view from the cheap seats

In a pretty bad mood today I'm afraid but consider this an attempt to turn my annoyance into something more positive. I like the place I live for a number of reasons, one of which is, having spent four years living in student houses, things are a bit more chilled round here.

Now don't get me wrong, I do love my metal and the peeps next door have young kids so we're not exactly librarians round here. The thing is that people seem to have a nice attitude, a decent balance between tolerance and respect. The two guys who moved in behind us a few months back, however, do not.

These dickhead, rich kid students from London have a band, who are wank by the way, and use their cellar as a practice room. Now having spent a few years as a bassist in a band myself I’m not unsympathetic to the difficulties young musicians face. If you’re playing with a drum kit you can’t play quiet and practice rooms can be hard to find.

Turns out however, that not only have these guys been particularly arsey with the various local residents who have tried to reach some kind of amicable solution with them, myself included, but they have also ignored the city council and police who are now involved.

Apparently the council went out and found these guys a secure practice room where they could leave their gear, practice when they liked and all for free! Despite this these dicks have insisted on keeping things as they are and, living in back-to-back terraces like these, are continuing to piss people off.

It’s not just the band practice either, this morning for example I was rudely awoken when they, having returned from a night out I assume, decided to play a bit of guitar and scream and shout from 4:30am this morning onwards. They shut up for a little while, I then had to spend the second half of the day listening to yet another band practice.

At least they didn’t try to play any Rage Against The Machine this time, it’s even more painful than usual to listen to their ridiculously white and middle class singer try to pull off outraged political rap. I guess i should be thankful for small mercies huh?

Two separate arms of the council are currently in the process of, ‘trying to get something done,’ though for some reason they can’t work together so my neighbours and I have to go through two sets of complex and lengthy procedures.

Anyway, now I’ve got that off my chest I’ll get to the point. I happen to know that in other areas of Leeds this would not be a problem. If these guys were acting like this near where a very good friend of mine lives they would have long since received an unpleasant visit that would have put them off disturbing anyone ever again.

Now I simply cannot condone such vigilant justice but, given the abject failure of the authorities to deliver swift action, what else can be done? I am still convinced that the use of violence is always a failure, a failure to think of a better way, and that it will always ultimately produce more problems than it solves.

This train of thought brings me to an uncomfortable station that has been bothering me for a while now concerning Iraq. Pretty much all the terrible things the anti-war camp warned against have come hideously true but I can take no pleasure, or serve any real purpose, by saying I told you so.

The fact is that Saddam was a scumbag of the highest order and while the people of Iraq were certainly better off under him than they are currently, democracy or no, neither situation is an acceptable one. It is fair to say that perhaps we shouldn’t have forced three different nations into one to form Iraq in the first place. It’s also valid to point out that maybe we shouldn’t have given him lots of cash and arms to fight Iran.

While justified, these points do not address the question at hand though, namely once the guy was there, doing his thing, how do the rest of us stop him? There was much talk around the opening of our war against the people of Iraq that the US would use the conflict in the future as a precedent for pre-emptive action. I have always felt that the anti-war camp had a responsibility to set a precedent of its own by presenting the world with another option.

Zimbabwe is another example of a sadistic lunatic ruining the lives of a nation full of people but if you went around saying we should bomb the crap out of the place to save those people I’m not sure you’d find a lot of popular support.

What this comes down to is a problem that I cannot, currently, solve. What do you do when someone is acting in an intolerable way but refuses to engage in any kind of civilised method of resolution? I still insist that violence is not the answer, (much as I would love to head round next door and lamp those twats, ) I just don’t know what the answer actually is.

We of ‘the left’ have a grave problem here because, until we can be the pro-peace camp by offering an alternative, instead of the anti-war camp who do nothing but criticise, we are not going to mobilise sufficient popular support to make a difference.

So help me out here guys, what is the third way? How do we free peoples from tyranny in a legally and morally just way? How do we liberate nations without annihilating them? And how can I get these anti-social, pretentious, Kaiser-Chief-wannabe fucks to shut the hell up?

Difficult choice this week between a specific guy with a specific act of Swinery and a whole bunch of guys making Swinery their profession. I'll start with the latter as they've been spared the piggy crown, this time. Now George Best is clearly a well loved bloke, and a footballing hero to many. It's fair enough then that, should he finally pass away, people would like to know so as to be able to pay their respects etc.

What nobody needs however, especially not Mr. Best's family and friends, is a crush of bored looking newspeople outside a hospital constantly delivering live action footage of bored looking newspeople outside a hospital.

Like bored children on a long car journey you can almost hear their plaintive tones: "Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?" These vultures squawk and shuffle, each waiting for the final tired breath of a terribly ill man that will kickstart their race to be the first to break the news.

The obit clips are poised and ready to roll, having been put together years in advance, while the faces on the ground go over their solemn announcement for the thousandth time. Each experiments with platitudes and soundbites, desperate to deliver the definitive eulogy to the nation.

Besides the shamefully distasteful nature of the hospital-front scenes there is another dimension to the journalists' failure. With all due respect to Mr. Best and his family, aren't there more pressing and significant news stories to be covered? Is the world really so peaceful and dull that our grand news agencies can afford to waste their time on this sickeningly eager deathwatch?

Anyway, as I said these guys didn't make it this week, mainly because while their Swinery is indeed appalling, it's unfortunately not particularly uncommon. This week's Swine is an individual who has, over the last few days, undertaken to set a precedent that can only really be interpreted as another step down the dark and greasy spiral.

The Official Secrets Act is a funny thing. On the face of it, it seems entirely reasonable that the government have some power to keep certain information out of the public domain, especially if people's lives are in danger. The problem is of course that because the information is secret the rest of us have to wait decades to find out if the decision to withhold the information was valid.

In the meantime we have to just trust our government to use its powers wisely, and this is where the whole thing rather falls down. Once you get into a position where you can't trust your nation's leader or his government as far as you could comfortably throw them, the use of these powers becomes increasingly controversial.

This week our attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, threatened journalists with the Act, ie. with jail time, if they published the contents of a memo. This memo allegedly details a conversation between Bush and Blair wherein Bush suggests bombing the Al-Jazeera TV station. Various sources speaking about the unspeakable have suggested that, on the one hand, Bush was joking, while on the other, he wasn't but Blair talked him out of it.

The precedent mentioned above is the way in which Lord Goldsmith has chosen to employ the Official Secrets Act. My understanding is that, in the past, the Act has been used to jail whistleblowers while the media would usually receive injunctions to prevent further disclosure.

Such instances have included ex-spies publishing memoirs which include details of UK secret service operations for example. It seems strange then that a situation involving nothing but an embarrassing comment from a foreign leader should be dealt with so much more severely.

But wait, things get more sinister still. The fact is that the British attorney general is threatening British journalists with British law. None of the reports of the unreportable so far have suggested that Blair said anything wrong in the memo, in fact he seems to come off quite well, finally demonstrating his long claimed restraining influence over Bush.(1)

It's one thing for the senior legal official of a nation to use the law against the people for the benefit of that nation's government. It can even be argued that the government's interests are the people's and so the people are being kept in the dark for their own good.

What appears to have happened here is that the most senior official in British law has subverted those laws against the British people for the benefit of a foreign power. Now call me old fashioned but isn't that treason? I'm pretty sure that in days gone by this chubby wanker could have been dragged into the streets and hung for such a day’s work.

Of course Lord Goldsmith is not simply some insidious traitor to the nation, but a grovelling servant to our supreme and ultimate leader. It’s quite amusing to see Blair’s authority crumbling around him, mostly because it ‘s clear from his face that he just can’t comprehend what’s happening. He clicks his fingers and nothing happens. Having spent so long believing his own hype, however, he can no longer imagine why his every wish should not be granted.

If he wants an expert opinion, he doesn’t listen to the breadth of academic and professional opinion, his minions find him an expert who will support his ideas. This testimony is then ‘proof’ of the validity of Blair’s idea. In this way the government has rewritten the ‘truth’ of any situation to fit its own latest crusade.

The law is no different and when it came to deciding whether our war against the people of Iraq was legal or not the same old tactics were employed. Now I don’t know the exact job description of an attorney general, but my impression is that they are supposed to be the foremost legal expert of the land, providing the government with clear advice as to whether their needs are catered for by the law.

It would appear that this week’s Swine never even intended to play things this way. Instead his job is to legitimise anything Blair wants. The law, it seems, is just another pesky ‘truth’ to be twisted to fit the plan. So, Lord Goldsmith, you are this week’s Swine Of The Week for aiding and abetting state censorship. I’d shake your hand but the blood of countless Iraqi children is hell to shift.

PS. If I might be so bold as to offer some advice to world leaders, I think it might save you a lot of trouble in the long term. It’s a simple rule that I’ve always tried to live by: DON’T SAY SOMETHING BEHIND SOMEONE’S BACK IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE BALLS TO SAY IT TO THEIR FACE!

footnote

(1) Not that restraining however, seeing as how Al-Jazeera did get bombed by the US, at least twice, and one of their journalists is still in Guantanamo bay!

So I've had an idea simmering away at the back of my mind for a while now and, while it's neither fully mature or concise enough to be explored here today, I'd like to set out the gist as it's relevant to tomorrow's activity, or rather lack of activity.

I was thinking about the nature of religion and in particular the general characteristic of insistence on a single universal truth. The idea that followers are strictly directed in their behaviour and even thoughts as if the religion is not prepared to submit to thoughtful scrutiny or tolerate constructive criticism.

A sudden parallel sprang to mind in the form of the whip system in UK politics, ie. when parties tell their MPs how to vote on a particular issue. From this initial link I carried the comparison forward and found more and more similarities that, as mentioned, will be explored in greater detail in the future.

The short and the skinny of all this is that I began to suspect that religion, then politics, and now economics, are all basically different forms of the same thing. Now, as is almost tradition in this blog, I have to race off at a tangent.

Never underestimate the power of habit. The fact is that we undertake so many actions with such regularity that it is simply impossible for us to fully consciously consider them all. This is where habit takes over, getting ready in a morning, putting the kettle on, going to work etc. Now there's certainly nothing wrong with this, not least because such reliance on the subconscious saves us from potentially terminal tedium.

The danger of the habitual comes from the ease with which it can be established. If we don't make the effort to step back once in a while and actually look at what we blindly do everyday, the details and more importantly the consequences of these habits can remain unseen forever.

Now to return to our three good and aforementioned buddies another common denominator becomes apparent, namely the role of the habitual in each. The strength, indeed the lifeblood, of these three systems lies in their popular followings.

The only way religion, for example, has any impact of significance is by creating and maintaining sizeable congregations. Indeed, despite reports of decline in Church of England attendance, more people apparently go to church each weekend than go to watch professional football.

The question is, does each single parishioner turn up at church because they have thought carefully about the pros and cons and decided that it's the best way for them to spend their time? Is each pew filled the result of a weekly spiritual quest?

