They're coming for you Barbara

Whilst many 50s horror pictures can be interpreted through the anxieties of the nuclear age, the conflicting views of the need for consensus and the threat of communist hegemony, the horror of the 70s became harder to penetrate. (The pre-50s horror films were mainly based on literary works and thus channelled borrowed themes).

Ed Gein influenced dozens of films from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to, uh, Ed Gein.

The phenomenon of the serial killer and mass murderer, which had not really existed in the cultural conscious of America before ED Gein but was rooted firmly into it after the Manson family murders, the Summer of Sam, Ted Bundy etc., was expressed in the form of the slasher flick. In Friday the 13th and Halloween, the monstrous figure represents the backwoods psycho who seems to dispatch his victims with seemingly little motive other than a need to extinguish their lives, an inexplicable action not fuelled by the usual human emotions of anger, envy or lust, but based on something insensible (Michael Myers is simply insane and never explained, whereas Jason Vorhees of Camp Crystal Lake seems to act out of vengeance, and yet it is a vengeance never satiated). The fact that the victims were usually teenagers bereft of authority figures signifies the burgeoning baby boom generation growing bold without the social bonds of previous generations, creating monsters that it does not have the facilities to deal with. The counter-culture of the 60s and subsequent cultural crash of the 70s, with the drawn-out death rattle of Vietnam, the death of Kennedy, the beginnings of the drug war, terrorism and Nixon’s shadow all combined to create a decade of paranoia.

Halloween. Laurie Strode, alone in the dark.

Whilst the zombie pictures are more easily identified as social critiques, Dawn of the Dead standing out most ostentatiously as a parody of mindless consumerism, these lone stalker pictures can all too easily be dismissed as bums-on-seats teen fodder rather than an examination of the breakdown of social links as America became more separated and urbanised in society as a whole, and the family unit itself broke down as divorce became commonplace (see everything from Kramer vs. Kramer to the period-set The Squid and the Whale). The victims here are the young and defenceless new generation who have no one to call on for help. In Halloween the parents are not at home, the neighbours are dead and the authorities are next to useless (whilst in Friday the 13th the unfortunate teens are the camp authorities), habitually arriving as the credits roll in film after film, usually just as the conflict has been dealt with (often by the survivor who shares values most similar to the previous generation-Curtis is a good student and has not adopted the 60s equivalent of free love). This screen version of the breakdown of the family unit ties in with the 70s vision breakdown of society, not only in the horror dystopias of Soylent Green and The Omega Man, but also represented in the evolution of the urban nightmare films which grew from Assault on Precinct 13 and The Warriors through to Escape from New York and Robocop, depicting the urban centres of America as lawless no-go areas, awash with outlandish gangs and drug-fuelled violence. Again, the authorities are doing a poor job, corrupt or fascist where they aren’t absent and it is only when the Reagan era influences the 80s trend for the buddy-cop movie that the police start to gain ground again in the cinema.

The urban hell of Soylent Green.

Whilst the mainstream depicted the anxieties of a generation growing up alone and at risk from outsiders, the indie features dwelt on a seemingly more personal subject matter. The early films of Cronenberg like Rabid and Shivers helped to coin the term body-horror, and whilst it would seem obvious that the terror is based on the fear of not being in control of our own flesh, it comes from the vantage point of the 70s, lurking in the STD-generating shadow of the free love 60s and leading into the ultimate body-horror bogeyman, AIDS, as films such as The Thing remake and The Evil Dead (not only is the horror inside us but it is easily passed to others) dragged the theme into the 80s.

The Thing. The horror lives inside us all, but Kurt Russell more than most.

But what have horror films to tell us today?
The resurgence of the genre in the mainstream in the last decade has mainly been led by two strands, the self-referential and the ghost story, so what do these films tell us about ourselves?

Films like Scream seem to offer nothing beyond tidbits for fans of the genre, a mirror reflecting upon itself, and the likes of Stir of Echoes, the Sixth Sense and The Others seem to share little besides the presence of children. The children and the concentration on character, suspense and the lack of gore would point toward the films being aimed toward the more mature audience, the grown up viewers of the 70s teen-slasher who are now parents themselves and of an age where they are both anxious for their progeny’s future and for their own parents who are now ageing (though there were parental-anxiety films in the 70s such as The Omen, The Exorcist and Don’t Look Now). Whilst the children in these tales are very much alive, the lives of their parents have changed and in a sense these films deal with the death of the old way of life through to acceptance and the commencement of the newer, presumably better path, with a family taking centre stage (and coming full circle from the isolated slasher flicks of the 70s and 80s, the lone teens sent out into the malevolent world now have families of their own and seek to change things for the better for their offspring).

Alongside these branches we have the sub-genres that never left, with creature features along the lines of Mimic and a million others, and the cod-mythological works of The Prophecy, Stigmata and The Relic all saying little that hasn’t been covered by their ancestors – from the days of Frankenstein we learned that it is best not to play the role of creator and mess with nature or things that we do not understand.

As for werewolf and vampire pictures, some of the most iconic in horror imagery have become some of the poorest offerings in the horror genre, despite the flawed attempts to inject some depth into proceedings (the Addiction, Nadja, The Hunger, The Company of Wolves).

After the numerous Hammer Dracula sequels spread the character thin over the decades, the attempted resurrection by Coppola in the 90s was only partially successful, hampered by its own pomp, and the genre has been repeatedly staked through the heart at each incarnation – from Vampires to Dracula 2000 to Underworld, the character of the romantic blood parasite has become the domain of the ex-music video director hoping to make a name in tinsel town. Once a metaphor for lust and the consequences of sexual abandon, the vampire story has been reduced to, at best, cautionary nods warning against dodgy haircuts and tight leather.

Dracula 2000. Gerard Butler must thank god for 300 twice a day

Also suffering in the Underworld franchise is the werewolf, once representative of everything from our animal urges bubbling under the surface to the hormonal tortures of adolescence, it has been reduced to merely another creature, a showcase for effects specialists mindful of the famous American Werewolf in London transformation sequence and with little more depth than a casual commentary on the issue of punishment vs. rehabilitation – the werewolf is a human too, so should it be put down or should we try for a cure? Invariably the creature is killed, emphasising that we are ultimately responsible for our actions and must pay in kind, or that punishment is a fitting response to crime, depending on your political outlook. This topic is nothing new of course, and has been covered since the early days of the were-picture.
One of the better Were-series in recent years is the Ginger Snaps franchise, but despite its accomplishment the chosen themes of female adolescent and sexual awakening are explicit and well-worn, as Ginger grows up and becomes much more interested in boys than sister B, as both partners and dinner.

