Most of the time, I'm happy to be English.
Some toff once said that to be born English, was to win first prize in the lottery of life. Not sure I'd go that far. I'd prefer a more interesting climate and a more flamboyant national temperament. Christ, show me what second prize was and, if it's a speed boat or a fortnight in Cancun, I might even be tempted to swap. I don't mind being Slovakian in exchange for a villa in Tuscany, just as long as I'm allowed to wax the mono-brow.
But generally, I think being born in this country isn't a bad hand to be dealt when you sit in on the game of Life. Our days of empire-building might be behind us, but we enjoy a standard of living, a freedom and a general level of sanity which is frankly lacking in other parts of the globe. And one mention of the Battle of Britain has me choked faster than a goldfish trying to eat a Big Mac.
However, every four years, I find myself wishing I'd been born on top of a slurry heap in the hoariest slums of Rio de Janeiro. I find myself wishing we had a touch of fascism in our glorious history or that a bit of Italian blood flowed in these slovenly veins.
Because every four years, we absolutely suck. Whilst thousands of people per annum might literally bust a gut trying to get here, none of them wants to support our football team. And today, we went out of the World Cup yet again. At the hands of the old enemy.
I know we're not supposed to say that. Not because it's factually incorrect (I think blowing each other's heads off at 100 paces pretty much encapsulates the idea of hostile behaviour) but because it doesn't fit into a spirit of unity, of forward-thinking, of forgetting the past. But that's silly. Because I'm not talking about the two World Wars. I'm talking about the last God knows how many World Cups and European Cups. I'm talking about 1990. And about every other bastard time we've come across the Germans for any match that mattered.
Because there was just no way England was ever going to beat Germany, not today. And I blame Winston Churchill. Because while the law of karma states that what goes around, comes around, the brave and morally correct deeds perpetrated by our countrymen in the past have somehow been lost in translation. Somewhere in the karma machine, the actions of our forebears to protect the world from Nazism have got mangled - sausages have come out as mince. And we've been cursed with, not a crap football team, but a terminally ill-fated one.
Germany, on the other hand, still to this day carries a terrible burden. The knowledge that their ancestors were behind some pretty rum deeds in the past (and probably, in the vast majority of cases, unwillingly) must be an awful bucket to hoist. I totally condemn the idea of holding the Germany of today to ransom over the wars; of clinging onto the past and preventing an entire nation from taking its rightful place in the world, because of events that transpired in a completely different world, 70 years ago.
Yet I don't think they've got the completely mucky end of the stick. Somewhere, it seems they have done a deal with God. He's said to them, as a nation, "okay, so for the foreseeable future, you're going to get a bunch of dickheads making Hitler salutes at you and shouting 'Achtung!' after they've had a couple at the Hamburg Festival. You will be unable to be blonde and German and NOT be accused of being a Nazi by some uneducated no-mark from Daventry every time you are unfortunate enough to host a stag party from the British shores. This is irrefutable fact. So, to ease your burden and redress the balance a little, you are ALWAYS going to kick their pasty arses at football."
I gave up watching football more than 10 years ago when, after allowing myself to get well and truly dragged into it, the full horror and grind of being an England fan was finally revealed to me. Every four years, I allow myself to be tugged back in, just a little, and every time I remember why I walked away. It's just not worth the heart attacks.
Sunday 27 June 2010
Tuesday 22 June 2010
A Nightmare Vision of the Past
As it's the last series, I thought I may as well tune into Big Brother tonight. See what's going on, what the characters are like this final year and so on.
I lasted eight minutes.
Once I'd listened to two different housemates discussing whether it is possible to die of flatulence, in two separate conversations, I'd had enough. It wasn't so much the banality of the topic that irritated me, but the pseudo-naive voice and manner adopted by the conversationalists, evidently under the impression that such gormless ramblings would somehow endear them to a reality-hardened public.
Nowhere is the theory that reality television has completely lost touch with its core concept better illustrated than on Big Brother. They might be significantly cheaper and more pliable/desperate than the average actor, and they might spout gems of dickheadedness on a half-hourly basis without the need for pricey scriptwriters, but the contestants on Big Brother are the Robert de Niros and Meryl Streeps of Stockton-on-Tees.
For the last 10 years, these people have been studying the changing face of the reality show winner with a dedication that might have been better spent elsewhere, such as on developing a sense of self-respect. Now that the final ever series of Big Brother has brought no-marks swarming out of the woodwork, all desperate to get that last stab at overnight fame for doing nothing, the cast of this year's show are more plastic than the contents of Madame Tussaud's bathroom bin.