No. The fact is that church attendance and the observance of the ceremonies therein are the result of a habit installed from a very young age. This is not to say that there is no value or substance to these ceremonies, simply that, for the same reasons mentioned above, habit always becomes a significant factor.

It is an established fact, certainly in the UK and US, that a relatively small percentage of the electorate decide the outcome of any election. This is because the two main parties in power always take a significant block of votes, leaving a minority to tip the balance one way or the other. Focussing on the respective party faithfuls we can again consider their motivation for forming the essential foundation of these huge ideological movements.

Does the lifelong Labour/Tory voter deliver their cross to the same old box each time as the result of deep soul searching and the exploration of political ideas? No. Again, habit is the glue that holds this machine together. Is there anyone doesn't see where I'm going with this yet?

So economics, specifically global consumer capitalism. In terms of grass roots support this system kicks the crap out of religion and politics combined. We all worship at the alter of commerce and tick the box of trade every single day. Why?

Do you consider the impact of each penny you spend? Is each purchase a considered use of consumer power? Of course not. We all perpetuate this biggest of all systems without a second thought, even those of us who recognise and dislike it, because it gets under our radar riding on the back of habit.

How can we possible know how deeply affected we are by this habit of spending without taking a step back? Well tomorrow is about exactly this. Just for one day, a single 24 hour period out of our entire lives, can we break that habit?

No-one is asking you to change your mind about anything or to align yourself with any group or ideas, the suggestion is simply to make yourself think about something we all do, all day, every day, something that has a major impact on our world.

Is it really that crazy an idea? Humans have been not buying things for millennia, it can’t be that hard, and if it is, well then maybe that’s a sign a problem that needs to be addressed. So tomorrow, just for a single day, BUY NOTHING, if you can.

The latest incarnation of our society's self obsession came in the reaction to Amnesty International UK's recent report into attitudes towards rape in the UK. Apparently about one third of people here believe that if a woman is wearing revealing clothing and is drunk then she bears at least some of the responsibility if she gets raped.

I guess this also applies to when I was growing up and myself and my other long haired mates were getting attacked for how we looked and dressed. If only I'd known that I was asking for it, it all makes sense now. If I'd just cut my hair and dressed like everyone else I would have been safe. Thank fuck I live in a free and liberal society hey?

Apparently this survey partly explains why only 5%, (FIVE PERCENT) of rape cases in this country result in a conviction. So here in merry old England if you're a bloke accused of rape you've got a 95% chance of walking away! There is something very wrong with that.

These are shocking statistics, until you realise that you're only shocked because you've been assuming that most people hold the same 'reasonable' beliefs as you. Before we tackle the ethics of this question however, I'll just recount one idea this story inspired.

Listening to people describe 'the real world', as opposed to, 'an ideal world', I was struck by the rhetoric that was being banded about as it reminded me of something else. It is apparently unrealistic to expect men to control themselves, they and their urges are as they are, and so, if women want to be safe, they must hide their bodies for their own good.

Now it's funny, but one of the most iconic 'differences' cited between secular western culture and the, supposedly weird and alien, culture of Islam in the media is the hijab. Women's rights are so often said to be being curtailed in Muslim countries because their society demands that they cover themselves to be protected from rape. Suddenly it seems like an Islamic state would actually fit in quite nicely with a lot of people over here after all.

Anyway, are the scantily clad female binge drinkers 'asking for it'? Well I don't think so. The analogy that immediately occurred to me was to consider leaving my front door wide open. Does this increase my chances of being robbed? Yes. Does this mean that I deserve to be robbed? Have I forfeited my right to own property? Would the act of theft be less illegal, or less morally wrong? No.

Yes, it would be a stupid thing to do but the law is there to protect everyone, especially the stupid and the vulnerable. Society has a duty to protect and care for all it's members. The flip side of this of course, is that every individual has a duty to look after themselves so that more of society's resources are available to the truly needy.

Now it may be tempting to some to then say, ha! if you fail in this duty to society you deserve what you get. This is a perfect example of a major problem we seem to have, namely that we only seem to be able to think in terms of compulsion. Many people can see only one mechanism for social change, if you do the wrong thing we hit you with a stick, that'll learn ya.

Unfortunately this just does not work, if it did our society would be perfect by now, what with the sheer number of stick beatings we like to hand out. There is another way and I like to think of it like this:

You're in a small lifeboat with a lot of other people. The boat has sprung a leak and is sinking, everyone's panicking and desperately bailing out water. The problem is that no mater how much water they throw over the side there's always more to replace it. Finally someone stands up and says: 'For fucks sake! Will somebody please just plug the hole!'

There are a million parallels to this, arming the police is a good example. People are shooting at our police and it is unreasonable of us to expect them to put up with it, so what do we do? Arm the police? More water floods in as more criminals arm themselves. Keep the police safe? More water floods in as law and order breaks down in what become no-go areas. Do nothing? More water floods in as the police find their jobs more dangerous and recruiting more difficult.

Plug the gap, go to the root. Why are people shooting at each other? Why are people getting blind drunk every week? Why are people raping and robbing one another? These things are, in the vast majority, products of society, they reflect the state of our communities and the form of our economy. Of course tackling these problems is far more difficult than coming up with yet another short sighted initiative but there's a good reason for that: the rewards for success are so much greater.

There is a belief that people can't be changed, that notions such as, encouraging people to have interests other than drinking for example, are unrealistic. This may seem sensible but it is patently and utterly wrong. Why is it that so many people follow such self destructive recreational pursuits, drink, fast food, TV etc? Human nature? No! Human beings did not evolve to do such things, in fact the way our bodies respond so badly to them suggests quite the opposite.

The reason these pastimes have become so popular is because it is in the interests of certain people that they do. Decades of a perpetual barrage of multimedia advertising has shaped our society and defined our spare time. It is in fact entirely possible to sway populations into trends, even things they don't want that'll ultimately kill them, without any punishment or threat tactics, just ask McDonalds.

The fact is that private companies have far more influence over the nation than our elected government. People may dismiss this as conspiracy theory, saying that the companies don't make the laws or govern etc but this misses the point. They don't need to do any of that because the real power, the real driving force of our society is consumer capitalism which defines not only the jobs we work, but what we do when we're not at them.

So it is entirely possible for us to plug the leak, to tackle the social problems instead of their resultant symptoms. The techniques are there, they're just being used to deliver profits instead of happiness. If we consider freedom to be total independence to decide the course of our own behaviour then human beings are not and never can be free. There are forces all around us that shape our attitudes and behaviour, the nearest thing to freedom we can get is to take control of these forces.

That's it for today, I'm off to get dressed, carefully, after all I don't want to accidentally 'ask for' anything do I...

As a general rule of thumb, the more I learn about the United States of America the lower my opinion of that nation sinks. Whether it be historical, such as the Native American holocaust(1) or the conduct of early US citizens when fighting on both sides of their 'war of independence'; or contemporary, such as their current antics in Cuba and Iraq; they always seem to manage to plump new depths of indecency.

Not believing in absolute concepts like good and evil however, I have to maintain a serious effort to remember that there is another side to this self righteous, war-addicted land. looking about me right now at the CDs, DVDs and many, many books, I cannot help but recognise the various examples of greatness produced by this very same country.

HST, HP Lovecraft and Hendrix are three H-type examples that spring readily to mind. I love them all and they all came from across the pond. More recently I've started watching, 'The Daily Show,' on More4 and found myself not only amused but surprised.

There's been plenty of great US comedy I'll admit, but what got me about this spoof news show is the satire. I'll be honest, until I saw this show I wasn't sure the US really got what satire was, I thought maybe it was just some cultural concept utterly lost in translation, like irony for example.

It was nice to be pleasantly surprised in this way. It gave me the feeling that maybe there was some hope, that maybe this other US I keep hearing of, and occasionally enjoying the fruits of, was somehow more real and gathering some kind of momentum.

Another similarly pleasant surprise was the speech I caught on C-SPAN the other day. Democrat John Murtha was speaking about why he felt the US needed to 'redeploy' their troops, ie. get them home within six months. The former marine and defence advisor almost broke down, and deeply moved me, when recalling the regular visits he makes to his local veteran's hospital and the people he encountered there.

This guy had seen combat, seen Iraq and seen the aftermath and had clearly entered the beyond-outrage-disbelief within which much of the rest of the world has been sitting for the past few years. As clearly passionate as he was about the sicker and sicker true tales he recounted, his points were simple and delivered in a calm and constructive fashion.

Before I sing this guy's praises too much I should mention another thought the speech and subsequent press conference inspired: where the hell was all this two years ago? I can't really blame Bush for being Bush, he's an out and out fascist and his genocidal madness was to be expected. The Democrats, on the other hand, are supposed to be the counter balance that protects both US citizens and the rest of the world against him.

They have so far failed miserably in their task but, if they want to change that, they should take some pointers from Mr Murtha and grow some balls. In the US at the moment I'd guess it takes a pretty brave politician to go on national TV and say things like:

we have now become the targets, we are uniting Iraq against us and causing more problems than we're fixing,

the decisions killing our troops are being made by people in air conditioned offices who have never seen combat and have no concept of the reality they are sending our children into,

the Iraq conflict is not just like Vietnam, it's worse!

we don't give purple hearts to those maimed by 'friendly' fire,

we ignore those with mental wounds and scars,

first time round Bush Snr at least entertained by partisan opinion, even if he didn't always listen to all of it, this administration won't listen to anyone, even Republicans,

These are dangerous words in a country of rabid flag wavers but I was impressed and waited to hear the response. A group of Republicans had held a meeting to discuss the issues raised by Mr Murtha and gave their own press conference to announce their conclusions.

I gave them a chance, I swear I really did, but after the fourth or fifth sour faced guy had delivered yet more of the same old rhetoric I switched channels. None of the valid and pressing points made by Mr Murtha were directly addressed, just the same tired bullshit about, '..9/11 justifies everything..', '..not cutting and running..' and how '..America never surrenders..' etc yawn.

At this point I'll level with you all and admit that this post, up to this point, has really been intro and filler to try and disguise the fact that I only really have one small point to make here today. It was while forcing myself to seriously listen to and analyse the Republican response that I suddenly realised something I hadn't before.

They seemed to keep implying that them killing Iraqis was some how keeping the rest of the world safe from terrorism. The fact that all the terrorist attacks on western targets(2) they mentioned occurred after their illegal invasion of Iraq went unmentioned, but all of a sudden I got it, it finally made sense. So here it is, the rational for the utterly irrational, the explanation for the totally inexplicable and the reason for undeniably unreasonable:

The US is either unwilling or unable to stop terrorists killing their citizens. If however, they give the terrorists sufficient numbers of the right kind(3) of US citizens to kill on the other side of the world then maybe the rest of them can be safe at home.