But what of the rest of the world? Whilst the US horror market becomes culturally repetitive, besides the cooing reassurance for the disco generation dealing with teens of their own, the most successful horror films are crawling out of Asia.
Bally old Blighty does have a long tradition of horror classics, from Quatermass to Village of the Damned to The Wicker Man, but as the camptastic Hammer offerings took the box office by storm the recent decent British horror pictures have come to reflect the knowing-winkery of those days, and stand in camps with either one foot firmly in comedic territory (Dog Soldiers, Shaun of the Dead and Severance) or both flailing in the land of the bizarre (In the Lair of the White Worm), offering little behind the scenes besides Lotto cash.

Shaun of the Dead. Funny, But Is It Art?

Since the success of The Ring the Asian horror film has been the foundation of the recent popularity of Asian cinema in the West. Alongside the traditional (if updated) ghost stories the pervading reference is to that of technology – the leaping bounds of East-Asian progress on all things electrical have led to a fear of the machine.
An issue historically dealt with in sci-fi, the reason for the fixation on the ghost in the machine in the East is perhaps due to a readiness to believe in the supernatural, or a greater steeping in history. The new technological methods of communication may allow a new avenue for spirits to come back and haunt the living, be it through videotape, mobile phone or the internet, and allows for hauntings outside the traditional confines of the old, dark house.
The emphasis on the psychological rather than gore is usually an indicator of quality, and this has no doubt helped the Asian horror films stand out, but it is the application of a different set of rules that likely interests those in the West.
The traditional chase, confrontation, solution through force rules of American horror films do not apply, so if the situation is not as easily predicted you automatically raise the suspense; when you do not know if the heroes and heroines (or even children) will survive, the thrill of the unknown remains intact.
In Hollywood you need to create a monster that literally exists in dreams in order to bend the rules, but there are no such safeguards in Asian horror – the most extreme case perhaps being the Grudge, which begins as a seemingly humdrum haunted house picture but morphs into something where you don’t ever need to visit the house to be in danger.

This fresh approach to horror (for the West) brings about a strange situation, as the stories are transplanted into a culture where the themes do not necessarily apply, and so films that are a success for the horror genre and bring scares back into the cinema now have nothing to say.

The Grudge. This chap can turn up anywhere, and frequently does.

I went to see The Pursuit of Happyness and I enjoyed it

In posts previous I have mentioned my games, that I like playing games.

Call it a compulsion.

In a fit of endless Spring cleaning, muchlike a sparkling Never Ending Story, I recycle my old games when I'm done with them by selling them, for money. Unless the game is so superlative that it deserves to be kept for the forseeable

Alternately, it may be a title that deserves seeing through to completion, but that I will come back to later, like Resident Evil 4 or the excellent Eternal Darkness, or one of those 'open-world' thangs where you run around blowing stuff up. Many would posit GTA and the like, but I have an affection for a spot of Mercenaries.

But otherwise, I play it until I clock it or I can't be arsed, and then I sell it. It's like I'm saving the planet and getting paid for it.
Which is nice.
Games are the things that tend to sell the fastest, so I'm wondering how long it will take for me to get rid of my copy of Chihuahua Nintendogs. Yes, despite my previous elation at aquiring Nintendo's beautiful handheld and its virtua-fur champion, we have to part ways. This evening I held A,B,X,Y,L and R and put my puppies down.

The kind of game that you play for a few minutes a day just isn't for me, I need something I can dive into for a couple of hours at a time, New Super Mario Brothers being an excellent example of something at first seeming simple and retro, but is in fact a gripping and challenging test of platforming skill. Very much seeming like an amalgam of 2D Marios past, this latest update takes on the many, many platforming successes of the previous incarnations and lashes them all together in a sublime jaunt of mushrooms and block-smashing.
For those with a passing ability with jumping from left to right, the game presents the possibility of steady progression toward the inevitable princess rescue, but for the cognoscenti there are the hundreds of details and hidden secrets to uncover. It doesn't matter that you have literally done it all before, the fact is that you've never done it so good.
Of course it's not all good. The game is let down by its length (fnar) but luckily, this doesn't faze me as I have so many games to play it'll be a while before I excavate all the meaty goodness.

And yet having so many games is a curse as I feel reluctant to further add to the stable. I'm very, very eager to play a hefty wad of 360 games, and I've saved enough to buy the (still-not-dropped-in-bastard-price) Premium wedge, but I can't let myself give in to the temptation as I still have a tower of ye olde Xbox games to crawl through and it's hard to justify when I've already furnished myself with the scrumptious (but worrying) Wii.

But that is another story for another time.

Until then, SNOW!

A hospital gown, open up the back

There are many studies of ex-cinemas, the grand old picture houses of the 30s and 40s of cinema’s heyday, the time of talkies and newsreels before TV came along. While some were converted into more conventional theatres or bingo halls, many of these buildings were lost and the legacy of local cinema with them.

But I don’t intend to talk so broadly about cinemas, rather I’m focusing on the changes that are happening to this very day.

I first started going to see films regularly when I was around 16 or so. It coincided with a newfound independence and the ability to legally back up my desire to see ‘15’s.
I had taken a year out of school after a bad start at my sixth form, and in the interim before I started my A-levels at a college, I took the opportunity to drink in as much cinema as terrestrial TV could offer.
All day long I would watch films on TV or from videos recorded when I couldn’t catch them, and I took in everything from 40s screwball classics and 50s B pictures to 70s thrillers and 80s blockbusters.

When I started college, I found myself with quite a bit of free time as we only needed to be in college for our lessons, so I made many trips to the Harrow Warner plex to see the latest Hollywood jobs and got the tube central for anything more unusual.
I carried on in this way at University, except unlike college, which I enjoyed, I grew to hate Uni and so would spend an increasing amount of time going to the pictures or collecting videos with my new part-time job’s discount.

Rather than just the films, visiting the cinema itself was part of the experience, and I came to know the differences between cinemas and between screens within the cinemas themselves, making a little mission to visit as many different cinemas as possible, at least in central London.
This aim was a lot more interesting back then, as there were simply more cinemas around. Since the early 90’s I have seen the demise of many a cinema in the West End, some of which I never got the chance to visit.