Of course people have wanted to get on telly ever since the medium first elbowed its way into sitting rooms across the globe, but Big Brother was the true mothership which spawned a billion scouts, feeling their way further and further into the population with every passing hour. Hordes of wannabe Wags and boy band gonks ran screaming towards the alien crafts each year, begging to be taken aboard and their faces beamed across the globe to the blanket adoration of all those who espied them. The fact that the public reaction was more generally, at best, utter indifference and at worst, outright hostility that persisted throughout living memory just because someone once did something unwise with a wine bottle, has done nothing to deter these attention-seeking dimwits.
It might sound cruel to tar them all with the same brush and make out they are all weirdos who are simply desperate to jump on the celebrity bandwagon and become famous just for being famous. Some claim to just want 'the experience' and never mind the media possibilities that inevitably follow the more successful housemates, even though these periods of press interest tend to be shorter than an episode of Emmerdale.
But come on - this is hardly the behaviour of a sane individual, is it? To give up all your privacy, dignity and anonymity (not for long, granted) in exchange for a pop at winning £100,000 just doesn't seem remotely justifiable to the average person possessing a modicum of self-respect. An excruciating half-hour trying to outwit fellow smartypants on some daytime quiz show would be just about the level most people would consider, if the potential reward was big enough to make being ineptly insulted by Anne Robinson worth the embarrassment.
It is no coincidence that while most of the contestants on things like Going For Gold were swivel-eyed goons who looked ecstatic to win £50 and a button, the people appearing on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire generally look like they could tie their own shoelaces. Because the potential prize on offer was infinitely worth briefly, and in a respectable environment, giving up their anonymity - which, for most people, is one of their most precious assets.
Although we might all sigh and envy the Hollywood stars on MTV Cribs, we don't really want to be them. We might like to attain a high level of respect and acclaim in our chosen field, but we don't want to get papped outside the Co-op and have our cellulite thighs splashed across the Daily Star every other week. What we want is financial freedom, something which only shedloads of cash can bring and unfortunately, having a famous arse can often seem a quicker route to riches than building a business empire or winning a Nobel Prize.
But most ordinary people wouldn't go down that route. They would rather accept that they will never be able to quit work or own their own personal island, than give up their right to poo in private. And this is where Big Brother contestants and their ilk differ in a bone-chilling way. When humankind has spent hundreds of thousands of years establishing an etiquette and a code of basic civil rights, most people refuse to retreat to caveman conditions just for the sake of cash. If someone came up to me and offered me £100,000 to pose spread-eagled across the centre pages of Playboy (you never know, it could happen), I'd say no. That's not to cast aspersions on women who do choose to do that, but it goes against my personal moral code. So there's no way I'd give millions of viewers a flash of my lady garden for free.
But even this is missing the point, because the Big Brother hopefuls aren't playing for money. They are playing for fame, for attention, for a shot at a free ride. And just as £100,000 doesn't buy you very much these days, neither does your pride.
So I won't be shedding any tears for the demise of Big Brother. Once a nightmarish vision of the future, it is now a tedious and worn out part of our televisual past. And long may it stay there.
I lasted eight minutes.
Once I'd listened to two different housemates discussing whether it is possible to die of flatulence, in two separate conversations, I'd had enough. It wasn't so much the banality of the topic that irritated me, but the pseudo-naive voice and manner adopted by the conversationalists, evidently under the impression that such gormless ramblings would somehow endear them to a reality-hardened public.
Nowhere is the theory that reality television has completely lost touch with its core concept better illustrated than on Big Brother. They might be significantly cheaper and more pliable/desperate than the average actor, and they might spout gems of dickheadedness on a half-hourly basis without the need for pricey scriptwriters, but the contestants on Big Brother are the Robert de Niros and Meryl Streeps of Stockton-on-Tees.
For the last 10 years, these people have been studying the changing face of the reality show winner with a dedication that might have been better spent elsewhere, such as on developing a sense of self-respect. Now that the final ever series of Big Brother has brought no-marks swarming out of the woodwork, all desperate to get that last stab at overnight fame for doing nothing, the cast of this year's show are more plastic than the contents of Madame Tussaud's bathroom bin.
Of course people have wanted to get on telly ever since the medium first elbowed its way into sitting rooms across the globe, but Big Brother was the true mothership which spawned a billion scouts, feeling their way further and further into the population with every passing hour. Hordes of wannabe Wags and boy band gonks ran screaming towards the alien crafts each year, begging to be taken aboard and their faces beamed across the globe to the blanket adoration of all those who espied them. The fact that the public reaction was more generally, at best, utter indifference and at worst, outright hostility that persisted throughout living memory just because someone once did something unwise with a wine bottle, has done nothing to deter these attention-seeking dimwits.