The young men and women dying horribly and the many more being maimed are simply human sacrifices in the truest sense of ancient traditions. In order to placate the great dark beast from which you cower you hang out a few of your best young specimens and hope it'll be satisfied.

footnotes

(1) A lot of people throw this word about without really thinking about the weight it carries, I am not one of them. The US government is estimated to have slaughtered at least the same percentage of Native Americans during their pursuit of manifest destiny as the Nazis did European Jews in WWII.

(2) As pointed out in the current issue of Adbusters, (#62, Vol.13, No.6) these attacks were against those who supported the US. The UK but not France, Spain but not Germany, Australians in Bali. Of course Blair and the like insist that there is no connection with Iraq but then he's the kind of guy who'd insist he wasn't choking even if you stood on his neck.

(3) The 'right kind' of US citizen in this case is the disposable kind, ie. the poor. The disgraceful fiasco surrounding the recent hurricanes to hit the South East of the US demonstrated quite clearly that the poor in the US are not so much actively oppressed as completely ignored. Below a certain income you just don't exist in the US, and who's going to miss someone who never really existed in the first place?

Retro movie fun the other night as I sat down to watch Ghostbusters, the 1984 film I absolutely loved as a child. Bill Murray was still funny and I was relieved to find it's still a fun family film, though some details did appear slightly different to me in the light of experience.

For example, when Sigourney Weaver's character becomes possessed by an ancient demon the main change is that she became overwhelmingly horny. Now I know the whole sex = evil thing has been around much longer than twenty years but it did make me think about how sex was seen in the eighties.

In my earlier description of another great movie, Day Of The Dead, (see tag ) I mentioned a grim kind of 1980's apocalyptic vibe. The rise of AIDS during that period must surely have been a big part in establishing this feeling in the communal psyche. After the fun of the 60's and the decadence of the 70's, sex was suddenly scary and dangerous.

Now just to leap off at a tangent for a moment, Question Time this week included debate about the fast approaching reform to alcohol licensing laws in the UK, or '24-hour-binge-drinking-armageddon,' as the media have so responsibly portrayed it.

Reference was made to the difference between contemporary attitudes towards drink and those of decades past. The general upshot of this was to suggest that our current social culture is one of anti social decadence, that having a good time now fundamentally involves a loss of control and respect.

In one of those little golden moments that the human brain was built for, these two ideas found one another and a connection became apparent. The eighties were a time of fear and despair while the nineties were supposed to be about 'caring'. This change could be thought of as a backlash, so relieved at having survived the previous decade the 90's saw society push for the sensible and responsible.

If this is the case then another backlash explains the current trend rather neatly. After being boring for a bit the past fears are forgotten and the pendulum swings, away from social responsibility and caution and headlong into wild abandon.

Now obviously this is quite hideously simplistic and has three fairly obvious flaws. Firstly it's based on some pretty superficial observations and secondly there are clearly plenty of other factors that can shape social attitudes. For example it is fair to say that in the past, both economies and communities were local and inherently linked.

As our economies have become national and then international we have not developed our communities to keep up, (though this may well be impossible,) and so the concept of community has faded altogether. This nicely ties into the idea of a loss of respect and due attention to our fellow citizens as we become increasingly isolated from one another.

Finally there's the important, but often forgotten point, that society is never, ever homogenous. No matter what the mainstream trends and opinions there are always significant numbers of people involved in a variety of completely different lifestyles.

These caveats in place however, there is still much to be said for this backlash theory. A potential example is all over the news right now via the truly horrible shootings, one fatal, of two police officers in Bradford yesterday. According to BBCN24, the incident has reopened the debate as to whether UK police should be routinely armed.

I'm happy to say that I'm not too worried about this happening, mostly because the police themselves don't want it. A perhaps rare piece of common ground between myself and the UK police is the great pride taken in being one of very few countries in the world where the police do not carry guns. According to a police representative on BBCN24 today this is an integral feature of the British policing technique, ie. diplomacy and common sense over force and authoritarianism. A sentiment also reflected in our military's approach, cf. UK and US troops in Iraq for example.

The key problem with the backlash system is that the kneejerk responses we allow to continually shape our society are not based in fact or thought through. The facts, (according to BBCN24,) are that, over the past two decades, only around a dozen police have been shot dead in the UK. While each individual incident is clearly a tragedy and can not be downplayed, that's not a bad record compared to other countries whose police are packing.

Incidents involving replica firearms have gone up, increasing the overall 'gun crime' statistics, but crimes involving real guns have actually dropped over the last year by more than one fifth. This surely means that the chances of you actually getting shot in the UK have gone down. Unfortunately this makes very little difference to a potential backlash and there may well now be a subsequent public outcry to arm the police for their own protection despite the facts and the police's own opinions.

I can see no upside to this thrashing back and forth but within the swing of the pendulum there is hope to be found. A good friend of mine pointed out the other day that when things move in one direction what is left behind doesn't disappear. Instead it continues to be developed but outside the constraints of the mainstream.

Art is a great example of this. As music, film and literature become increasingly commercial and homogenised all that happens is underground scenes spring up to fill the gaps. Sometimes these scenes swell to become the establishment of the future, sometimes they don't, but if things are always changing then there's always hope that things can get better.

Another very good friend of mine, (he knows who is, respect for this one mate! ) shared a brilliant idea he'd had with me recently. I've often bitched on here about how TV is incredibly powerful as a medium but incredibly crap in content. Now my friend knows a guy trying to start a pirate radio station and he wondered if, once the analogue signal is switched off in a few years time, how easy it would be to set up a pirate TV station.

My mind instantly raced ahead with the sheer possibilities. Only the old school analogue TVs would be able to pick it up of course so, if successful, it might be possible to start a kind of counter technological revolution, keep using your old stuff, don't buy new just because you're told to. Also the transmission range would be a major limiting factor which would probably lead to lots of small, local stations, again taking us in the exact opposite direction to the global media corps.

As with so many things in life however, being able to play the system to your own advantage doesn't mean the system is a good one. One thing that occurs to me about this continual backlash scenario is how utterly self absorbed we must be as a society to perpetuate it.

Is it really so ludicrous to suggest that a society should be driven by wider, more long term and humanitarian concerns? Instead we appear to have allowed our blinkered obsession with our own pop culture to constantly define us, leading us to lurch back and forth between various flavours of lip service while not actually making any real progress.

Some might say this is just the way society works and maybe they're right. I've long had an interest in what I call unconscious systems, ie. mechanisms of change driven directly by circumstance as opposed to any conscious planning, natural selection for example, and this could be a good example of one.

The thing is that once we become aware of the system, it is no longer unconscious. Once we recognise the true consequences of our own unwitting, and even well intentioned, actions, we instantly acquire responsibility for them. I believe that the backlash process is not inevitable and that, with a little thought, we could take more direct control of our society. Of course I can't claim to be breaking any radically new ground here so the real question is why haven't we already done this?

Unfortunately for us this situation of being blinded by immediate shadows and ignoring long term substance is hugely beneficial for a small but powerful minority. At the end of the day though, we currently ignorant and sheep-like creatures are in the vast majority, this is our world and it's just waiting for us to step up and get serious.

Slightly different this time in that our latest Swine conduct their swinery all year round but were actually caught out for it this week. Before we get into such current affairs however, let’s start with a little background into why this week’s Swine, namely Coca Cola(1), piss me off so much.

For a start I’m not a fan of big corporations generally, and Coke are one of the biggest. Now such views are often dismissed as radically closed minded, the loony left refusing to embrace the future of economics etc. I feel, however, that I can justify my distaste with more than tired rhetoric about some new kind of class war.

I just don’t think it is in society’s interests to have any non-democratic organisations with such power and influence. Anyway, surely these gargantuan businesses are the true ‘anti-capitalists’ as their dominance in their fields(2) removes that sacred tenet of capitalism: competition.

Are they really that powerful? Maybe we’re just getting a little carried away in demonising these suits. Well the thing is that the Coke logo is now the single most commonly recognised written symbol in the history of humanity, Also, a terrifying number of western toddlers now come to learn such brands even before their own names.

So yes, they’re pretty powerful and all that power is put to a single end: profit. But hey now, come on, what’s wrong with making a profit if you do so by providing quality goods and services? Well one thing that has made it easier for me to boycott Coke, and its various subsidiaries, is that their products are incredibly unhealthy and, once the cycle of sugar addiction is broken, not even particularly pleasant.

Another point concerns Coke’s role in the developing world. Coke sell something else besides fizzy shit and no I’m not talking about their abortive attempt to flog bottled and poisoned tap water. ‘The Real Thing’ is a lifestyle indicator, they are selling the brand which is inextricably linked to a particular lifestyle, namely the cliched US lifestyle.

Thinking of another aspect of Coke’s role in the world, have you ever seen a Coke factory? I haven’t but I’ve heard of one, in a developing country, that takes so much water from the local area to make our sugary luxury, that the indigenous peoples don’t have enough to drink. Is there anyone out there still willing to defend Coke?

The main beef with Coke here today, however, is the first point, namely their application of their great influence. I was unlucky enough to see this in action first hand during my time at Leeds Uni which has Coke vending machines throughout the campus.

Now the student’s union at Leeds had, when I arrived, a small independent supermarket which sold, among a million and one other things, individual cans of Coke. The problem arose when Coke wanted to up the prices of cans and bottle sin their machines and discovered that our supermarket was actually already undercutting them.

The short and the skinny of all this is that Coke demanded that the union remove the competition to its machines. The student’s union, remember what those two words literally mean, had a vote on whether or not to keep our supermarket. The vote to keep the supermarket open came in at over 90%.

I’ve never fully understood exactly what happened next, but the supermarket closed and the prices in the vending machines went up. Apparently Coke had threatened to remove all their machines, and whatever else they do for the uni, and so the wishes of the student body were simply overridden.

This episode is not unlike the situation that has seen Coke in the news this week. Raquel Chavez(3) owns a small shop in Mexico City where she sells a selection of soft drinks. Her claims that Coca Cola tried to bully her into removing rival products from her shelves resulted in a federal investigation and a major complaint from Pepsi.

These two actions have now resulted in Coke being found guilty as charged and fined just under £40 million. Mrs Chavez’s story is a great one and she certainly appears to be quite an amazing woman. While the fines are mere pocket change to Coke the bad publicity could be far more costly and, hopefully, their entry into the League Of Swine will makes things that little bit worse.

The upside of this week’s events are the proof that ‘little people’ can make a difference and that these guys aren’t as untouchable as they appear. So as the premier examples of why global consumer capitalism is a vicious and ultimately unworkable economic theory, Coca Cola are this week’s Swine Of The Week, bastards.

footnotes

(1) check out Coke’s side of the story at their website: www.cocacola.com

(2) Coke has about 70% of the world’s soft drinks market.

(3) Rabid US right wingers must really hate that surname now!