At some point early in the millennium, Odeon gained ownership of the ABC cinema chain, and began a process of assimilation or destruction.
A number of cinemas, such as Panton Street and Covent Garden survive those times as new Odeon cinemas, but many fell by the wayside.
One most recent loss is the Odeon Wardour Street and ex-ABC Swiss Centre, cunningly located in the building with the tourist-trap clock on the Piccadilly corner of Leicester Square.
Whilst many wouldn’t feel such emotion at the loss of this cinema, owing to the Mezzanine-rivalling ‘front room’ screens, it provided the opportunity to see world cinema and arthouse fare that sometimes weren’t covered elsewhere in London, even with the likes of the ICA, Panton Street and Curzon Soho catering for such tastes.
Despite the relatively small sizes, the screens were still larger than the current monster HD sets and so did at least provide something you couldn’t get at home.
I had managed to see something in each of its four screens before it went, and I have to say I had an affection for the smallest, with the bizarre metal rail between the front row and the screen.

An earlier ABC loss that never made it to Odeon status was the ABC Piccadilly.
Situated on Piccadilly itself, it was opposite the Tower Records/Virgin store and was basically just a small box office at ground level before the descent into the depths were the screens lurked.
The ABC Piccadilly was once a venue for adult movies and in spirit can be seen in the film “An American Werewolf in London”, though that scene was actually based on the Eros cinema that used to be at the site where you’ll now find the Gap shop. It never seemed to lose that seediness, which not only grew from the two screens being literally bisected into four (making for a less than immersive experience) but mainly from the flea bitten state of the place. It has been the only screening that I’ve had to walk out from before the film began because of an unidentifiable but nevertheless rancid odour.
Last time I checked it was still boarded up with the obligatory tourist tat stalls parked outside its doors, long may it rest.

Just down the road from there was the Plaza cinema, a wonderful building with a large lobby and a high ceiling leading to each of the four screens. The Plaza specialised in showing Blockbusters that hadn’t quite completed their run, but had been on release for some weeks, and offered them at budget prices. A sort of grand scale and more expensive Prince Charles cinema, the Plaza provided the opportunity to catch things you may otherwise may have missed, but without the unforgiving scheduling of the PC. Whilst most of the screens were of an average to good quality, the main screen upstairs was beautifully tiered and huge, well worth the asking price.
One day there were flooding problems in the basement and the cinema was closed for refurbishment. It never re-opened, part opening years later as a Tesco Metro and the rest opening later still as the Apollo cinema, a decent cinema itself but amusingly almost the opposite of the Plaza, a luxury cinema for top-dollar prices.

Another recent loss to arthouse venues wasn’t that far from Odeon Wardour Street. The Metro Cinema, which changed names to the Other Cinema a couple of years before its demise, was a lovely little two screen venue which specialised in foreign and indie releases.
Found down the side of the Trocadero on Rupert Street, it had an old-time ‘Ed’s Diner’ feeling to it and it seemed like the only reason it hadn’t been multiplexed to death is due to it being hidden out of sight.
Today it has become a front for yet another theatre ticket box office catering to our theatre-greedy tourist community.

Still more losses are even more obscure – the Odeon Haymarket was a few minutes from the now Cineworld Haymarket but closed not long after I was regularly cinemagoing so I never visited it; likewise an indie cinema of which I have forgotten the name on St. Martin’s Lane, toward Trafalgar Square and opposite from the Duke of York’s Theatre.
I could swear that there used to be a cinema called “The Phoenix” down the side of the Phoenix theatre, off Charing Cross Road, and my memory of a picture house that once stood on Oxford St. at the Tottenham Court Road end is hazier still.

Despite the increasing success of box offices in recent years, I can’t help fear for my cinemas, and I’ve never taken for granted that I have so much choice – I can’t comprehend of what it would be like to live somewhere where you maybe have a choice of a two-screen indie and a multiplex at most, three screens of which are taken up showing the latest blockbuster on rotation.
Whilst I do appreciate some of the positives of the multiplex chains – the usually large screens and generously terraced seating - it has to be said that sometimes the audience just doesn’t actually give as much of a fuck about seeing a film as they do in the West End. Even as you venture out of the centre, to the Odeon Tottenham Court Road or Marble Arch cinemas, the audience become that bit more irritating that much more frequently, where the act of film-going is seen as a social event instead of what it is – sitting in a dark room with strangers and watching a fucking film.

I would go on to discuss the cinemas that remain today, but that is for another time.

Here’s a picture found at this link Golders Green cinema. It closed after screening Eyes Wide Shut, the only cinema within walking distance. Bastards.


Follow these links to find information on London’s lost cinemas, and some pictures here

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Just in case you thought you were safe from review-pimping, you’re not. The links to my latest reviews of anime, Fearless Hyena and Hand of Death DVDs can be found at the top of the review links on the right.

Everybody's dead, Dave.

Twice in the past year or so there has been a fire within minutes of my home that has resulted in the evacuation of nearby residents due to the risk of propane tank explosion. Luckily those residents weren't me, I don't 'do' evacuations.
When the ice caps flood the earth I'm banking on living away from seas and rivers.

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This jaunty little fellow introduced himself to me one evening before Christmas by falling from the ceiling of my bathroom on a near-miss trajectory with my head, landing with an audible thump on the tiles. Whilst not a particularly portly specimen, I'd never seen the like before, and its crab-red legs and pasty white baked-bean body urged me to investigate it even as I was capturing it in its plastic cell.
Turns out that the little bastard is a woodlouse spider, cunningly named for its woodlouse-based diet, but what is most striking is the fact that this is one of the few spiders in the UK that can actually break the skin due to its formidable woodlouse-shell crushing mandibles.
The teeth are the arachnid equivalent of a sabretooth tiger's and can quite easily be seen protuding greedily from it's red head, so I'm pretty glad it didn't land on target.
Spiders are no stranger to my home and I regularly come across many from the spindly to the wolfish, all getting chucked into the garden after brief plastic incarceration, but I've never seen this ugly species in all my 28 years.

I crossed the road to throw him in a copse.



This is a picture of one taken by someone with a better camera. You can just about see the fangs.

DJ Santa on the wheels of steel

I don't watch telly any more.

I haven't really watched telly in about a year, not conventional telly that you turn on and absorb.
These past months I've been picking and choosing, taking in morsels of programming like flotsam and jetsam, thanks to the TV-on-demand service I get from my internet peoples.
It's down to this that I get to see stuff I might otherwise have missed, like the excellent State of Play, watching the first episode to see what it was like and then ending up watching every episode back-to-back until four in the morning.

Just tonight I caught Born Equal, an excellent ensemble drama dealing with the highs and lows of life in London, from City boy to down-and-out, every word and performance ringing true. But damn is it depressing.
A world of bleak hopelessness and washed-out colour, all of the characters are trapped no matter what their circumstances.
All the locations are recognisable whilst staying away from postcard London, the grime and the drab straight out of reality.