It might sound cruel to tar them all with the same brush and make out they are all weirdos who are simply desperate to jump on the celebrity bandwagon and become famous just for being famous. Some claim to just want 'the experience' and never mind the media possibilities that inevitably follow the more successful housemates, even though these periods of press interest tend to be shorter than an episode of Emmerdale.
But come on - this is hardly the behaviour of a sane individual, is it? To give up all your privacy, dignity and anonymity (not for long, granted) in exchange for a pop at winning £100,000 just doesn't seem remotely justifiable to the average person possessing a modicum of self-respect. An excruciating half-hour trying to outwit fellow smartypants on some daytime quiz show would be just about the level most people would consider, if the potential reward was big enough to make being ineptly insulted by Anne Robinson worth the embarrassment.
It is no coincidence that while most of the contestants on things like Going For Gold were swivel-eyed goons who looked ecstatic to win £50 and a button, the people appearing on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire generally look like they could tie their own shoelaces. Because the potential prize on offer was infinitely worth briefly, and in a respectable environment, giving up their anonymity - which, for most people, is one of their most precious assets.
Although we might all sigh and envy the Hollywood stars on MTV Cribs, we don't really want to be them. We might like to attain a high level of respect and acclaim in our chosen field, but we don't want to get papped outside the Co-op and have our cellulite thighs splashed across the Daily Star every other week. What we want is financial freedom, something which only shedloads of cash can bring and unfortunately, having a famous arse can often seem a quicker route to riches than building a business empire or winning a Nobel Prize.
But most ordinary people wouldn't go down that route. They would rather accept that they will never be able to quit work or own their own personal island, than give up their right to poo in private. And this is where Big Brother contestants and their ilk differ in a bone-chilling way. When humankind has spent hundreds of thousands of years establishing an etiquette and a code of basic civil rights, most people refuse to retreat to caveman conditions just for the sake of cash. If someone came up to me and offered me £100,000 to pose spread-eagled across the centre pages of Playboy (you never know, it could happen), I'd say no. That's not to cast aspersions on women who do choose to do that, but it goes against my personal moral code. So there's no way I'd give millions of viewers a flash of my lady garden for free.
But even this is missing the point, because the Big Brother hopefuls aren't playing for money. They are playing for fame, for attention, for a shot at a free ride. And just as £100,000 doesn't buy you very much these days, neither does your pride.
So I won't be shedding any tears for the demise of Big Brother. Once a nightmarish vision of the future, it is now a tedious and worn out part of our televisual past. And long may it stay there.
Sunday 13 June 2010
No More Bad Days For Bauer
So, after eight incredibly bad days, Jack Bauer has finally hung up his terrorist-kicking boots. This is a shame.
I say it's 'a shame' rather than 'a tragedy' for a number of reasons. First of all, watched on a weekly basis as it was intended, 24 took nearly six months to play out. Traditionally, it started in January and before you knew it, it was June and the final hour was looming, along with the realisation that Jack and his cohorts had done more with their lives in one day than you had in the last 24 weeks.
Secondly, I truly can't stand Chloe, Jack's righthand berk. She has the most slappable face in history. Starting out as an irritable little analyst who constantly reminded me of a toddler having a tantrum after being refused the last Jaffa Cake, she inexplicably rose to acting head of the Counter Terrorism Unit in the final series. To say this relentless advance was unconvincing was an understatement. You could have pinned the badge on Roland Rat and I would have more readily accepted him as the leader of US anti-terrorist forces.
Thirdly, it isn't really the end for Jack, both on a personal level and in terms of 24's screen career. For one thing, I have only seen about four and a half series out of the eight on offer, having watched the first two series aeons ago when they were shown on terrestrial telly, but being frozen out when Sky snapped up the rights to the gravelly avenger. As I firmly resisted calls for Sky's introduction to our household for several years - on the grounds that paying out more money for the privilege of letting my arse expand yet further into the sofa was unacceptable - I eventually caved a couple of years ago and Jack bounded back into our lives like a faithful puppy, ready to show us his latest pile of mess.
Just before season seven was aired, Sky decided to make another bid for my soul by showing the entire sixth series over a 24-hour period, on a Saturday. And although it's madder and more overblown than a Semtex balloon, 24 is nothing if not addictive. I dipped in and out of it all day and was firmly re-hooked in time for the next brain drain to start.