Just a brief note to mention a thought I'd had regarding last week's Swine. The ruck was over the idea of intelligent design, ie. that life is too complex to have occurred by accident, thereby proving the existence of a creator.

It occurred to me that this argument is flawed by obvious ignorance concerning the sheer scale of the universe. Simply put, no matter how improbable life and its intricacies may be, there's been so much stuff floating about for so long that it's bound to happen. Odds of a million to one might sound overwhelming for example, but if you're allowed a billion attempts they suddenly sound pretty good.

Now if you're an advocate of intelligent design I can imagine your feathers may be ruffled by now so let me reassure you. This is not about science being bigger than your god, it's about your god being bigger than you.

If you're a pantheist, ie. you believe your god is everywhere and in all things, then this is the contradiction you face: the scale of your god and his creation mean that life could have happened by accident and unfortunately this means that life itself is not proof of a creator.

Your very belief in your god undermines your evidence, and if your faith's so strong why are you looking for evidence anyway? So it turns out not only does proof deny faith but faith denies proof as well. What a crazy game you religious types play!

Bit of a backlog here after a couple of weeks of cinematic overload so you'll have to forgive me for being slightly less than up-to-the-minute and topical. So Blair recently suffered his first ever defeat in the Commons after eight years of having his every wish granted, no questions asked.

There was a time when it might have been tempting to take some pleasure in this, but things just seem so knackered now that it's hard to raise a smile. Yes Blair's on his way out but it's beginning to occur to people that what comes next won't necessarily be any better.

As always when laws are debated and passed, or not, in our Houses of Parliament, there are many, many delicate and complex facets of the law and the issues to be considered. Also true to form, the whole thing was presented to the public as being about one single, controversial issue.

Now we could talk about the pros and cons of locking people up without charge for 90 days, or even the effect on parliament and society of MPs now voting purely to punish Blair but there's one particular element of this whole thing that I want to focus on.

Maybe he was trying to spread the responsibility, maybe he was trying to appeal to the instincts of the centre right; whatever the reason, Blair tried to justify the 90 day measure by insisting that it was the police's idea. To reinforce this we then had the dubious spectacle of high ranking regional police officers personally lobbying their local MPs to support the bill.

My point here today is not only to highlight just how tenuous Blair's argument was but, more significantly, the fact that, even though the bill fell, many people accepted the argument as being valid. Let's work this through step by step:

at first glance:

If the police say they need 90 days we should give them that power, after all they're the people on the ground, they know the situation better than anyone and are in the best position to make such decisions. Also, everyone, whatever their profession, is entitled to lobby their MP in the hope of swaying their vote, this is a democracy after all.

Initially this seems both logical and compelling, it also has the advantage that anyone disagreeing can be accused both of thinking they know better than the police and of denying individual police officers their democratic rights.

Now obviously this didn't work, the bill fell and Blair was defeated, but those who voted against him were inspired to do so for a variety of reasons. No-one took this argument head on which is a shame because, from the first moment I heard it, it seemed patently flawed and ripe for destruction..

look again:

When drafting legislation it is obviously vital to listen to those people on the ground and make the most of their valuable experience, the point here, however, is that we have systems in place to do this. Of course the police should be consulted on such an issue but if theirs is to be the definitive and overriding opinion then what exactly is the point of the Home Office? If things are as simple as presented by Blair then why don't we just let the police write the laws?

Of course police officers have the right to lobby their own MPs, but if their professional opinions are to have political consequences the only way to do this fairly is to a have a structured system of lobbying so as to ensure that all the police's views are accurately represented. The alternative is that the views of police officers with more free time, strongly held political beliefs or the most articulate will have a disproportionate impact.

Basically for those who dare to run the risk of falling into one of the PM's 'branding traps', ie. if you disagree with me you are a racist, or a communist, or a terrorist sympathiser etc etc. there are holes in this argument big enough to drive a truck through.

What concerns me is how few people seemed to take that second look and how common these situations are. The Bush administration have raised this practice to an art form and the Democrats have given in it to so many times that they don't even know who they are anymore.

Have we actually reached a point now where we value convenience over truth and justice? Are we now so intellectually lazy that we'll accept any argument as long as it's simple and comes with some kind of ethical cushion, rather than have to actually think about something?

This certainly would explain a lot but the picture painted, accurate as it may be, is not a pretty one. Once more however, look again, isn't there some hope at the back there? Surely identifying the problem is half way to solving it.

If we could somehow spread the practice of critical analysis, of just thinking about things, these guys would lose all their power and the bar for politicians would be raised so high as to change the whole game. No, no, no come the croaking voices of pessimism, people are just too lazy and self interested.

Well I say look again, that argument just suggests the method, ie. make it in people's interests to use their brains. How to do this? Who knows, so far, but then what's the alternative, wait for these losers to get us all killed? And hell, with all the thought recently given to the sacrifices ordinary people made during WWI & WWII, since when did something being hard become a reason not to try?

Something occurred to me today, one of those things that seems so obvious once you've thought it that you can't imagine having not considered it before. My father was telling me about some of the people working in his office and their lack of computer skills.

One woman, the example he gave, has spent a great deal of time going through a huge database deleting a particular field from each entry. For some reason it didn't occur to her that she could just delete the whole field itself in one stroke thereby saving everyone a great deal of time.

That reason, or so I speculated, was that a lot of people stick relentlessly to what they know and seem to lack any kind of desire to learn more than the bare but necessary minimum. This trend is something I've written about here before but it's also something I've encountered throughout my life.

I can count on one hand the people I know with whom I can have a decent abstract conversation and feel not only that their interested, but challenged as well, and two of those are my parents, which probably explains a lot. There are plenty of friendly people who will listen but, when it comes to it, they don't have much to say and really they're just being nice.

Now I've speculated in the past about the reasons for this, popular culture, education systems etc, but recently came across another explanation in George Orwell's, 'Down And Out In Paris And London'. Orwell points out, from his experiences, that it is almost impossible for people living in poverty, particularly if hungry, to think about anything but getting through the next 24 hours.

I'd say that critical and abstract thinking don't produce anything physically useful directly and are skills that need to be learnt and practiced. If just surviving takes everything you have and no-one's encouraging you to use these skills you're clearly not going to.

So the poverty stricken masses that make up the majority of mankind aren't swamping us with world beating ideas and heart rending art. This is clearly not because, as quietly accepted opinion would have it, they are somehow lesser peoples not up to the job bless 'em, but because they are too busy feeding their children.

Fair enough I say, but then what about the rest of us? I know I bitch about being skint but I have no conception of true poverty and neither, I would guess, would most people reading this. So what's our excuse? Surely the standard of living we continually celebrate having achieved, with convenience and comfort in abundance, should be the ideal breeding ground for abstract thought.

Well in my experience, yes; but in popular experience, apparently not. Being free from the basic demands of survival, things just occur to me, all the time. One of the reasons I have trouble sleeping is my inability to stop thinking about things and the reason I write, the reason I have always written, is to get stuff out of my head so I don't have to think about it.

In fact, come to think of it, I remember being told at school, 'you think too much.' Looking around me today, the idea that such a thing were possible scares the shit out of me more then it ever has. This being the case then it perhaps easy to understand why I struggle so with the concept of someone having no interest in abstract thought or any kind of philosophy.

Now I'm sure my good friends will have plenty of suggestions for the reasons why this could be, but let me return to the original point, namely thought that occurred. Discussing this very situation with my father I pictured my own mind, relentlessly buzzing away with some idea, and wondered:

If you're not thinking abstract thoughts, what are you thinking?

Thought I'd do this now to capture the moment, and because I'm at that stage in a long session where the sun's back up and you suddenly feel like you could stay awake forever. It's 9:01am and I've just got back from the Leeds International Film Festival's (1) Night Of The Dead V.

Sitting here smoking my last pre rolled joint and drinking my complementary Sagres beer, I can hear the PC's fan whirring away, an occasional car, and nothing else. It's a kind of Zen feeling summed up best good old Chris Morris, the kind of euphoria experienced after a long bout of vomiting.

It's been a great night, in all possible senses of the word. The vibe has always been good down at the Hyde Park Picture House on these occasions, but as the Fest has gone from strength to strength this year saw the place sold out.

Now that's a lot of people, (288 I believe,) in very close proximity to one another being deprived of sleep and exposed to about eight hours of disturbing sounds and images, needless to say it was a bit of a zoo. There was every form of weirdness from live head shaving on stage to a rabid feminist outburst from the stalls, while beer bottles were thrown and caught, for the most part, and greasy, life giving chicken was distributed in a regimental fashion.

There were of course some films as well and these were the stops along the way from midnight to here:

"The French Doors" (2004)
Dir Steve Milder, (New Zealand)

Another fantastic horror short! A guy renovating an old and remote house fits what I'd call some French Windows actually and goes to bed. Gets up the next day and while fantastic Kiwi sunshine streams gloriously into most rooms, only pitch gloom can be see through the new doors.

Gradually the guy ventures out into this inexplicable midnight world, circling the house until, wait, a horrific hunched figure is at one of the windows inside. He races back round to the house, back into the wonderful light, but there's still somebody into the house. A great jump and then the true horror of the piece as our fixer-upper is dragged out and away into the darkness.

I find I always at least respect art that dares to defy logic. In this case it's done brilliantly, the audience is given no explanation for anything which is fine because no-one's asking. The situation is so compelling that it can hold your entire attention. This piece cleverly exploits one of the strengths of the short format.

"Loft" (2005)
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, (Japan)

I had high hopes for this one, hoping for something in the vein of Ringu or Ju-On, (the Japanese originals to those horrific peroxide, US remakes, Ring and The Grudge.) For maybe the first half or so things were building nicely and hopes were still high. Not too long later, however, I found myself just waiting for it to end, never a good sign.

The plot starts with a successful female writer moving to an old remote country house to write her new novel. She's alone and vulnerable and weird things start happening. A large building out back is used by a local university and a mysterious academic is holed up in there with a newly discovered mummy, the body of a young woman preserved for a millennia in mud at a local beauty spot.

Things started to fall apart after this, it got wildly complex and never managed to build any tension so that the few scares there were didn't really pay off. Disappointed but piss was taken and fun had by all.

"Something Red" (2004)
Dir. Scott Milder, (USA)

I'm really starting to like short films and I even enjoyed this typically clichéd US effort. Sulky little girl in little red dress in the back of a family car with infant sibling. Mother and step dad argue in the front as they drive long haul, moving to a new house.

They stop for gas and the stressed out step dad wanders off for a cigarette while mother changes junior in the skankiest of bathrooms and little girl waits in the car. Strangely, various Red Riding Hood style clues are graffitied about the place but then step dad finds a dead body covered in gashes and maggots.