It was a little anticlimatic, then, to have a teaser after the credits rolled telling us that Dracula is back, and he's a buffoon - clicky for duh
Marc Warren? Cuh.
I mean, I don't really care about how the legend of Robin hood gets portrayed, but where will it all end?

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The aforementioned TV-on-demand thing is how I keep up to date with Torchwood, never having watched it at the same time as your common or garden viewer.
The second to last episode was unbelievably awful, based around a corny voice-overing dead moron like some twisted sci-fi Starter for Ten, almost vaporising the very idea of entertainment for good.
Then in the last episode they bring out a mostly well-written and acted episode of genuine warmth and free of the 'adult timeslot' bombast of some of the other shows (apart from a bit of sex, which in this case is wrapped in a love story), completely throwing the quality curve of the show, peaks and troughs like the ocean floor.
A fairly unoriginal tale of people from the 50s getting stuck here and how they cope offers only a few glaring "isn't it funny how things change?" and instead goes for the feelings, looking at how people deal with being lost and alone and doing it in a much more successful way than, say, that one with Mel Gibson.
A new angle comes from Captain Jack, ideas of loneliness and immortality - again nothing new but thankfully well handled.
Along with the recent episode dealing with ex-Torchwood member and incredible criminal mastermind this episode is an example of what could have been, had the show not become bogged down in the need for an alien that kills through sex and the "terrifying" stilted movement of a half-cyberwoman who happens to look a lot like the iconic Metropolis Maria-bot. But crap.

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You can take the horror director out of the genre, but you can't take the genre out of the director.
This can be shown time and again, as the creators of little indie gore-fests become recognised for their flair and vision and are recruited to helm the studios' latest blockbuster franchise.
Sam Raimi went from the Evil Dead to the international 12A hit Spiderman series, but his roots show through in the octopus arms sequence in number 2, a horror scene to its very pores.
Peter Jackson started out on Bad Taste and the spectacular gunge fest that is Brain Dead, so it's little surprise that his uber-epic Lord of the Rings Trilogy featured a fair few fang-tastic moments, the death of Boromir springing to mind.

Guillermo Del Toro, on the other hand, has never really left horror.
Starting out on his quirky Mexican vampire flick Cronos, Del Toro went on to a typical piece of Hollywood horror fluff, Mimic, which he managed to raise above the average premise (the old chestnut of man-meddling-with-nature) into something halfway decent.
Then entering franchiseland proper, he got to hold the reins on Blade 2 which again, despite being a bit of throwaway action/horror, showed quite a bit of flair hither and thither especially with the hideous new vampire strain unleashed on Blade.
At this point Del Toro felt a little chafed by the restraints of the studios that led to the glass ceiling of above-average films, and produced the Spanish Civli War ghost story The Devil's Backbone, proving that Cronos was not a fluke by filming a picture of remarkable tension in the Old Dark House vein.
After flexing his cinematic muscles, Del Toro returned to Lalaland to take on a new comicbook franchise, Hellboy, whose supernatural origins perfectly suited his genre leanings. Hellboy is one of the better of the recent rash of comicbook adaptations, managing to juggle character development alongside the spectacle as well as bringing the sumptious art of Mike Mignola to life, which for some reason makes me wish it had been Del Toro at the helm of the dire League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

His most recent film, Pan's Labyrinth, comes before the Hellboy sequel and is another marriage of horror and the Spanish Civil War. I'm going to assume you've seen it so spoiler alert.
This time around the fantastical elements of the film do not sit as well with those of the 'real world' of the civil war. With little integration it is easy to believe that the stranger moments of fantasy are all in our heroine Carmen's head, which may help to explain the brutal violence which often is a part of the reality. With the ultra-fascist captain Vidal such an evil baddie, the threat of the fantasy characters is lessened, and the case for the fantasy being just that is strengthened all the more due to the unbearable nature of reality.
Having said this, Pan is still a decent film with some strong ideas and lovely images, not to mention cringeworthy violence and body-horror; the bottling still remaining lodged in the mind, so to speak, with the spectacle of Vidal stitching his own face shut seeming tame in comparison. The fantasy world is suitably earthy, scenes of Carmen squirming in the mud of the bowels of a tree and Pan seemingly hewn from rock and bark himself, the images here all have an edge to them down to the fairies that begin as Del Toro's trademark insectoids. The fantasy of the Labyrinth is a foreboding place but is still preferable to a world where the adults are all mad and no-one listens to little Carmen.
One niggle I can't get over, though, is when Carmen sets off to retrieve the knife and is warned not to touch the food. Of course she can't resist a grape and escapes in the nick of time, but it was maddening to see the rubbish temptation get the most of her. Yes, she'd gone wihtout supper, but she had been warned in no uncertain terms and then had seen the horrible post-liposuction beast at the table, followed by the numerous paintings of it chasing and eating babies. After all this and the fairies desperately warning her, she goes for a grape. So, she's too hungry to be scared, which is bollocks as she's the type of girl to sneak to the kitchen, but even accepting that she doesn't go hog-out and grab a side of beef or handful cake, but risks her neck for a couple of fat grapes. Pah!
Worse than this, perhaps, is the underlying message of the film - to avoid fascism, not take orders blindly but to think for yourself, as pointed out by the couragoeus doctor and Pan himself. This is fair enough, but crazily for a film which unashamedly supports the rebels in the Civil War and their struggle for socialism against the ruthless fascists, the dream end for Carmen is that of the princess of the underworld, ruling her subjects as a monarch.
Unfortunately Pan fares better on the spectacle rather than the content, but is undoubtedly worth watching.


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Latest publications include contributions to the Sci fi London anime reviews for November and December and the Big Boss Platinum Edition review for hkcinema. Have a look!

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Being a regular reader, you will of course remember my incoherent rant about Hollywood remakes a few months back. With a heavy heart I point you in the direction of the Hitcher trailer, from the producers of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amityville Horror remakes indeed!
Replacing the more or less everyday looking actors from the original with a bimbo and himbo, and the otherwordly menace of Rutger "Guiness" Hauer with the pie and chips grimace of Sean "Give Blood with 02 in Somerfields" Bean, it can only hope to scale the giddy heights of bearable. God help us all.
Makes the new Die Hard trailer look like a project of breathtaking invention.

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You may have seen the advert "Christmas designed by Debenhams" in amongst all the other desperate, screaming snippets urging you to part with cash. Featuring a younger, hipper santa, what once may have sounded like a good idea has turned into some bizarre sub-Aphex Twin clay-faced nightmare. Run Away!

