The Cutprice Guignol

May 17, 2014

Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter One

Synopsis: We meet Anastasia Steele, prick extraordinaire, as she carries out an interview with Christian Grey for her sick roommate. No, literally, that’s all that happens. It’s diabolically boring.

Christian Grey Describe-O-Meter: The scribbles on the copy of my book imply that Christian Grey being described as looking “above all, polite” was my favourite; however, after a brief re-read, I noticed that there were four references to his “long index finger” in the handful of pages he appeared in the book. This conjured up the image of a guy with normal hands hindered by one huge, flappy pointing finger that he struggled to control as it careered waywardly around the room. I preferred this.

Because it reminded me of this.

Ana, A History: What struck me most about this chapter was that Ana Steele seems to have been written as a complete wanker deliberately. On page two, she “ignores a pang of unwelcome sympathy” for her bedridden best friend (Kate) who’s so ill she’s unable to conduct an interview we discover she’s spent months arranging. Then she proceeds to ask a series of ridiculously rude questions to a man who she’s apparently so in awe of she feels “strange muscles in [her] belly clench suddenly” when he looks at her (by the way, EL James, stomach =/= arousal).

First off, she suggests that his millions of dollars and twenty-thousand people strong company is down to luck alone, then tells him he’s a control freak. After that, she proceeds to ask if he’s gay when he says he doesn’t want a family. C’mon, Ana, I liked Kate! Even if you have a wierd desire to watch her suffer, try not to fuck up an amazing opportunity that she created for herself, okay? She also mentions that she’d prefer to be reading “a classic British novel”, which holds the double win of making me hate this book for being too vague to name a single classic British novel, yet specific enough to know I would eviscerate Ana with my words if I ever met her. That’s talent.

This kid has the right idea.

For the man who awoke dormant menopausal libidos across the planet, Christian Grey is outrageously shit. I get the notion of a standoffish sexual hero-treat ’em mean if you must-but his dialogue seems to consist of really inappropriate sexual hints (after all, Ana is a student at the university he benefits) and indecipherable statements. Viz;

“We can’t eat money, Ms Steele, and there are too many people on this planet who don’t have enough to eat.”

“That sounds very philanthropic. Is it something you feel passionate about? Feeding the world’s poor?”

He shrugs noncommittally.

“It’s good business sense.”

Aside from being atrociously written (can you shrug with certainty?), this is pretty much left as it is. He isn’t asked to explain that strange final comment, and the attempts to make him seem like a sensual villain with a heart of gold come off as a teenager wearing his fringe over his eyes to seem mysterious.

After a brief goodbye, during which Ana actually gasps when he touches her-

-Ana sneaks in one last reference to his long index fingers and is mercifully on her way, never to see this wretchedly boring creature again. Until Chapter two, that is. Tune in next Friday!

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April 11, 2014

The Life and Times of Adrian Mole: A Tribute to Sue Townsend

Sometimes, things affect you in a way that you never expected they would. I forget this up until the moment it happens again, and I was sadly reminded of it when I read the news of Sue Townsend’s passing.

I’m afraid this won’t be funny, or cruel, or cynical, because I can’t be. She is-was- a hero of mine- a true genius with boundless imagination for the mundane and buckets of anecdotal eccentricity (Stephen Monahan, who played Adrian Mole, recounted his first meeting with Townsend wherein she inspected him at great length to make sure he “was ugly enough” to play Adrian. He was.). Also, she was a funny woman writer, and I need more of those around purely from a cynical standpoint-they make me look great.

And I don’t know what kind of person this makes me, but I was equally sad to think that Adrian Mole had died with her. For those who don’t know, Townsend had written the diaries of fictional loser Adrian Mole since 1982, following him from his early teens, through to work, marriage, kids, divorce, and the labor Government. She was still writing his latest diary when she passed, and so, with her death, we lose the entire world she’d created and the masterful characters that populated it.

I started reading the series when I was twelve on holiday-my Harry Potter CD broke and Mum needed something to distract me with. Since then, I doubt two months have passed without me at least flicking through one of the books and realizing how-dreadfully- I can relate to the whingey money woes and depressing work responsibilities of the later novels. I’ve grown up with Adrian Mole, and everyone who surrounds him-Townsend’s genius was not in making the everyday outrageous, but making the outrageous everyday. Everyone Adrian encountered was someone me or someone I know has met, and Adrian himself-the ultimate British everyman-reflected every facet of life, from pubescence to adulthood, with startling clarity. However ridiculous it got, it was still ultimately real and painfully funny in equal measure.