He freaks out but can’t find a working phone to call the police and while he argues with mother they hear the car pulling away. Turns out that body wasn’t so dead after all and the hacked up giant tools down the interstate, smoking with the radio up. He talks to sulky little girl, “I spy something red,” he says, and little girl is sulky no more.

Whatever else kids need, positive personal contact and affection are the most vital. The message is not original and is rammed home clumsily, but it’s still fun to watch.

“Boy Eats Girl” (2005)
Dir. Stephen Bradley, (Ireland)
www.boyeatsgirl.com

Wasn’t expecting too much from what sounded like it was going to be an Irish Scream style horror, with pretty and/or funny teens. I was pleasantly surprised then, when a fairly solid plot, some good laughs and a decent bit of gore followed.

Teenage hero accidentally kills himself while drunk, his mother brings him back to life with voodoo but botches the job making him a creature of the undead. After an initial weakness he manages to control his newfound compulsive taste for human flesh but it’s too late. His victim is now a rabid, 28 Days Later style zombie infecting a wide array of extras at will.

Hero actually ends up being turned back into a living human, a turn so apparently stupid that it’s original because no-one else would do it; and no-one seems too bothered about the massive loss of life once the day is saved. It’s a piece of cheese, but cheese done well.

“Jona Tomberry” (2005)
Dir. Rosto AD, (Netherlands)
www.jonatomberry.com

Holy crap! I’ve never seen anything quite like this surreal animated short. The animation style is arresting, stark and intricate the whole thing is an absolute joy to watch, which is a good job, because there si no clue as to what the hell is actually going on. I must admit that if I could get hold of this I would be prepared to watch it through a few times and try to work out what it’s all about.

“Zombie Honeymoon” (2005)
Dir. David Gebroe, (USA)
www.zombiehoneymoon.com

Mr Gebroe was at the Hyde Park Picture house last night to introduce his film and shave some heads. He told us that, flesh eating aside, his film is a true story, the names of the characters haven’t even been changed.

At first glance Zombie Honeymoon seemed to share a bit with Boy Eats Girl. A young man, the director’s late brother-in-law as I understand it, is attacked by a random zombie on the beach and dies having ingested the dead guy’s black spew. He then struggles against his newfound compulsive taste for human flesh with the help of his new bride, the director’s sister.

Watching this film, however, you quickly realise that it is apart from the rest of the films on show, not least because it is, according to Mr Gebroe, a tribute to the life of his brother-in-law who died in a surfing accident just a few years before.

It seemed to me that this was really just a drama about a young and enthusiastic marriage being shattered by the husbands heroine addiction, only instead of heroine Mr Gebroe used human flesh. This was a new take on the zombie-as-metaphor format started by Romero and revived excellently recently of course with Shaun Of The Dead.

A tragic and moving story told in such a way that at first seems somehow irreverent but ultimately is a respectable zombie movie and therefore, apparently, a fitting and welcomed tribute.

“12 Hot Women”

Don’t know much about this as it was a ‘secret’ short. Basically a spoof movie trailer along the lines of the ‘girls with guns’ videos as seen in Samuel L Jackson’s apartment in Jackie Brown. It was a good parody and reasonably amusing but not nearly as funny as the outrage of some older woman near the back, ‘well that was fucking intelligent wasn’t it!’ came the unfortunately naive outburst. Luckily by this point aggressive verbal outburst and general weirdness had become the norm and the whole thing was lost among laughter.

“Hellavator” (2004)
Dir. Hiroki Yamaguchi, (Japan)

A quick word to Geordie Adam who hosted the fifth Night Of The Dead allnighter, damn you man for putting this on last! I guess you wanted to keep people there, to end on a high etc, but my powers of concentration were starting to wane by the time this eighth film began, which is ironic as it was the one most deserving of my attention.

A whole fascist state dwells in some great building, each floor a different section of society, with room sized elevators complete with hostesses to transport people between floors. A huge explosion and fire has cost many lives and the police officer investigating interviews a witness.

The film focuses around the events that take place inside one of the elevators before during and after the ‘accident’. Each person in the elevator has a secret but tensions are driven higher when the elevator is used to transport two criminals to their final punishment.

The mad bomber who only talks backwards and the psycho cannibal rapist get loose, obviously, and carnage ensues. The passengers of the elevator do manage to overcome their criminally insane counterparts but this is just the start of their problems as they being to turn on one another.

Why do we never see the baby in the mother’s pram? Is the old guy with specs and briefcase full of cash a government scientist or a terrorist bomber? Just what happened to the psychic, resistance fighter, cigarette smoking schoolgirl to give her such terrible flashbacks? Is the disaffected youth slouching in the corner really a government secret agent? And if he is and he’s not after the schoolgirl, then what does he really want?

Brilliant, brilliant stuff delivered in a fantastic package of disturbing claustrophobia and nerve jangling violence. All questions are answered in the course of time and our eventually homicidal schoolgirl pays the ultimate price.

Her mind is taken from her then her body taken all the way up to the mythical floor zero where there is nothing but a ladder up into darkness. She clambers up until, you guessed it, emerging from a manhole in a post apocalyptic Tokyo. Fan-fucking-tastic!

Today’s the last day of the Fest and these were the last films I’ll be seeing. The festival is great thing and the allnighter a brilliant tradition. I’m going to wind down a bit then get some sleep but in the meantime; I wonder what’ll be on next year...

footnote

(1) www.leedsfilm.com

Just gearing up for a long night of pretty extreme cinema at the Leeds International Film Festival.(1) The evening kicks off around 6pm with some Korean ultra-violence then there's a few hours to kill before the 'Night Of The Dead V' kicks off at midnight: four horror shorts, four horror features and a very sore arse. Anyway before I start getting ready for all that I'll just mention a couple of films I've seen over the last few days:

"The Great Yokai War" (2004)
Dir. Takashi Miike , (Japan)

So before I get into this particular film Takashi's reputation demands some explanation for those who've never heard of him. He is, to my knowledge, a complete one off, and that's probably no bad thing because while his work is undeniably brilliant and valuable, the world is just not strong enough for more than one Takashi Miike.

Simply put, there are just no limits whatsoever to a Takashi Miike film, either in where the plot will go or to how nasty things get onscreen. 'Ichi The Killer', for example, is easily the most insanely and disturbingly violent film I've ever seen and, having been lucky enough to see it at the cinema at an earlier Leeds Film Fest I know that several scenes in the theatrical release did not make it to the DVD. These films are deeper than the simple voyeurism most descriptions seem to imply however. Instead they present surreal experiences so extreme as to become almost completely abstract.

In the light of such an intro it may seem strange then that 'The Great Yokai War' is billed as Takashi's first "family friendly" film. Having seen it I understand this description but feel it is misleading as it only refers to half the film. The plot is indeed a mainstream, family matinee style affair wherein a young boy coming to terms with his parents recent divorce undertakes a fantastical journey to save the world and grows up some where along the way.

The 'Yokai' are mystical personifications of, well, just about everything, river sprites, snow people, walls, everything. The great war between them is the crises our young hero must face and the film opens with mankind receiving a desperate warning about the forthcoming danger. The thing is that although the nature of the onscreen action was somewhat restricted by this storyline it was still Takeshi Miike.

The aforementioned warning, for example, comes in the form of a farmer entering his cattle sheds on a stormy night to investigate a strange noise. He discovers that one of his cows has given birth to a weirdly deformed calf with a human head that screams terribly of impending doom before it short, pain filled life ends.

See what I mean?

I'm not really selling this so far am I? Well there's another aspect of the film to consider and that's the fact that it is a complete romp. Almost randomly funny then shocking then just plain weird, it delivers a genuine Takashi Miike experience, albeit in a relatively unusual format.

As mentioned above, the guy makes a lot of films and it's fair to say that they're not all masterpieces. This one just about is though and I can't recommend his other successes highly enough because the fact is you just haven't fully experienced cinema until you've seen a Takashi Miike film.

"Survival Style 5+" (2004)
Dir. Sekiguchi Gen, (Japan)

I have to keep reminding myself that the Japanese films I'm seeing at the moment are all fringe, genre stuff, ie. in the minority of Japanese culture. If not I can't help but ask, 'what the hell is wrong with Japanese people?' This is not, for one moment, a negative statement, it's just that these films, as much I'm loving every second of them, can only be the products of deranged minds.

Here Sekiguchi Gen has taken five stories, each one strangely unique enough to be a film of its own probably, and swirled them together into what the Film Fest brochure accurately describes as: "..an extreme surrealist maelstrom.."

My favourite story was that of Ishigaki whose wife just won't stay dead, and then she does; but the mild mannered father living life as a simple bird because the hypnotist was murdered half way through the show who eventually learns to fly was pretty good too. Vinnie Jones pops up, adding to the disorientation, (no pun intended,) as an aggressively philosophical hitman as the stories overlap and twist round one another.

Another fantastic cinematic experience which only when seen can be believed but never fully understood and I laughed my arse off.

footnote

(1) www.leedsfilm.com

In keeping with HST's original practice I've been a little slack about Swine Of The Week recently, at least that's my excuse. Rest assured that the lack of Swine naming over the past couple of weeks has unfortunately not been the result of a lack of Swinery, but rather of me being distracted by other things. Anyway, let's get things back on track shall we?

For those of you not familiar with this week's Swine let me tell you a little about Pat Robertson. He's the US TV evangelist who recently announced that the US should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and also declared that Florida would be struck by a hurricane as divine retribution for tolerating homosexuality. The fact that Florida is hit by several storms a year while San Francisco isn't apparently went unnoticed by Mr Robertson.

This week one of his foaming tirades focussed on the town of Dover in Pennsylvania which recently voted against teaching 'Intelligent Design' in schools. Intelligent Design is an alternative theory to Darwinian evolution generally espoused by right wing christian psychopaths.(1)

Mr Robertson's response was to declare that the town had, 'voted god out of their lives,' and that should a disaster strike the town not only should the inhabitants now try praying to Charles Darwin, but that it would serve them right. I think to most people outside the US this kind of thing appears laughable, until we remember that loons like this are currently running the most dangerous nation in the world.

Other people demonstrating similar attitudes to Mr Robertson this week were the suicide bombers who attacked a hotel in Jordan this week. Ignoring a crowd of westerners, the bombers specifically targeted a Jordanian wedding.

Apparently the perpetrators feel that a bride wearing white, wedding guests drinking alcohol and men and women dancing together are all betrayals of their faith. My immediate response upon hearing this was to shout at my TV: "If that's a betrayal of your faith I suggest you don't do it, who are you to decide what's a betrayal of someone else's faith?"

Of course the slaughter of innocent people is far beyond what I would consider average Swinery, and that's why I've chosen Mr Robertson as this week's Swine. His behaviour, which is in equal parts vicious and pathetic, is a perfect example of the cross denominational religious arrogance that is causing so many people so much pain. You are this week's Swine Of The Week, Mr Robertson, and if I believed in hell I'd put good money on you spending a great deal of time there pretty soon.

footnote

(1) I'm not using the word psychopath flippantly here. My understanding of the word is that it refers to someone who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality and so is, I feel, entirely appropriate here.