I build myself an effigy

November has been the month for my American Trilogy, three different perspectives on America all presented in the medium of film:

Rampage is a documentary made by George Gittoes.
Gittoes has been a war photographer for decades and made his first documentary, A Soundtrack to War in 2004. It looked at the music listened to by the American army troops in Iraq, and Rampage leads directly on from that by examining the lives of the Lovett brothers in Miami.
Elliot Lovett was one of the standout soldiers in the first documentary; a wannabe rapper who was little fazed by the violence in Iraq due to his upbringing in the Brown Sub low rises of Miami.
Rampage follows Elliot home to meet his brothers Marcus, Alton and Denzell, their family and friends and to see what life is really like in the ghettos of the USA.

Rampage throws up a lot of conflict. Not just in the situation faced by its subjects, stuck in the rut of gang violence and poverty, but within the issues raised in the film.

On the one hand it is crushingly depressing to see so many people seemingly chained into the vicious circle of ‘urban’ culture, of macho posturing and the urgency of seeking a quick, dangerous buck over any planning. It is astounding how everyone in the neighbourhood seems so accepting, let alone resigned, to the horrifically violent culture that they live in; granma Lovett looking on with fondness as her grandson Marcus tells everyone just how he would torture and murder anyone that messed with his family. Here the conflict comes from condemning the eagerness to violence, but is it hypocritical to judge when Marcus and his neighbours are all under constant danger of death? Marcus himself is assassinated by a teen hitman during the course of the documentary, punctuating the different situation they all face. It’s one thing to criticise the reverence for violence in the ghetto culture, but from a position of relative safety it is hard to dictate how to live.

The area is more dangerous than Iraq, with the local professor of criminology estimating that 1 in 8 young men die violent deaths before their 23rd birthday, which the wounds of the majority of the Lovett brothers’ friends attest to.

On the other hand you have Gittoes, who breaks with documentary tradition and steps in to try and get Denzell, the youngest Lovett, a record deal in New York and a life out of the Brown Sub.
Denzell is turned down by all the record company men as he is told that he is too young to rap about what he is living everyday, as if the horrific reality of gangland life is only fantasy.
But then you have the problem of Denzell’s rap: why would he want to continue reliving such a hell? Why would he want to dwell on the violence and petty squabbles for dubious respect? The fact that Denzell should be able to rap about the drug deals and murders that he has witnessed first hand doesn’t address how are his stories any different to the endless run of MCs year after year telling you how their skill with a mic is only surpassed by their skill with a 9?
It’s a weird paradox, the hope that the promotion and glorification of the stereotypical gangsta lifestyle will help Denzell and his family to stop living it.

Then you have that subjective element of Gittoes getting involved with his subjects. It seems that becoming the focus of filming may have made the Lovetts a target for rival gangbangers and guilt for his role in the death of Marcus spurs Gittoes into doing his utmost to help out Denzell. Would Marcus still be alive? Would Denzell have received as much exposure?
Again, it’s easy to blame those stuck in the projects for sticking to the self-fulfilling prophecy of a violent thug life, but without having to live it perhaps it isn’t fair to judge.

After years of gangsta rap culture played out through music and movies it is easy to see it as fantasy, clichés so recognisable as to be easily dismissed as fiction, but the look on Denzell’s face during his brother’s funeral brings you back to reality with a crash.

Rampage is potent stuff and serves as a reminder that even if the mess in Iraq gets to a point peaceful enough so the GIs can go home, there are old war zones still festering in the heart of America, but there are no media campaigns to end these wars.

Not having learnt the wonderful ability of posting videos within the page as if altering the very fabric of existence, I furnish you with a link to the Rampage trailer: Depress mouse button once pointer icon has alighted 'pon these words

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Whilst on the subject of questionable reality, I found Borat quite an odd film.
A weird mixture of the usual skits lifted straight from the TV shows where Mr. Cohen has one of his characters perplex ‘real people’, and bizarre scripted moments hanging around a mutant plot, it is sometimes hard to work out where the reality ends and the fiction begins.
All of the moments that seem to involve unscripted people tend to be straight lifts from Borat or Ali G sketches, and whilst it is alarming to receive the apparently genuine thoughts of honest-to-goodness Aymericans, the addition of fiction into the mix only dulls the impact. It’s easy to believe that people were paid to say they wanted gays killed, or that people only acted so astoundingly confrontational in New York to further the film, rather than being filmed unawares. And if the shock element of watching people believe that the character of Borat is a real person or revealing their hidden controversial thoughts has been dulled, then Borat the movie has to rely on comedy for a backup

The film does have it’s moments, but I’ve never been one for the ‘cringe’ school of comedy so it’s enjoyable but there’s little in the way of belly-laughs outside the more bizarre moments and now-familiar bad taste gags.

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The third film I’ve seen is a slightly less chaotic portrayal of the United States.

Little Children is a film of depths.
Deceptively smooth, it plays out like this year’s American Beauty, depicting the ennui and desperate yearnings of American suburbia, far removed from the turbulence of Rampage.

With a steady pace and flattering photography, it could be forgiven for appearing staid, but it crackles with the energy of the characters who seek a metaphorical escape from surburban restraint.
Of course, these themes have been covered as intensely as the OJ trial by French and Spanish cinema for decades, but American cinema rarely affords itself the opportunity to suggest that adultery may not be such a sin and that paedophiles may have lives beyond the monstrous.

Kate Winslet continues her taste for getting nekkid and is used to taking less-than flattering roles, here playing a bookish and alienated housewife, but here role is brave for the portrayal of a mother who seems less than enamoured with her little miracle. It’s a move virtually unheard of outside the horror genre, but brings some welcome authenticity to the film.
In a less challenging but still comparatively rare role, Patrick Wilson plays a house husband, a man not defined by his career (or lack of) and with little interest in passing the bar exam he keeps failing.

Both characters share a distance from their other halves, finding a bond with each other in their afternoons together with their children, a bond which soon develops.
All the while a flasher of kiddies has been released from prison and someone has been fly posting the neighbourhood with warnings.
The character is both monster and human, Jackie Earle Haley presenting a suitably pale and wizened figure, with a self-awareness of his less than normal tastes (Jane Adams playing one unfortunate on the receiving end, continuing a bad run of things from Happiness). But he also has a world outside his desires, a factor usually ignored in most cinematic portrayals.

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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is notable for having Lamb play over the ending credits, a feat matched by last week’s episode of Torchwood which again was a strangely pleasing mix of interesting ideas and slightly clumsy execution.

Astral bodies collide

Torchwood is a telly programme.
A Doctor Who spin-off aimed at the more 'adult' audience, it has swears, sexy and killings in it.
It is a strange creation, something of a Frankenstein's monster, part cringeworthy cliche and low-budget British naivete, part interesting little show with a bunch of slightly-less-than stereotypical characters.
Including the Lumpen Maws of Torchwood.

