn't seen me for a while, ironically, asking me if I'd lost weight. Which gave me the impression that people always remembered me as fatter than I actually was, which wasn't great. I think next time, I'll just have to ask her why she wants to know.
3/ Are you married yet? The girls' parents aren't married, so this has become a pressing question, to be asked at regular intervals of everyone. The fact is, if a man so much as meets my eye on a crowded Tube, I tell anyone I know about it, so a secret, speedy marriage is never going to happen. I must impress this upon them, that they will be amongst the first to know of any impending nuptials that would involve me as an active participant. Perhaps they're just desperate to be bridesmaids. Perhaps my single status opposes an Ark-like world view that everyone should go around two by two. Or perhaps they're just worried that I'm messing with the natural order of things, and instead of me having to look after them if anything happens to their parents, they will be left to care for me because I Have No Husband.
Anyway, Question 3 reached a particular high point when I was babysitting on Valentine's Day. Yes, that's why people get spinsters to be godmothers - you know they'll have no plans come 14th February.
Seven year old godchild: Are you married yet?
Me [faux jaunty; it is, after all, hard to be properly jaunty when faced with the barrage of Everything's Great if You're in a Couple! messaging that goes with Valentine's Day]: No, not yet!
Seven year old godchild [sagely]: Why, doesn't anyone like you?
I laughed my arse off*, as her sister told her she couldn't say that, as it was rude. All the money and time that could be saved on self help books! All you really need is a seven year old girl to get straight to the heart of the matter.
* The following evening, however, I went out, got a bit drunk by accident and threw myself a miniature pity party. 'WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LIKE ME?' I snivelled, as I Weebled my way home from the tube. Red wine can be a very poor friend to a single lady on occasion. I had luckily recovered my equilibrium by the time I was going out for drinks with three friends and I was going to be the only one who wasn't in possession of a fiance. Equally luckily, a gaggle of additional single chums joined us. Crisis averted!
What if they fall over and break an arm? Or if they somehow manage to mix rat poison in with their post-tea time yogurt? Or, and this is the more likely outcome, I am so devoid of grown up gravitas that they refuse point blank to go to bed, and are still racing around when their parents arrive home at midnight, to find me tied to a chair with a ball of yarn in the corner (trying to teach them knitting, crochet or some other wholesome activity), covered in crayon and bits of drying papier mache? I don't know what it is about being around children that makes me want to revert to the 1950s. I think it's their obsession with computer games and electronic technology.
Mind you, the three I'm looking after are a charming mix of ancient and modern. Whilst they love playing an F1-style game that sees them zapping round a computer screen at alarming speed, they're also fans of curiously old skool films. Their most recent obsession is with the 70s Bond villain/anti-hero Jaws, so the first time I went, I was treated to a screening of Moonraker, in which the metal-toothed monster tried to kill Bond about seven times, then fell in love with a Heidi-style buxom wench with glasses and pigtails before jetting off into space and joining forces with 007 to thwart the planet-annexing ambitions of his former boss.
The girls were thrilled when I said I'd met Jaws at a party, but as it was probably about 15 years ago, all I could remember about him was that he was really, really tall and that he was a Geordie. Yes, he had the teeth in. No, he wasn't very menacing, actually, he seemed rather sweet. It's not the world's greatest anecdote, is it? Especially if you're seven.
So instead, they reverted to their default questions. There are three which they seem to ask me, no matter how short or long a time has elapsed between my visits. They are:
1/ Why do you dye your hair? Their mum doesn't dye her hair. They themselves have beautiful hair. So it is an ongoing mystery to them why I should choose to eschew my natural locks in favour of unnatural ones. I still haven't come up with a better reason than that I find my own hair colour 'boring'. They find this mystifying. I might have to invent a reason like, 'Having red hair gives me magic powers'. Which could backfire.
2/ The oldest god-daughter always asks me if I was 'chunky' when I was a child. I'm not sure where this comes from - if her mum has disloyally informed her of how utterly dreadful I was at sport when we were at school together, and, things being as they are, it is still the fat kids who are picked last for teams, so it's her assumption that I was more bag-of-potatoes than french fry. Either way, I never know quite what to say, and why she wants to know.
Yes, I did feel I was chunky when I was younger. Albeit with small arms and perfectly OK legs; I used to routinely refer to myself as 'an orange on cocktail sticks'. Heck, I felt like I was pretty chunky up until I paid Cheerful James to whittle me down a bit. But I didn't get bullied for it or anything. The only real issue I had was people who hadn't seen me for a while, ironically, asking me if I'd lost weight. Which gave me the impression that people always remembered me as fatter than I actually was, which wasn't great. I think next time, I'll just have to ask her why she wants to know.
3/ Are you married yet? The girls' parents aren't married, so this has become a pressing question, to be asked at regular intervals of everyone. The fact is, if a man so much as meets my eye on a crowded Tube, I tell anyone I know about it, so a secret, speedy marriage is never going to happen. I must impress this upon them, that they will be amongst the first to know of any impending nuptials that would involve me as an active participant. Perhaps they're just desperate to be bridesmaids. Perhaps my single status opposes an Ark-like world view that everyone should go around two by two. Or perhaps they're just worried that I'm messing with the natural order of things, and instead of me having to look after them if anything happens to their parents, they will be left to care for me because I Have No Husband.
Anyway, Question 3 reached a particular high point when I was babysitting on Valentine's Day. Yes, that's why people get spinsters to be godmothers - you know they'll have no plans come 14th February.
Seven year old godchild: Are you married yet?
Me [faux jaunty; it is, after all, hard to be properly jaunty when faced with the barrage of Everything's Great if You're in a Couple! messaging that goes with Valentine's Day]: No, not yet!
Seven year old godchild [sagely]: Why, doesn't anyone like you?
I laughed my arse off*, as her sister told her she couldn't say that, as it was rude. All the money and time that could be saved on self help books! All you really need is a seven year old girl to get straight to the heart of the matter.
* The following evening, however, I went out, got a bit drunk by accident and threw myself a miniature pity party. 'WHY DOESN'T ANYONE LIKE ME?' I snivelled, as I Weebled my way home from the tube. Red wine can be a very poor friend to a single lady on occasion. I had luckily recovered my equilibrium by the time I was going out for drinks with three friends and I was going to be the only one who wasn't in possession of a fiance. Equally luckily, a gaggle of additional single chums joined us. Crisis averted!
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