But I still have the interim adventures to catch up on so, as a box set-tastic future beckons, I was not too devastated to see Jack waddle off into the sunset.
The other thing is that as I understand it, the show was only cancelled partway through filming the eighth series, which suggests the writers were not building towards a much-anticipated final climax, like Lost and Ashes to Ashes. I imagine there was some pretty frantic rewriting going on at 24 Towers when that news was broken, but as the possibility of a film version has been strongly mooted - a move which would completely desert the dynamic gimmick which made the TV show such a success - it leads one to believe that the show's creators were not quite ready to bid farewell to their hero just yet.
Number one on the agenda must surely be a girlfriend who is allowed to live beyond 9am. At the end of the first series, Jack's pregnant wife copped it when his lover turned out to be a homocidal lunatic. Later on, his bright and intelligent soulmate kind of lost her appeal when a year's attentive imprisonment by the Chinese government left her thinking she was a hobgoblin who worked as Terry Wogan's char woman in her spare time.
The seventh series saw Jack getting the eye from a pretty redhead, who developed her own mental problems by the time Day Eight dawned, but did at least let Jack get his leg over before taking a bullet in the lung. God only knows how many female corpses are littered across series three to five, but I am rubbing my hands in anticipation of the carnage.
Whilst it cannot claim to be as profound, mysterious or have as strong an emotional grip on its audience as Lost, for example, 24 was a bit of a rarity on television these days. Not only did it produce a truly iconic character who has become a household name, even for those who never saw the show, it was also fun, exciting and utterly gripping in the uncomplicated way that only a dumb-as-shit thriller can be. I loved it and I suspect that when the final DVD of those lost series grinds to a halt, bringing my stormy relationship with him to a proper end, I will shed a tear or two for mumbly, grumbly, sexy Jack Bauer.
I say it's 'a shame' rather than 'a tragedy' for a number of reasons. First of all, watched on a weekly basis as it was intended, 24 took nearly six months to play out. Traditionally, it started in January and before you knew it, it was June and the final hour was looming, along with the realisation that Jack and his cohorts had done more with their lives in one day than you had in the last 24 weeks.
Secondly, I truly can't stand Chloe, Jack's righthand berk. She has the most slappable face in history. Starting out as an irritable little analyst who constantly reminded me of a toddler having a tantrum after being refused the last Jaffa Cake, she inexplicably rose to acting head of the Counter Terrorism Unit in the final series. To say this relentless advance was unconvincing was an understatement. You could have pinned the badge on Roland Rat and I would have more readily accepted him as the leader of US anti-terrorist forces.
Thirdly, it isn't really the end for Jack, both on a personal level and in terms of 24's screen career. For one thing, I have only seen about four and a half series out of the eight on offer, having watched the first two series aeons ago when they were shown on terrestrial telly, but being frozen out when Sky snapped up the rights to the gravelly avenger. As I firmly resisted calls for Sky's introduction to our household for several years - on the grounds that paying out more money for the privilege of letting my arse expand yet further into the sofa was unacceptable - I eventually caved a couple of years ago and Jack bounded back into our lives like a faithful puppy, ready to show us his latest pile of mess.
Just before season seven was aired, Sky decided to make another bid for my soul by showing the entire sixth series over a 24-hour period, on a Saturday. And although it's madder and more overblown than a Semtex balloon, 24 is nothing if not addictive. I dipped in and out of it all day and was firmly re-hooked in time for the next brain drain to start.
But I still have the interim adventures to catch up on so, as a box set-tastic future beckons, I was not too devastated to see Jack waddle off into the sunset.
The other thing is that as I understand it, the show was only cancelled partway through filming the eighth series, which suggests the writers were not building towards a much-anticipated final climax, like Lost and Ashes to Ashes. I imagine there was some pretty frantic rewriting going on at 24 Towers when that news was broken, but as the possibility of a film version has been strongly mooted - a move which would completely desert the dynamic gimmick which made the TV show such a success - it leads one to believe that the show's creators were not quite ready to bid farewell to their hero just yet.
Number one on the agenda must surely be a girlfriend who is allowed to live beyond 9am. At the end of the first series, Jack's pregnant wife copped it when his lover turned out to be a homocidal lunatic. Later on, his bright and intelligent soulmate kind of lost her appeal when a year's attentive imprisonment by the Chinese government left her thinking she was a hobgoblin who worked as Terry Wogan's char woman in her spare time.
The seventh series saw Jack getting the eye from a pretty redhead, who developed her own mental problems by the time Day Eight dawned, but did at least let Jack get his leg over before taking a bullet in the lung. God only knows how many female corpses are littered across series three to five, but I am rubbing my hands in anticipation of the carnage.