I don't mean any slight to the no doubt wonderful people that portray Gwen and Owen, but they do seem made for each other (as is the suggestion of the current storyline, did I forget to say spoiler? Pah) - literally when taking into consideration the matching, almost prehensile catfish-like oral cavities that they both sport.
Maybe it's some CGI thing.

It really is an odd show. I do have affection for it and enjoy watching it, but some of the ideas are fifth-hand sci-fi narratives or obvious horror staples such as last Fridays "crazy backwoods cannibals" which went so far as to use the 30-year old "heavy-breathing murderer POV". It did manage to cultivate a bit of tension out of it, but it was bit tragic to have a Scooby Doo reveal showing us that the Welsh Father Jack was behind it all, licking his lips in that way they must teach you during the part of the acting course entitled "How to play a deranged psychopath". Welcome to quotation country.

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I have suddenly been distracted by the part of buffalo 66 I never got to before - lots of topless ladies in a strip club before a Taxi-Driveresque moment made remarkable only by the 'moving still' shots. I think I've (almost) watched the film at least three times, so it seems odd that I never made it this far. It's probably because Vincent Gallo near repulses me with his uncanny and incessant portrayal of the same twitchy, arrogant prick character.
buffalo 66 does feature a lot of nice shots, staging and direction doing a lot with the bland, small town America blah, but Vincent's Billy character is nothing but irritating, coming across like a neurotic Tarantino who never got his shot at the big time, and no amount of winky cameos (Mickey Rourke, Jan-Michel Vincent etc.) can redeem it. I can see where the critical acclaim has come from, but for me the film is empty and the character seems all too real.
That is Vincent Gallo.

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And it was on Film Four that I came across buffalo 66 again. Now Film Four is 'free' I can watch it whenever I like. But whenever I can watch it, there's something I've already seen, or is arse. I remember back when it was first rolled out, it was a tantalising opportunity for world cinema and indy features, but now it's just Pulp Fiction over and over. Not really, but it's very disappointing. Maybe I can't complain because it's free. Oh but I can.
Dumbing down.
War Games? Happy Gilmore? Volcano? Trading Places? Regardless of the quality, the channel is packed with the kind of thing that wouldn't look out of place on an ITV Saturday line-up, yet they have the gall to have that guy doing the voice-over with his slightly 'edgy' voice, like John Simm used to do so often. Edgy like the Hallmark channel.


Wow, it's all grumbles tonight!

STAY LUCKY!

I am the king of Kongolia!

I just have a scant missive to convey at this juncture.
Reviews are ready for your reading pleasure covering the wonderful Host and the less than such Ring Girls.
Click The Host
Click Ring Girls

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For once there is a generous abundance of moving picture goodness available, I have yet to sample Prestige, Borat or Casino Royale and Jackass 2, Tenacious D and Pan's Labyrinth are all drawing near. So little time, so little time.

Nothing like spring

I've started contributing to www.sci-fi-london.com, which is nice.
Their take on sci-fi is broad, so lots of genre pictures, and the site came about as a web home for the London Sci-fi Film Festival which always has screenings worth catching. Now it's a repository for news, reviews and interviews, if you read my review then check out the home page to find interviews with Christopher Nolan, Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine gabbing about the Prestige.

Click to read my Puritan review.

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Vestiges

Foley art (?) -– I believe that's the term for the creation of sound effects, is crazy in French Cinema.
Every little sound seems to be amplified as if the characters now have special werewolf hearing. Whilst the rustle of clothing or pad of bare feet bring important detail to a scene, in French films the mix seems to be ratcheted pretty high in favour of the effects.

Also -– French cinema seems more fixated on class than British. Everyone is either an underclass, hand-to-mouth type as in La Haine or Read My Lips, or they are so upper middle class that the day-to-day details of food and shelter are neither here nor there, leaving ample opportunity to analyse tortured souls and hearts.

But my, French cinema can be deliciously good.
The Page Turner is a good example. Ostensibly a film about pitiful middle class anxiety, it is full of strong, subtle performances and biting moments not without a little ambiguity.
A revenge film at heart, it works well at not succumbing to the cliches and has a pleasingly definite end point where many other directors would be tempted to meander on for another fruitless half hour or so.

If you can get past the initially stifling middle class milieu of featureless clothes and the ubiquitous country house then you'’ll find a true gem.

Lovely jubbly, as they say in Paris.

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Death Note started life in a Japanese manga strip, became very popular and spawned two live action movies and a currently running anime series. Judging by the fuss surrounding it, it may well become the next crossover hit to come to the West, following in the footsteps of Naruto and Bleach.

In some other dimension, the Death Gods live. One of them is tired of their bored existence, and drops a Death Note to earth.
The Death Note allows the owner to kill anyone they like, provided they know thier face and name, and that they write their name in the book. After writing the name in the book, they have 40 seconds to write a cause of death, otherwise the victim will perish from a heart attack. Should they write a cause of death, they then have 6 minutes and 40 seconds to embellish the details of this demise.
These conditions are from memory, but in effect it results in an interesting little morality play.
The person to find the death note is a boy in high school, top of his class, who on finding that the book is genuine sets about a carefully planned campaign of killing of criminals.
In time, the police notice the connections of dozens of convicts and suspects keeling over and begin a manhunt for the one dubbed 'Kira' by the media. The advantages of the Death Note mean it's nigh on impossible for the police to even know where to start, and that's where a mysterious figure known only as 'L' steps in, a world reknowned master detective who works via a similarly anonymous middle man.
It's at this point that the series becomes a game of cat and mouse, as Kira and L both try and use their considerable cunning to reveal the other's identity.

Death Note is a decent show based on an interesting premise, so I hope the plotting stays tight rather than degenerating into the vagueness of 100+ shows like Bleach and Naruto.
Thankfully as it is based on thought more than action this is unlikely to happen.

Just remember that you heard it here first. Probably.

A smithering of lyme

A little self-promotion on the eve of Bonfire Night as my review of Kekexili has made the front page. Read it here.

Please check out the links to the right, nice things are there and the unexplained ones are blogs, We Can Rebuild Him is particularly new so be gentle.

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Last week I took it upon myself to go see one the 50 surprise screening that took place due to the London Film Fest. Every year they put on a film that is a surprise until the curtains open on the night, and every year (as far as I've heard) it is a fairly high-profile English language release.
Seeing films in general appeals to me, so the prospect of a surprise new film lights a little flame in me, and this year I had a much better chance getting tickets as the thing usually sells out before the tickets go public.