So last night I finished my last shift at the Leeds International Film Festival. Of course this doesn't mean that the Festival itself is over, (though how they'll manage without me I can't imagine ) nor that I'm done talking about it. The Festival runs until Sunday with the horror all-nighter on Saturday the crowning glory, for me anyway. Eight or nine solid hours of horror films in the great atmosphere of the Hyde Park Picture House, kick ass!

Just caught one film when I was working last night which I'll talk about in a moment. Before that I think it's definitely worth mentioning the people I've been working with recently. The Leeds International Film Festival has gone from strength to strength over the last few years and is a fantastic event for both cinema and the city. This only happens thanks to the hard work of a lot of very dedicated people.

From volunteers like myself to the super-stressed out organisers, this thing only happens because there are enough people passionate enough about cinema in Leeds to make it happen. I've met lots of new people over the last week or so varying wildly in age, profession, nationality and even sanity, (you know who you are! ) These people were great to a man and I feel privileged to have met and worked with them.

"Mrs Henderson Presents" (2005)
Dir. Stephen Frears (UK)

One of the more mainstream titles at the festival this is soon to be out on general release and I have to admit that although it's probably not something I would have paid to see I enjoyed it more than I expected. Dame Judy Dench plays Mrs Henderson, a rich, eccentric widow in 1930's London who buys an old theatre and employs Bob Hoskins as the manager.

After some initial success the novelty wears off and business goes downhill until Mrs Henderson has the idea of staging naked performances. It's a great example of what us Brits do best, namely poking fun at ourselves, and there's plenty of wonderfully polite outrage and embarrassment.

The film darkens as WWII begins and Mrs Henderson's theatre soon becomes the only one to remain doggedly open through the blitz. On paper this seems like pure sentimentality and a bit of a cash in on the cliché of plucky British determination but somehow, on screen, it works as a thoroughly genuine and moving story.

This is, to a large part, thanks to the quite outstanding performances from Dench, who shows why she is one of our very greatest assets, and Hoskins who holds his own and never looks out of place alongside her. Being mainstream, clichéd and even predictable doesn't stop this from being an enjoyable film to watch. Oh and here's a quick tip, if you're going to see it at the cinema but are unsure which screen it's on, just look for the queue of old people.

Braved the rain last night to visit the Hyde Park Picture House, my favourite of the official venues for the Leeds International Film Festival, and I'm glad I did, here's why:

"Ferpect Crime" (2004)
Dir. Alex De La Iglesia, (Spain)

When I saw 'Lie Still' at the HPPH the other day we were told that Mr De La Iglesia would be attending last night's second screening of his film to introduce it. Unfortunately, we were told by the festival Development Manager, although LIFF had bought him a plane ticket the Spanish director had somehow got on the wrong plane at the airport.

Not only had he not made it to the UK, and subsequently the screening, but nobody knew where he had ended up. As it turns out however, his bizarrely humorous and accidental absence was an entirely fitting intro to this great film.

Set almost entirely in a huge Spanish department store, 'Ferpect Crime' follows the misadventures of the head of lady's wear, Rafael. Actually born in the store, Rafael is the greatest salesman of all time and has his pick of the shop girls/models he employs. Everything is going according to his life plan until he is cheated out of promotion and accidentally kills his new boss.

The single, token ugly shop girl witnesses the crime and, after initially helping Rafael dispose of the body, proceeds to blackmail him. Very dark and very funny, the leading man makes the film with his wonderfully expressive face, reminding me of Basil Faulty in places. His whole life has become exactly what he never wanted and he begins to plot an incredibly complex escape plan which, eventually delivered, provides a great and unexpected climax.

Like the Spanish dialogue, the film is fast paced and a joy to experience from the very start with lashings of brutal comedy violence to keep the whole from slipping into abject silliness. Overall a pretty straight forward romp that, on paper, I never thought I would enjoy as much as I did.

I laughed my arse off at this welcome change from the other valuable but heavier works I've seen at the fest so far. Well worth seeing.

I'm currently reading, 'Misreadings' by Umberto Eco, a selected collection of the Italian professor’s early columns written for a literary magazine in the 60’s. Being Eco, and being from the 60’s, it’s pretty weird and heavy but, ultimately, rewarding.

The connecting theme among the collection is pastiche, and includes such gems as ‘Granita’, a kind of reverse Lolita with a young man obsessed with an elderly woman; and ‘Regretfully, We Are Returning Your...’, a series of critical letters to publishers from their test readers considering such ‘new titles’ as ‘The Bible’ and Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.

The piece I read last night that inspired this post was entitled, ‘The End Is At Hand’. Seemingly set in ancient Athens, the author describes at length the degeneration in society he sees all around him. A tirade against the flaws of democracy and mass-culture, he decries the dumbing down of intellectual pursuits, the diluting of artistic integrity in the name of commercial success.

The intended contrast of the original column is now leant an extra dimension by reading it in retrospect. Eco’s point seems to have been to present the concerns of the time were as being to some extent timeless by setting those very same concerns in what we now consider to be a golden era of intellectual advancement. Of course the fact that the concerns of the 60’s he demonstrates are still shining with apparently new and imminent danger today adds strength to the idea.

Now the concern over falling standards, the creeping fear that society is oh so slowly sliding to the dogs, is an attitude apparent in most areas of society today. If it’s not the religious right screaming about the decline of the traditional family and gay bishops, it’s the loony left moaning about the erosion of civil liberties and impending environmental apocalypse

Many of my own comments on this very blog would fall into this category and it is for this reason that I feel it is worth investigating whether such outrage is honest and justified or an ongoing illusion. It seems to me that there are three possibilities:

1. We are indeed in the grip of a mortal struggle for our very ways of life. If we don’t rise to the challenge of the ‘new dumb’ everything we value will be lost. The only reason this ‘reaction’ has in fact been a constant for so long is that the balance has tipped back and forth. In this case our outrage and pessimism is indeed spontaneous and justified and has always been so.

2. There is no actual fight because the things we fear for can never be ultimately destroyed. Experience and knowledge may be lost but it is only a matter of time before it is eventually rediscovered. Our concern about ailing societies is in fact just a natural human aversion to progressive change. Despite being mistaken however, such passion can be used to try to reduce counterproductive acts. We cannot lose the things we hold important forever but caring about them means we might not have to lose them at all.

3. Standards are not falling, things are just changing and everything has been more or les the same, in different forms, forever. The effort put into resisting change is criminal because while it can achieve absolutely nothing it detracts from more important matters. In this case our concerns are inappropriate and wasteful of our talents. If we spent more time just trying to get along instead of fighting everything the world would be a better place.

So which is it? Are we right to worry about the growing media monopolies and their strangle hold on art and information for example? Or should we just relax and wait for the pendulum to swing? There are no answers to these questions are it is just impossible for us to make definitive comparisons between our own lives and a history we cannot directly reach.

Frustrating huh, so what do we do in the mean time? Maybe it’s just a matter of faith, you pick the one that feels right then spend the rest of your days defending and idolising it in the vain hope that you’ll eventually be proved right.

In order to convince everyone that your choice is the right one you need to sell it, make it seem important. This could probably be achieved with some kind of ceremony, probably involving silly hats. Personally I think that’s a survival tactic that smacks of imaginary friends and genocide, or religion if you want to call a spade a spade. I prefer to get at least a little use from my degree and consider the following:

There is a general consensus among astrophysicists that the universe is heading for one of three possible futures, as shown below on this plot of size of the universe, S, against age of the universe, t, (this is a sketch only, it is not to any kind of scale,):

The first possibility is a ‘closed universe’, as shown by curve 1. In this scenario the universe expands initially but eventually reaches a maximum size and collapses back down. Secondly there is a ‘flat universe’, shown by curve 2, where the universe expands to a maximum beyond which point it remains constant size indefinitely. Finally there is the ‘open universe’ model, as shown by curve 3, in which the universe simply expands forever.

OK, so here comes the relevance. The main problem we face in ascertaining which path our universe is to follow comes from our own position on the graph, indicated by the red circle. The fact is that it is simply to early for us to tell and waiting around until the differences start to show is not an option, bearing in mind that the distance along the t axis from zero to the red circle is the age of the universe so far.

I’m not claiming that the puzzle over social concerns outlined above will eventually resolve itself, but rather suggesting that it may help to understand how to progress when faced with such an impossible situation. Have astrophysicists split in three rival factions, each bitterly insisting that they will ultimately be proven right on some far off and momentous day? Well maybe a little, but not really and certainly not to the stage of silly hats and imaginary friends.

As technology and technique improve both the models themselves and the measurements of the current universe will become slightly more accurate and perhaps nod one way or the other. All the astrophysicist can do is entertain all three possibilities, look carefully at any new evidence and, most importantly, keep an open mind.

I’d say that not feeling concern over the preservation of some element of society would be unnatural and that such passion can be a great tool. There’s nothing wrong with trying to defend something and nothing wrong with us standing our ground, we just have to remember we might be wrong and never let pride get in the way of what’s right.

With these caveats in place I can of course now return to churning out diatribes against mainstream society and culture, safe in the knowledge that I have covered my back should I be proven wrong. Now the thing with the mass media is this, they’re bastards, and the reason they’re bastards is...

Not working at the Leeds International Film Festival(1) for a couple of days now so yesterday I took the opportunity to get nice and stoned and go see some films for free. The festival has various international links and some of these take the form of competitions.

This year the LIFF is host to four film competitions, the Fanomenon part of the fest in particular is hosting a 'Silver Méliés' comp as it is now part of the European Federation for Fantastic Film Festivals. This is a way to give up and coming genre film makers an opportunity to screen their works across the continent and even earn international recognition.

The feature I saw yesterday was an entry in this comp while the short shown beforehand was also entered in one of the others. Here're some thoughts on the two:

"Avow" (2004)
Dir. Tony O'Reilly (UK)

A very well made and edgy short that portrays a murderer's taunting confession to the police. Using simple text and uncomfortably abrupt and scratchy shots and sound, Avow builds an increasingly disturbing atmosphere that leaves the audience thankful to be simple voyeurs rather than the intended copper who could surely not help but be intimidated.

This was a perfect example of the genre, sharing a great strength with "Thinning the Herd" (see yesterday). Neither of these films could have worked as feature length pieces because the atmosphere they create is too powerful to be effectively sustained. Instead they are designed to deliver a couple of hours worth of experience in a single blow and, being cut back to the bone, they leave a much deeper and starker impression than longer and more complex films.