And, most importantly, these are characters I see myself in. I’m Pandora, Adrian’s unrequited love, a cynical career woman constantly showing “the most leg, cleavage, and teeth”, I’m Pauline, Adrian’s chain-smoking mother who hides hair dye down the back of the fridge so no-one will know she’s not a natural redhead, I’m Rosie, his pointedly rebellious, crude and savage little sister-and most importantly I’m Adrian, the perpetual teenager who woke up one morning and decided he was an intellectual. So for that, Sue Townsend, thank you-there’ll be another star in heaven tonight. Having a fag.

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April 3, 2014

How They Ruined How I Met Your Mother

I’ve been watching CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother for more than five years now; what started off as a slightly clever dramady turned into one of the sitcom mainstays of American television, running for nine years as it followed the story of five friends trying to make it in New York. No, not friends-don’t mention Friends. The people behind this show have never heard of Friends. They didn’t know what that show was about, though maybe they caught a few episodes when the TV was on in the background. But HIMYM is nothing like Friends, when you think about it-for a start, there were SIX people on Friends. They could go on, but there’s no need, as there is literally not one similarity between their original creation and Friends. Not one.

Either way, the show came to an end on Monday night after nine seasons and many ups and downs-both in the lives of the central characters and the quality of the show. But I stuck with it and it became a regular in my weekly viewing-funny, occasionally sad, a little surreal and ultimately predictable. Told in a framing device where the central character recounts the story of how he met his children’s mother to his bemused offspring, it played off fore-knowledge, flashback and unreliable narration for pathos. And after watching the finale, it’s safe to say I’m furious with how the show chose to throw nine years back in it’s audience’s face while prancing around blowing raspberries and stealing their cigarettes.

I’ll try to avoid spoilers here, but suffice to say the show indulged in a spectacular amount of flashforwards for it’s final hour-and in doing so managed to undermine the relationships they spent so long building, both this season and for nine years. Much of the show revolved around main character Ted’s relationship with (female) Robin-we knew from the off that she was not the mother, but Ted frequently found himself drifting back into the fantasy that she might be The One. Eventually, he began to slowly, painfully let go of that belief and open himself to someone different-someone, probably, better. A brave and interesting way to handle a will they/won’t they, it was believable and felt like an earned growth of character as he finally let her go for the last time.

I think what makes a great sitcom finale is the idea that life goes on. Friends and Frasier did it best; you got the sense that everyone’s lives were going to continue, but you just wouldn’t watch them living them any more. How I Met Your Mother lay everything out with no room for argument-here is exactly what happened to everyone for the rest of their lives. If you don’t like it-tough. There’s no room for speculation. If we want to repeal character development, major relationships, and key plot points, we will. There was a distinct feeling on the ending being decided on years in advance-and it was, with some character’s reactions having to be recorded within the first few years of the show’s inception- and the writers found themselves stuck with it, attempting to steer the careering plot lorry away from the edge of a cliff they knew they couldn’t avoid.

Some people have argued that by making unexpected (and unpopular) choices, the writers have moved HIMYM towards some semblance of reality. What they forgot was that we don’t come here for reality-we come here for glossy fiction. You can’t feed us exotic eclairs for almost nine years then act surprised when we spit out soggy toast and margarine-nine seasons of charming, witty fiction matched with an hour of sad, depressing, unlikely and unguessable stabs at reality left many viewers (including me) feeling cheated. The finale was not the ending to the show I’d been watching for five years-so I’ve decided to erase the ending from my memory and enjoy it at it’s-entirely unrealistic-best.

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March 17, 2014

Let’s talk about 50 Shades in a calm and rational way.

This is fucking superb, and sums up my problems with 50 Shades of Pish more succintly than I ever could.

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March 9, 2014

Pure Mental: Madness on TV

Recently, me and the consort demolished two separate shows in the space of a week-Hannibal, which I reviewed earlier here, and cult anime Neon Genesis Evanglelion. Both shows are brilliant in their own right (I consider NGE, which was obviously my pick, one of the best things I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve seen shirtless pictures of James Marsters, so…), and both are worth watching if you feel like a big binge of cleverness, and, in the case of Hannibal, many beautiful men. But I digress-what struck me about these shows when held together is how different they seem on the surface but how damn similar they are on closer inspection.

I should, at this point, probably outline what Neon Genesis Evangelion is: an anime series from the late nineties that is outwardly about giant robots fighting space monsters, but REALLY concerns the importance of individuality and the nature of personal madness. Now, the best way I can describe this series is by my brother’s reaction to the ending. As the credits rolled on the final episode, he shut down his computer, turned off his lights, and climbed into bed with the covers pulled up to his chin with a mixture of bemusement and mild upset on his face. It’s really fucking strange. Hannibal is similarly bizarre; focused more on the slow but unrelenting descent into madness that FBI criminal profiler Will Graham suffers as his mind becomes enveloped by a particularly traumatic case and the machinations of psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (played by Mads Mikklesen, a man so angular his face resembles a tremendously handsome Ikea shelf set). They might seem wildly different on the surface, but they do have one important thing in common: madness.