So Sunday night I made my way to Hampstead, to the very poncey but comfy Everyman to get my surprise.
I knew it would be in English, and that it would be something due out within the next couple of months. The giddy anticipation!
Anthony Minghella, the writer and director of some stuff walked out to the front, made a little speech about the BFI and how it wanted to bring film to the people and suchandsuch, and told us that even he didn't know what the film was going to be.
Of he went, the lights dimmed, the curtains drew back and the projector whirred into life.

Starter for Ten.

Starter for Ten.

Starter for fucking Ten.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a shit film. It's not even bad. What it is, though, is the dictionary definition of predictable.
All the genre staples of a coming of age film are there, taking in student life, a bit of comedy, a bit of romance. You can see everything coming from such a long way off it's like star gazing.
The acting is solid for the most part, the dialogue is okay despite the fact that you already know the gist before delivery and the mid-80s period detail is spot on, although this is rubbed in a little too hard when you have a new pop song on the soundtrack every 16 seconds so they can presumably release two volumes of the soundtrack.
It ambles along quite genially and you never really wish it ill will, but I personally rolled my eyes throughout when it became clear that they'd not tried anything new. It's a textbook case of the successful British film, shuffling along a well-worn path with a zombie-like gait, offering up the cozy and expected and no doubt it will be showered with undeserving praise as it reaps the dollars from the Americans cooing at the quaint English people and their shambling bashfulness.
If it weren't for the likes of Shane Meadows, Pawel Pawlikowski and the Pegg/Wright team I might be more accepting of the turgid beigeness of a lot of Brit flicks, but I know that it doesn't have to be that way.

Such is life.

A snape, a knave, a jackalope

There is a palpable difference in the light in London. The weak, dishwater rays that seem too timid for the shadows often make the city feel worse than it is, and whilst there is night there is never dark in the outdoors, a thin layer of orange sodium burning everywhere like an abandoned level of hell, fires smouldering.
It's only through travel that you realise that it's not like this everywhere, my eyes now only accustomed to a narrow range of light.

Night time oranges and daytime greys are the colours that define London.

The grime and the botch-job DIY of this city that has mutated over hundreds of years is perfectly captured in Children of Men.
It's a London instantly recognisable and yet different, as if fast-tracked down one particularly nasty future alley.
In its science fiction it is credible, all performances solid and robust and a storyline that's depressingly believable enough.

But it is the direction that makes the film, the way it is told and what you see. The details that are revealed rather than explained, the over-the-shoulder viewpoint in some scenes making you feel that you are literally part of the story.
It's this inclusion that lends the film its weight, and led to me fighting back the tears for the first time in a long time because of a film.

Some criticisms of the film I've read are the lack of explanation, but it is key to the way the film unfolds. Especially in a sci-fi setting, it's incredibly jarring to have everything explained to you in such a way that all the people living in the world aren't used to it themselves. Exposition is a tricky task, and in Children of Men the problem is handled admirably. Do not listen to these people and their complaints, for they are wrong and they inflate the ranks of the damned.

I'm not going to go into any more detail, just know that you have to see it, and see it soon. You may not thank me as it if nothing else is fully deserving of the term harrowing, but you will have seen the best film this year.

London seems to be a good place for dystopian futures, it seems.

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Back in happy land, I hope you took the opportunity to see brand new South Park. Whilst the second conspiracy episode of this half-season wasn't as good, the last two have excelled, Cartman regaining some authorataih and Satan holding a party on Earth.
Watch niiicce and Biggie Smalls...Biggie Smalls...Biggie Smalls!.

Still don't believe me? Vote or die

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Say hello to Brown Food

Bleary

Eight on a Saturday morning is when you aim to be digging up roads, no? I don't have double-glazing, so they may as well be digging up my floorboards.
Joy and rapture!

Luckily this little video cheered me up a bit : click it
Otherwise I would be thunderous and murderous and stuff.

Last week I saw Snakes on a Plane. It was an average movie, a little predictable, a little amusing, so just as well that it cost me £1.50 at the Prince Charles. See the film was okay, but that wasn't the only performance I was party to.

A little man, very reminiscent of the gentleman above, was sitting in front of me. The warning signs came before the film started, with the man leaving his seat for the lobby, returning to one a row or two behind me before ending up back in front of me, in time for the screening to begin. Then joy of joys, I discovered that he was A Whacko.
Whenever anything mildly exciting happened on screen, this man would jump around in his seat, sling his arm up over his head, let out little yelps or scratch the back of his head in an uncomfortably vigorous manner. It all culminated when he peaked in his excitement and ended up actually talking to a character in the film, warning them of impending snake.
Luckily I was watching Snakes on a Plane so it wasn't deeply involving or remotely complicated, but I don't think it's too much to ask for for my fellow film goers to sit down and shut the fuck up. I'm not in America, I don't want whooping and hollering with my movie.

It kind of makes a mockery of that ad they show nowadays, trying to get you to avoid pirate DVDs and visit the cinema instead because of the experience, when that experience involves suffering the bovine populace mindlessly thwarting your simple desire to enjoy a film.
Cinemas that now charge more than the film will cost to own, double the usual price for drinks and snacks, people turning up about 15 minutes into the movie (and about half an hour after the advertised show times - what the fuck are these people thinking? If they don't want to see it why go at all?!), people deciding that the best place to meet up with friends and catch up is where others want to watch a film, the repetition for months on end of the same run of boring, offensive adverts (the mayfly doesn't use his day of life to the max, it is his lifetime, his perception will be totally different), cinemas insisting on allocating seats when the show is less than half full, and the aforementioned human jackanapes who see fit to inflict their social maladjustments on the long-suffering public.

Why can't the adverts be as good as this - clicky? Or this - clickclick? I'd rather see those a dozen times than another horrific attempt at selling cars.

To counterbalance the unfortunate cinematic experiences, one week at my new job and I feel like I belong there.
Which is nice.

To close, two decent links to arty images - clouds and amazing paper artwork.

Isaac Hayes never bought me a drink

Click this link to see the new South Park episode, beginning the second half of season ten.
You should do this because South Park is fantastic and the best Western animation of the past couple of decades.
Feral crudity mixed with razor-sharp and last-minute cultural observations, it's a crime that they stopped releasing the DVDs in the UK from season 4.

Then look at this picture:

It's an image from the upcoming 'next gen' iteration of the video game series Rampage. For those with a less than impressive versing in videogame history, Rampage was a game which allowed the player to adopt the persona of a person who for some reason mutated into an animal of Godzilla proportions so that you could then destroy buildings, eat people and knock police choppers out of the sky. Hailing from the mid-80s, it was a fairly basic 8bit game which was confined to a solitary screen - the newest version published by Midway will no doubt offer more freedom, better graphics and hopefully more in-depth gameplay.
It will also offer a wider choice of creatures to control, though as you can see from the screenshot above one of the characters seems to be a massive penis.