There is a great deal of potential in the genre of short film that we miss out on due to a basic lack of viewing opportunity. This is the same for short stories, only ever seen in collections either by multiple new authors or lone successful ones cashing in on their earlier works. HP Lovecraft, for example, the master of the short in my opinion, was barely published during his lifetime and then only in the odd magazine. Such traditional habit and attitude towards format means we all miss out.

"Lie Still" (2005)
Sean Hogan (UK)
www.liestill.com

This second screening was attended by writer and director Sean Hogan himself who spoke briefly before it began. It's an entirely independent British horror film with a nice concept and some good scares. John breaks up with his girlfriend and moves into a room in a large old house, creepiness ensues. His journey of discovery through the quirks and history of the house runs in parallel with the crumbling of his own mind.

An abject lack of strong alternative British cinema, ('28 Days Later' being perhaps the only recent exception,) has long since been a saddening fact of life with Richard bloody Curtis defining British film the world over. This guy shows great promise for the future and proves that there's so much more to the UK than Hugh Grant being charmingly befuddled.

I have to admit that I was not overly impressed with Mr Hogan's writing, but I'd love to see this guy direct something written by somebody else. The dialogue felt unnatural and so got in the way a bit, and the story of mental decline would have been better served if the story had started with a definite shape which could then have crumbled accordingly. As it was a sense of dizzy confusion was almost constant throughout, detracting from the feel of increasing detachment from reality.

Thankfully Mr Hogan is a much better director than he is a writer and the film was a nerve jangling joy to watch. While the camerawork was great, it was the lighting and sound that delivered an atmosphere that did, I admit, get under my skin.

At one point I quite literally jumped out of my seat, but this was not a cheap start. There's the kind of jump associated with a loud sound, your common 'Scream' style jump, where your body starts and thinks, 'ooh, what was that?'. These are easy to provoke and eventually just annoying for the viewer.

What I'm talking about is when something is so sudden and overwhelmingly terrifying appears that every muscle in your body clenches as if braced for impact. Your eyes bulge and all the air in your lungs is ejected in a single sharp grunt, before the instant passes and you are left gasping, and in my case usually laughing a little too.

What impressed me most of all was the success of this film in sidestepping such temptations to drop into cheese and cliché. In fact, if anything, I thought there was a slight air of experimentation about the piece, packed full as it was with lots of great little devices, as if Mr Hogan was taking the opportunity to get all his ideas seen at once on the off chance that he doesn't get to make another big film. It's in all our interests that he and those like him make lots more films.

Fuck CGI monsters and screaming teens, let Hollywood milk that cow dry. It's time for those who fund British cinema to stop being scared of making clever, subtle and interesting films. The true art of scaring people is getting under their skin and making them scare themselves, putting them back in touch with real, human, primal fear.

Definitely unsettling and definitely worth seeing, 'Lie Still' is a film that needs supporting. I honestly think that, given the opportunity to build on this, Mr Hogan and the many other struggling genre film makers in the UK could produce some truly great and utterly terrifying work, finally putting the UK back where it belongs, at the centre of the horror map.

OK, so yesterday I only had time to talk about the first film I got to see at the Leeds International Film Festival,(1) this was because I had to leave to watch another film before going to actually work on the festival, ie. tear some tickets then watch three more films.

I've started a list to keep track of what I've seen this year and for those of you with motive and opportunity to volunteer for next year's festival I'd remind you that I haven't paid a penny to see any of these films. How good is that? Pretty good when you're as skint as me.

Anyway here’s a run down on the rest of the festival I’ve seen so far, including spoilers so watch out if you want to see any of these films fresh:

“Hidden” (2005)
Dir. Michael Haneke, (France)

This guy has quite a reputation and quite a following but I was new to his work. Parisian couple Daniel Auteil and Juliette Binoche start to receive strange video tapes and childlike drawings. The tapes initially just show the outside of their home but later include the husband’s childhood home and a mysterious apartment.

The details of the dark past the stalker seems to be hinting at are not, ultimately, important as I was left with the distinct impression that the ‘plot’ of this piece was in fact a red herring. Throughout the film the audience is constantly frustrated as every single character and scene has the feel of some crucial facet being withheld, or Hidden if you like.

From pretty much every angle you are presented with seemingly ordinary things that only hint at darker currents beneath. The husband suspects he knows more about the stalker than he is prepared to admit even to himself, the wife may be having an affair, their son knows something and is angry etc etc.

Definitely a conceptual piece it is more about sharing a feeling of frustrated paranoia than telling a story, and is, in its way, very clever. The pay off is that there is no pay off, no resolution and no closure. Nothing is ever revealed and the teasing hints continue up to the credits.

This breaks our everyday illusion of comfort and safety by rubbing our faces in the fact that we cannot know the ‘real truth’ about most things in life, if anything. There are no happy or sad endings to life, there are not even endings, just more and more questions, forever.

While, in reflection, I did appreciate the apparent point of this piece as a valid and even an interesting one, I did not enjoy the experience of watching the film. 117 minutes is a long time to be frustrated for, especially when the same point could have probably have been adequately made with a short film.

While I noted that many of the audience enjoyed the film I was starting to fear it might actually bore me to death by the end of it and, had it not been subtitled, I would almost certainly have fallen asleep. The line between genius and pretension is a fine and subjective one which, to my mind, was unwittingly crossed here.

“Thinning the Herd” (2004)
Dir. Rie Rasmussen (France)

The Fanomenon section of the festival is dedicated to ‘genre’ films, ie. horror, fantasy etc, and showings quite often include a random short at the start, a practice I particularly like. I was unsure about this one at first but gave it a chance and was duly rewarded.

A young woman, v pale, v blonde, dressed in white, comes home to her dingy apartment and sets a familiar routine of knocking the TV on and starting to prepare food etc. Despite the obvious normality of the situation there is something eerie about the whole thing, not least because her smart appearance seems out of place in the abject squalor of her home.

The knackered old TV mumbles in the background about the slaying of an old blind woman and a young disabled boy. The tensions builds with some nice, Sam Raimi-esque camera work, ie. sweeping about from unexpected angles, using odd perspectives to lend weirdness to such every day action. A couple of false jumps later and BANG! a classically dressed burglar appears from nowhere, holding her by the throat.

His persistent monologue in her ear is utterly reasonable and almost likeable. He is apologetic for having to scare her and asks why she has come home an hour early; had she been on time he would have been long gone; if she just stays quiet and doesn’t look at him he’ll leave etc.

Once he has tied her to a chair with the phone cord however, his demeanour changes instantly. If only you had tried to fight or run you might have had a chance, he explains, but now I’m going to cut off your face and wear it while I eviscerate you.

She is hysterical so that her pleas for mercy and explanation are almost unintelligible as he strips and starts to ponce about with a razor. He explains that he preys only on the weakest and most innocent, the old blind woman, the young boy in a wheelchair, because he is the worst of monsters. Eventually you’re bound to meet someone more powerful than you, she manages.

Teasing her with gleeful sadism he explains that she is wrong because he is special, he was born to perform this purpose and, striking a christ-like pose with his buffed and naked form, he begins to chant in latin. Basically just your average self obsessed nutter.

Up to this point everything seemed pretty conventional and I was even a little disappointed in the clichéd pretension of the killer, but as he chants himself into a frenzy and abrupt change falls over the woman. Suddenly utterly relaxed and leering she lolls in her chair and the audience remembers the air of weirdness that she had at the start, forgotten in light of the sudden violence.

She shhhs him, which stops him in his tracks as he suddenly finds that, somehow, he is no longer in control of the situation. She begins to ramble strangely, talking about humans as monkeys and giveing the distinct impression that she is something else. Eventually she says that god created man in his own image and that, at first, man was perfect. There was no illness or deformity, she says, until I began to pollute the bloodlines.

Suddenly we notice that her hair, made entirely fly-away by the assault, is curled into two distinct points from each temple. With utter malevolence she explains, you’ve been killing my babies and with a terrible animal sound she out of the chair, out of shot, and upon him. The TV is still on and shows wolves tearing apart some poor grazing beast while, in the background shown by occasional silhouette, a similar bloody scene is occurring.

In just a few short minutes I felt this piece illustrated the absurdity of the concepts of good and evil and did it beautifully. The super evil serial killer is unwittingly doing god’s work by undoing the devil’s while Satan herself avenges the death of innocents and prevents any more as part of her own diabolical plan. Is evolution and natural selection good or bad?

A brilliantly simple piece of work that communicates a complex idea in a very small space of time, Michael Haneke take note.

“Hotel” (2004)
Dir. Jessica Hausner, (Austria/Germany)

I had high hopes for this film as it seemed to have the potential to be genuinely terrifying. Irene starts work as a receptionist at a hotel after the previous employee disappeared. The tension is built using the apparent hidden knowledge of the rest of the staff and the creepy locations of the hotel itself and the dense forest that surrounds it.

There are hints to local supernatural forces, a legend of an old witch who lived out in the woods, a strange sound from the darkness that, initially, sounds like a woman’s scream but, with repetition seems to be just a strange bird call. Irene’s feelings of isolation upon being the new girl are an easy way for the audience to empathise with her and provide a way into her fear.

Unfortunately, having built up a nice level of tension, the film seems to fall flat and ceases to develop, simple maintaining the same atmosphere to the credits. As with ‘Hidden’, there is no real resolution or final explanation and the audience is left frustrated.

The very end sees Irene forced to venture into a particularly remote part the woods alone, at night. She disappears into the pitch gloom among the trees and then nothing, nothing, then that horrible sound that suddenly sounds much more like a terrible screaming than it did before. Overall ‘Hotel’ was ok but I couldn’t help but feel that it had missed an opportunity to be better.

“The Death of Mr Lazarescu” (2005)
Dir. Cristi Puiu, (Romania)

I just caught the last half hour of this one but was reliably informed that what I saw was representative of the whole 150 minutes. This work of fiction is made uncomfortably real by the documentary style as we follow Mr Lazarescu in almost real time. He is drunk who, experiencing stomach pains, calls an ambulance.

The entire film then shows him wheeled from one hospital to another as the medical staff argue over paperwork and diagnoses. By the end he is no longer fully conscious and having long since soiled himself, is eventually stripped, cleaned and shaved for surgery, his last remnants of dignity taken from him.

Upsetting to watch this, reminded me of Kafka with its nihilistic vibe and the maddening persistence of blind bureaucracy. A heart rending portrayal of a system so complex that those within it have long since lost sight of its very reason for being. Powerful stuff.

“Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream” (2005)
Dir. Stuart Samuels, (Canada)

A great documentary about the rise and fall of the midnight movie screening that looks, in particular, at, ‘El Topo’, ‘Night Of The Living Dead’, ‘The Harder They Come’, ‘Pink Flamingos’, ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Eraserhead’.

While the title is Margins to Mainstream most of these films apparently starting and failed on mainstream releases and only became successful through word of mouth when they were shown at midnight in smaller cinemas. By the end of the piece, however, the title explains itself as the phenomena of the controversial midnight movie eventually dies as the mainstream cashes in on it, not to mention the birth of home video.