Now, I don’t claim to have ever been “mad” in the ways that these shows depict, and I’m thankful for that. But both myself and many people close to me have suffered from mental health problems in one way or another, so I’m always interested in how these sorts of things are depicted in fiction; either we get the sanitized, slightly glamorous version of insanity (you rarely see, for example, a character sitting around, depressed, binge-eating crap food and watching one episode of Top Chef over and over because they can’t bloody take it in), or the one-off descent into madness that’s cured by the love of a good woman/man/Vampire Slayer (I apologize for the Spike references; the consort is sitting next to me watching Angel as I write and I’m trying to distract myself from how shit it is by reminding us all that James Marsters exists).

But the way these two shows handle madness is very alike. In neither case is the madness in any way attractive or aspirational-it’s by turns irritating, harrowing, irrational, debilitating and frustrating. In Hannibal, you become lost in the woozy, violent half-dream world Will Graham finds himself in, and in NGE you grow to sympathise with characters who suffer through their problems because they have no other choice. There’s very little swooning around mantelpieces and taking to beds-in some cases, you have no choice but to carry the fuck on and treat mental illness akin to cystitis-pissy, a little painful, and constantly re-occurring. One of the final scenes of NGE features the main character being told the man the fuck up and do what he knows he has to do because, even though doing it seems like the absolute hardest thing in the world, it’s the right thing. This is the same voice I hear in my head (in a non-mad way) when I start sleeping for sixteen hours a day and refuse to change out of my comfy Batman t-shirt.

Both shows also use a very distinctive visual style to depict madness. I think this is worth mentioning because madness (and particularly depression) is often nothing to do with the world around you changing, but rather to do with your perception of the world. In NGE, characters are mostly seen isolated and lonely even when they’re surrounded by people who truly want the best for them; in Hannibal, Will is plagued by visions of animals and people he knows can’t exist. In both cases, little has actually changed, but the way we see these events through these character’s eyes lets us know that for them, everything is different. Madness is in the way we see the world, less what the world does to us.

Don’t get me wrong; many shows do a great job of depicting madness. And I am in no position to really judge the right or wrong way to do it, because I’m neither mad nor involved in making television (unlike, say, Gillian McKeith or Jeremy Kyle, who clearly cover both bases). But something that struck me about these shows was how satisfied and drawn in I was in both cases. It’s rare to discover shows that examine mental illness in a way that anyone with mental illness will appreciate, but these two definitely hit the nail on the-schizophrenic, depressed, delusional, self-harming, bipolar, OCD, disassociate, and just plain nuts-head.

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February 24, 2014

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Girls

Now, let’s get this straight. Girls is by no means an awful show. In fact, it’s one of the more entertaining comedies to come out of America in the last three years. At no point during my binge-watching of this polarizing sitcom was I actively not enjoying the brainchild of the supremely talented Lena Dunham, and what follows is mainly a reaction to the astonishingly passionate reception the show’s garnered over it’s three-season run. point-by-point, shall we?

It’s Derivative as Shit

Now, literally any show that follows the lives of twenty-somethings in New York can be considered original. That’s just a fact. With the existence of Friends, Will & Grace, Gossip Girl, How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls, etc etc ad finitum, no show is going to truly break new ground with this premise as it’s been gone over a thousand times in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily- New York holds a certain allure to film and television that almost no other city holds. That’s not my issue, though-my issue is the fact that Girls is Sex and The City.

The first episode shows one of the lead characters with a poster for the SATC movie on her wall; this pale nudge-nudge attempt to deflect attention from the almost unbelievable amount of crap these shows have in common. Like Carrie, lead character Hannah (played by Dunham) is a writer with a chequered sexual history and a gay best friend. The other three girls fall more or less into their respective roles- uptight Marnie works at an art gallery and describes herself as a serial dater (Charlotte), Soshanna is an ambitious and romantically reticent with a brilliantly logical mind (Miranda), and Jessa is promiscuous, straight-talking sexual free spirit (Samantha). Now, just one of these similarities you might have gotten away with- you have to consider the us of archetypes, after all-but there are various other plot points peppered throughout the series that stuck in my proverbial craw- one character dating an older, aloof artist who’s really kind of a dick, the destructive on/off relationship between the lead character and a man with a compelling nose, and the issue-of-the-week episodes (abortion, STDs, break-ups, etc) make the whole suspicious similarity thing a bit too, I don’t know, fucking clear to anyone with a mind. Now, I’m not defending SATC here-a 7/10 show at it’s best- but credit where credit’s due, Dunham. Subconsciously or consciously, you’ve created a Muppet-Babies version of Michael Patrick King’s adored series, but with nudity squared. And that brings me too…