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Going back to the last entry, I wanted to add a bit more on the stylistic side of Fahrenheit 9/11.
Unsurprisingly it deals with the WTC tragedy of 2001 as part of the film, but I found it was dealt with with a surprising amount of subtlety. With all the related news items, documentaries and films that mention or focus on the event, the money shot of a plane strike inevitably features, but this film takes a different tack.
Using footage filmed at the scene, all we see are the reactions of people on the ground, dozens of people in shock, all looking to the sky as if sharing a mass religious experience. It's a touching choice that adds beauty to the documentary, and it's hard to decide if it is despite or because of the inclusion of shots of paper from the towers swirling in the air in a more affecting but obviously uncontrived version of the American Beauty 'bag scene'.

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Lots of the recent past has been about 'work'. I did an overnight shift for the first and hopefully last time last week, and it was a less than pleasant experience. Working from 8pm to 7 am, the night itself was okay, that mostly depends on the company, but it was the aftermath that did me.
Once again the reality of the idea of 'getting old' has hit me, as I remember the weekends a decade ago of partying through the night with little ill effect, severely contrasting with this week taking me two full days to try and feel normal again. And they were days off so heaven knows how I would have coped if I had to work too.
And then yesterday I left my old job after 9 years, finally having something else to go to in a week.
It's odd how panicky I don't feel, how I've almost completely accepted the situation in a no-skin-off-my-nose fashion. Of course it may be different next Sunday, but at the moment all I'm dreading is the commute of a 'normal' Monday-Friday 9-5.

I had a thing last night to say goodbye, and it was fantastic so thanks to everyone who made it.

Rounding off I'm going to link all my reviews to date as it's not obvious at first glance which are mine on the www.hkcinema.co.uk site, see how I think of you all?

Agitator, As Tears Go By, The Bodyguard, Bride With White Hair, Crying Fist, Gojoe, Hapkido, Hiruko the Goblin, The Little Norse Prince, My Kung Fu 12 Kicks, My Neighbours the Yamadas, Peace Hotel, Secret of Shaolin Poles, Seoul Raiders, She Shoots Straight, Silver, Sky Blue, Warrior King, Whisper of the Heart

The frustration of impotence

So I've just watched Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.
I'd originally put off seeing it when it was first released, partly out of the feeling of preaching to the converted (which, it has just occurred to me, makes no sense as a phrase. Preaching to the converted is the norm in most religions...), and partly out of a wariness brought about by the sustained dissection of Bowling for Columbine.
There were various accusations pertaining to the parts that seem to be insinuated or fabricated as opposed to documented, and I accepted these as the film as a whole got the message across and well - that the USA has a disproportional rate of gun related violence, guns are readily available and that the mainstream media scaremongers.

But in the run up to the release of Fahrenheit (after the post-Disney suppression) I'd read a lot about how the film suffered even more from events that were insinuated or just made up, so I gave it a miss. And I really shouldn't have.
There really isn't any actual content that is in dispute. The way the film is edited creates obvious bias, it's true, and whilst no documentary can be truly objective I don't think Moore ever set out to pretend this. And like I said, none of the facts can be disputed - they can be argued against just as I can argue that you're not really reading this, but you are.
It is a fact that the 2001 US election was fixed, that Al Gore was the elected president of the USA. Sure, elections are rigged the world over, but rarely do they impact so deeply into the lives of people outside the respective countries.
It's a fact that the Bush family has a long business history with the oil industry and the Bin Laden family, and that Bush and his administration have personally gained from their foreign policy decisions. It is a fact that they knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and that Iraq did not pose a threat to its neighbours at that time. And so on, and on and on.

And whilst we can ruminate on what could have been, that Clinton was often little better in his little Democratic blip in the last 25 years and that there's every possibility that Gore could have turned out as a spineless, money-grabbing war monger, but this brings me to the other documentary I saw two weeks back. An Inconvenient Truth.

It shows evidence that Gore has actually dedicated at least a small amount of time in at least the last 3 decades into thinking about the state of this planet that we all have to share, which seems a huge amount more than Bush has managed. Again, an Inconvenient Truth can be accused of preaching to the converted. But again the facts are undeniable. Our actions are having a direct and massive effect, changing the climate of our planet and everything we've come to take for granted.
It's not some risk like smoking, where you have the possibility of smoking every day of your life and living to 90 without dying of anything smoking related.
Climate change is happening now, the temperature of Earth is rising now, the weather systems have already been affected and even if we all stop contributing to global warming today, completely, the temperature will still keep rising for some decades.
This isn't something that we can ignore, that we can hope goes away, pretend isn't happening. Everybody needs to act now, and the film does a fantastic job getting it across, from what's happening and how, what will happen if we do nothing and what we can do to change.
And like Gore says, it doesn't require a massive effort on our part, we don't have to stop being the ipod generation, it just takes little steps, lots of little steps that all add up.
Click to visit the site and do at least one thing to help yourself

I really hate sounding like some git trying to get people to join a cause, but this is ridiculous, it's not something we can ignore, it's not homelessness, vivisection, extinction, it's going to affect the whole planet and everyone on it. True, many of us will be dead before it gets stupendously bad, so why worry?
Just look at the site and change your lightbulb to an energy saving one. And put a jumper on now it's getting cold, you don't need the heating just yet.

But...
despite all the talk of Gore et al, saying that denial usually leads straight to despair - once you accept there's something wrong you feel powerless even though you're not - I still do feel that impotence.
Is it any wonder that I feel a sense of powerlessness when in my adult life I've seen the President of the US get in power despite losing the election, and my own country going to war despite hundreds of thousands of people actually taking to the streets, not just tutting and moaning but getting up, going out and trying to show that this particular thing is unacceptable. So what can we do to make a difference? I guess we just have to take a little step for ourselves, and hope that everyone else joins in.
So this is my bit to try and get other people to join in - just do something, change that frigging lightbulb, I know you can afford it and if you really can't then tell me and I'll get you one for Christmas.

And we're STILL in fucking Iraq! It's obscene!
The war that was "won" years ago is now worse than ever, and not only that but some reports suggest that incidents of torture are worse than under Saddam (clicky).
So, there were no WMDs, Iraqis are worse off, US and UK soldiers are dying every week not to mention the men and women left crippled and having to deal with out labyrinthine disability benefit system, poor fuckers.

Yeah, so to stop this degenerating into a rant, get yourself a fucking energy saving lightbulb and dig those jumpers out of the wardrobe.