What I really liked about this film was that while ostensibly it simply talks about other films, what is really explored is the relationship between cinema and society. The midnight showings were, at their peak, a fantastic demonstration of the strengths of the counterculture, ie. when all the squares were in bed the hippies and the weirdoes came out to play.

They didn’t need multimillion dollar advertising budgets but relied solely on word of mouth and still managed to sell out cinemas for years. Much more interesting than it appeared on paper I thoroughly enjoyed watching this, except for the bit about ‘Eraserhead’ which I hate, but that’s just me.

“A Cock and Bull Story” (2005)
Dir. Michael Winterbottom

A very clever film that hides its substantial artistic depth behind some great comedy. I cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard as Steve Coogan delivers a magnificent performance. The supporting cast were also great though this isn’t that surprising when, seemingly, every single person in the entire film has been in a recent British film or sitcom.

The film is billed as an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s novel, ‘Tristram Shandy’ but it quickly becomes clear that this is not to be the case. It may help to have read the book but I’d never heard of it and I got the vibe here pretty swiftly.

The novel itself is billed as an autobiography but never actually gets past the title character’s birth as an infinite number of relevant but distracting background stories come perpetually crop up. Instead of simply trying to translate this to the big screen, Winterbottom has very cleverly delivered a cinematic equivalent. The film tries to tell the story of the of the novel, but fails as a constant array of other things come up.

Messing with the audience’s perceptions of what’s real and what isn’t, the comedic stylings of Coogan make the whole thing a joy, the scene where they drop hot chestnuts down his trousers in particular made my sides hurt. Don’t be put off by the literary basis or abstract depth of this film, it fires on all cylinders at once and is well worth seeing.

So there you have it, my experience of the 19th Leeds International Film Festival so far, I’m going to watch something else in a couple of hours so there’ll be plenty more to come. With all the vapid shite that fills the ever-more dominant multiplexes today events like this play a vital role in reminding us just how great cinema can be. If you live in or near Leeds check the website(1) and come along.

footnote

(1) www.leedsfilm.com

Thursday night saw the grand gala opening of the 19th Leeds International Film Festival(1) now one of the biggest film fests in the UK, second only to London and Edinburgh. It was a hectic but very successful evening with an extra screening of the opening film, Terry Gilliam's 'Brothers Grimm', put on because so many people wanted to see it.

Though I unavoidably missed the film itself I did get to see Terry Gilliam himself who turned up after the first screening and gave a great Q&A session with the audience. He was a thoroughly nice guy and more than willing to spend time talking to fans.

Last night was a welcome change of pace for those of us behind the scenes as the festival settled down and got underway. I got to see both the films I worked last night for free, which is nice, and found them both particularly thought provoking though in different ways. Here’s a bit about the first one:

"Adam's Apples" (2004)
Dir. Anders Thomas Jensen, Denmark

So from the very start of this film, having read a little about it beforehand, I was concerned. The basic set up is this, Ivan is a vicar who runs a kind of halfway house. His two lodgers are a recovering alcoholic rapist and a habitual armed robber. A new guest arrives in the monstrous form of Adam, a great slab of a neo-nazi, a classic arian stormtrooper.

When Adam arrives and asks what is required of him in his new home Ivan explains that all he must do is set himself a goal to achieve. Adam flippantly says that his goal will be to bake a cake and is a little confused when Ivan, apparently unaware that Adam is taking the piss, says that Adam’s idea is a good one.

He continues his mockery by suggesting that he could use the apples from the tree outside to make a nice apple pie. Ivan promptly agrees and makes Adam responsible for the health of the apple tree until the fruit ripens. This film is the story of that apple pie.

Now my initial concern stemmed from the potential for clichéd sentimentality that this set up seemed to present, the thug with a heart of gold, a heartwarming journey into the light of salvation etc. Pretty early on however, I realised that ‘Adam’s Apples’ was deviating beautifully from this tired line.

The relationship between Ivan and Adam was a joy to watch throughout as it shifted and changed, each of the two representing, to me, aspects of society in a fantastic piece of social commentary. Adam was huge and used to using his fists; dogmatic and intolerant of nuance or weakness and convinced of his own superiority. He was also strong willed and fearless, however.

Ivan on the other hand, was a skinny priest; insistently calm and reasonable and convinced of the good in everyone. He was also optimistic to the point of delusion, and retreated into words and ideas to avoid the real world. The fact the both characters have strengths and weaknesses immediately gives them twice the depth of most ‘good guy - bad guy’ pairings in mainstream cinema.

The atmosphere created is a strange one in which a kind of pervasive comfortable calm that is not quite punctuated by occasional horrific violence. Darkly humorous throughout, when the film does turn violent the action is somehow dampened, giving it a senseless feeling.

When the characters lash out there is none of the honour and climax of traditional movie violence, but rather a slightly ill feeling of pointless destruction not a million miles away from that experienced when playing witness to real life violence.

SKIP THE NEXT 5 PARAGRAPHS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS

In the end Adam is ‘rehabilitated’ but not in the brainwashing style we tend to associate with the phrase. The oh so gradual transformation of the man is presented excellently by the actor playing Adam and is absorbing to watch as it is far from a straightforward process.

When Adam beats Ivan to a bloody pulp Ivan ignores it and continues to treat the increasingly confused Adam as normal. As Adam learns more about Ivan’s past and weaknesses he instinctively sees an opportunity to win what he sees as the conflict between them. The very fact that he is so determined to break Ivan and prove to him that some people cannot be saved betrays Adam’s own fear that Ivan might actually succeed.

As it turns out Adam does break Ivan, smashes his faith and emerges victorious, almost killing Ivan in the process. This is the real turning point for Adam as the half way house begins to collapse with Ivan now utterly apathetic and waiting to die. Adam finds that the hatred and sense of being oppressed that had fuelled him so mightily before has now left him and that his victory is an empty one, having achieved nothing.

In the end Ivan recovers and Adam joins him at the half way house as his assistant. There is great scene that pops up throughout the film shows the two in Ivan’s car. Ivan puts a Take That song on which Adam promptly turns off again in disgust, Ivan switches it back on etc. The development of their relationship is reflected in their changing roles in this recurrent scene and the final version is beautifully telling.

Ivan puts the damn song on and sings along while Adam frowns but doesn’t complain. When the song reaches the chorus all eyes are on Adam’s lips which can’t help but twitch into life. It is clear that he still doesn’t like the song, ie. he hasn’t been changed into someone else, it’s just that he finds himself able to tolerate other peoples tastes.

OK, CARRY ON

A fantastic piece of cinema, well worth seeing as each of its many facets, fear, humour, pain, social commentary etc are all done brilliantly. ‘Adam’s Apples’ is the first Danish film I’ve seen and I found the cultural vibe particularly interesting, I’ll be looking out for more of that. If you live in or near Leeds get yourself on the website(1) and get yourself to the cinema. There’re over 200 films on at the festival this year from blockbusters to activist documentaries and everything in between.

footnote

(1) www.leedsfilm.com

In almost every aspect of life in the Western world there is an apparent desire for simplicity and convenience, we want things easy and we want them fast. Initially there may have been some suggestion that such rapid and limited interaction with all things was a necessary evil in our terribly busy lives, but it has in fact become a lifestyle in itself.

Not only is the speedy and straightforward promoted, but a more ponderous approach is actively discouraged. The urge to seek a deeper understanding of a situation is dismissed as impractical academia or trivial geekery, and the stigma of being boring is altogether too much to bare for some.

A response, (or maybe a contributing factor,) to this was the Political Correctness movement which drew a very simple line. Anything on one side of the line was good, anything on the other bad, words, opinions, actions, anything. What a relief to those in a rush, simple.

The downside to this polarisation is that it is utterly unrealistic. Inevitably people will find either something they don't like on the good side or something they sympathise with on the bad. These people then face the stigma of being 'politically incorrect'.

The fear of being seen as dwelling outside the accepted moral realms of society can be a very successful deterrent. Consequently people tend to either dilute their views just in case they go too far, or not bother to take the risk.

Now I was under the impression that Political Correctness was a left wing, woolly liberal type idea. An image attached to it in my mind is of a load of middle class white people deeply afraid of accidentally offending someone with different ethnicity and becoming the bigot they love to tell everyone they hate.

Funnily enough though the above consideration of PC reveals some crossover with a study in the psychology of right wing political thinking. The Guardian ran a short piece some time ago mentioning a US government study (1) that described conservatism as, "a set of neuroses rooted in," among other things, "dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

An inherent dislike of nuance seems to describe us aptly enough, so does this mean that our society has become increasingly right wing? Someone in the US might be tempted to wonder if everything wrong with the world is the fault of the Democrats for just being so shit. I don't believe, however, that this trend is driven by politics.

A useful question to ask at this point would be, who benefits from the establishment of such a situation? Whoever it is, though not necessarily the architect of the scene, probably perpetuates it for their own ends. Looking round I would say one candidate is obvious, capitalist consumerism.

How do the multinationals flogging us everything and anything benefit from a public dislike of nuance? Ok, example, advertising. How difficult would advertising become if, suddenly one morning, the tendency of most people became to critically analyse the information they received?

If people really listen to, and then really think about, most adverts they find they're abject nonsense. Not content with using everyday words to say absolutely nothing, advertisers now even invent new words to mean even less. An industry like this could not survive a more aware and engaging society and so it is in its interests to resist the emergence of one.

Whatever the cause of our current self inflicted handicap, the terrible toll it takes is painfully demonstrated in situations like that currently between Iran and the West. Why aren't we asking ourselves what on earth is happening that would drive ordinary people to call for another country's destruction? It's far easier for us to take the easy, and racist by the way, option of just declaring them an evil, or at least inherently angry people.

When the President of Iran makes some silly remarks it's all the excuse we need to worship the line we have drawn and glory it bestows upon us. We get so excited by denouncing him as on the wrong side simply because it reminds us that we're on the right side, meanwhile nothing changes.

Our attention spans and thirst for knowledge are waning as we wallow in what we are told is comfort. We have lost our understanding of the value of hardship and difficulty. Now I'm not suggesting that there is any great value to society in the hardship suffered by bomb victims; rather that there is indeed value in dealing with the hardship of facing difficult questions.

There are no easy answers or quick solutions and pretending that there are is only making things worse. The alternative is to face possibly some of the most difficult mental and emotional challenges that exist but it's worth remembering that the rewards for success will be correspondingly great.

footnote

(1) The paper is called: "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition"
by John T Jost (Stanford),
Jack Glaser (Berkley),
Arie W Kruglanski (Maryland)
and Frank J Sulloway (Berkley).
It appeared in the Psychological Bulletin, 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, pgs 339-375
I downloaded the whole thing as a .pdf for free and it reads easier than I expected.