Whilst it cannot claim to be as profound, mysterious or have as strong an emotional grip on its audience as Lost, for example, 24 was a bit of a rarity on television these days. Not only did it produce a truly iconic character who has become a household name, even for those who never saw the show, it was also fun, exciting and utterly gripping in the uncomplicated way that only a dumb-as-shit thriller can be. I loved it and I suspect that when the final DVD of those lost series grinds to a halt, bringing my stormy relationship with him to a proper end, I will shed a tear or two for mumbly, grumbly, sexy Jack Bauer.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Review: Let The Right One In By John Ajvide Lindqvist
The screen adaptation of Lindqvist's vampire novel was widely hailed as a triumph. Indeed, some critics pronounced it to be among the best films of last year, which is no mean achievement for a horror film. Usually they are judged only against others in their genre and not taken seriously as stories, but Let The Right One In seemed to have overcome that obstacle.
I have not seen the film - I would quite like to, but I confess to being a little bit nervous about it. For although vampires do not scare me like ghosts do and I am not overly squeamish, I have heard that the film is pretty gruesome. Very intelligent and gripping, but gruesome nonetheless. And sometimes I find that non-stop wincing can really spoil my enjoyment of a movie.
But the book was recommended to me by a friend who knows my literary tastes pretty well, so I was curious to see if the source material was as captivating as the film is reported to be.
And the answer is - yes. I can't speak for the adaptation of course, but I can see how the novel could be converted into a thrilling and thought-provoking film. Because right from the first page, the characters leap out of the page and grab you by the throat, teeth bared and ready to bite.
The action centres on 13-year-old Oskar, a young boy who struggles to co-exist with his lonely mother and absentee father, while coping with bullying at school. Yet Oskar is not your typical victim. Even as he confesses to giving into the bullies' humiliating demands in the quest for a quiet life, he radiates a quiet dignity and sense of purpose which is way beyond his years.
Oskar's rather grey and pedestrian life in a Swedish suburb is turned upside down when he befriends Eli, the delicate little girl next door whose strange lifestyle soon raises his suspicions. With the innocence that only children can muster, he simply accepts Eli's stranger qualities and they form a touchingly powerful friendship.
But in the community around them, something is not right. In fact something is going very, very wrong and Oskar begins to realise that Eli might be at the epicentre of the storm.
Delicately balancing the drama of his high concept against the more mundane truths of human existence, the author creates a story that grips you from start to finish. Just as caught up in the mystery as Oskar, I was keen to find out what lay at the beating heart (or otherwise) of Eli and I was also intrigued by Lindqvist's refusal to paint any character in black and white. Though I was left feeling a little torn as to just how much freedom Eli deserved in the final reckoning.
I have not seen the film - I would quite like to, but I confess to being a little bit nervous about it. For although vampires do not scare me like ghosts do and I am not overly squeamish, I have heard that the film is pretty gruesome. Very intelligent and gripping, but gruesome nonetheless. And sometimes I find that non-stop wincing can really spoil my enjoyment of a movie.
But the book was recommended to me by a friend who knows my literary tastes pretty well, so I was curious to see if the source material was as captivating as the film is reported to be.
And the answer is - yes. I can't speak for the adaptation of course, but I can see how the novel could be converted into a thrilling and thought-provoking film. Because right from the first page, the characters leap out of the page and grab you by the throat, teeth bared and ready to bite.
The action centres on 13-year-old Oskar, a young boy who struggles to co-exist with his lonely mother and absentee father, while coping with bullying at school. Yet Oskar is not your typical victim. Even as he confesses to giving into the bullies' humiliating demands in the quest for a quiet life, he radiates a quiet dignity and sense of purpose which is way beyond his years.
Oskar's rather grey and pedestrian life in a Swedish suburb is turned upside down when he befriends Eli, the delicate little girl next door whose strange lifestyle soon raises his suspicions. With the innocence that only children can muster, he simply accepts Eli's stranger qualities and they form a touchingly powerful friendship.
But in the community around them, something is not right. In fact something is going very, very wrong and Oskar begins to realise that Eli might be at the epicentre of the storm.
Delicately balancing the drama of his high concept against the more mundane truths of human existence, the author creates a story that grips you from start to finish. Just as caught up in the mystery as Oskar, I was keen to find out what lay at the beating heart (or otherwise) of Eli and I was also intrigued by Lindqvist's refusal to paint any character in black and white. Though I was left feeling a little torn as to just how much freedom Eli deserved in the final reckoning.
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