The Nudity is Not Groundbreaking

Now, we’re comfortably past the point where seeing tits on TV leaves everyone clutching their pearls and swooning into the nearest mantlepiece, so it’s not the mere act of nudity that’s been deemed “groundbreaking” in Girls. No, it’s that we see Lena Dunham-a basically normal-looking woman-with her clothes off! Now, I’m all for trying to break down the destructive image that media presents of people at every juncture, and showing a normal person naked without trying to smooth out all the jiggly bits is undoubtedly a damn good thing to do (and a brave choice for Dunham). But the whole furore about it is undermined by the fact that every single other character on the show-man or woman-is inestimably buff, well-groomed, and up to the physical standards we’ve come to expect from people we deem worthy to point a camera at. With numerous accusations of black tokenism in the show, I’m surprised no-one has brought up the other blatant token in the show; the token normal.

It’s Also Just Not that Groundbreaking

Many people have commented on the realistic depictions of post-college, pre-family life-the disappointment, the financial difficulty, the fallible but hilarious female leads. But you know what? I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen women struggling, being unglamorous and still remaining stonkingly funny at the same time in Spaced, Black Books, Fawlty Towers. I’ve seen life as a young adult in Fresh Meat, Coupling and Peep Show (interestingly, all British shows). I don’t find Dunham’s creation to be anything new- a decent riff on an old theme, no doubt, but by no means nobly breaking down barriers for realistic, less-than-perfect women in comedy or the brutal realities of real life as a young adult.

And the presentation of characters who are often unlikable and make bad choices in almost every fucking episode (revving up for a rant here) is nothing new, either; in fact, it’s far easier to create unlikable characters who we cringe at than it is to create bastards we really relate to. Maybe my vision on Girls is somewhat blurry because I’ve never been a young adult striking out on my own in New York City for the first time, but that shouldn’t be a problem-characters and situations can transcend, and in Girls they simply don’t. It’s like watching a life I don’t want to lead starring people I don’t want to be doing things I don’t want to do.

Other than that, decent stuff.

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February 17, 2014

Robocop (2014)

Now I don’t have to bother with it at all. Thanks Cameron!

Cameron's Pit of Terror

Opening scenes of a film are rather important; setting the first impression for a whole audience. Many films go for a big powerful action scene, others for a thoughtful, perhaps shocking beginning introducing tone or characters or setting or a combination of these. At any rate it should give us some idea of what we’re spending our next two hours watching. So Robocop begins, with the MGM logo mysteriously silent. Suddenly someone starts making vocal helicopter noises in time to the lion’s iconic roars, moving on to other humming, gargling sounds. It is revealed to be Samuel L. Jackson producing these sounds, warming up for a live broadcast. He turns to camera, stopping the noises and starts his report. Even when a film has a generic or otherwise underwhelming opening I find myself contentedly watching if nothing else, but at this point I could so happily have stood up and…

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January 24, 2014

It’s Always Sick in Philadelphia

A good orgasm is like a good orgasm. The physical reaction can’t be recreated in any other way (except maybe eating prawn cocktail crisps) and are vitally individual to each person. There are some experiences and events that are simply incomparable to anything else, and there are so few things that aren’t moderately universal. With literally everything shared online, next no to phenomenon, cultural, social, or otherwise, is individual to any one group any more. One of the most important parts of a person, in my eyes, is the little things that are solely theirs; and by far the one I value most in a sense of humour. And I believe I may have found the people with possibly the most wildly creative, surreal and, most importantly, one-of-a-kind sense of humour in the world: Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day, Rob McElhenny and Glenn Howerton, also known as the main cast and creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

A basic sitcom premise-four friends own and work in a bar in Philly-quickly evolved into being one of the most shockingly unpleasant and consistently hilarious shows on television. The real genius lies in the characters- selfish and shrill Dee, insurmountably disturbed but cheek-tuggingly cute Charlie, half-manipulative, half-blindingly thick Mac, and psychopath Dennis. Many, many shows have tried to create something dark and edgy and boundary-pushing (the only one that has succeeded on this level, and for the same reason, is League of Gentlemen), but their first mistake is making the characters even vaguely likable. While most sitcoms will try to deal with innocent-ish characters battered by a bizarre and incomprehensible world, It’s Always Sunny presents a world that’s constantly horrified and confused by the gang’s exploits.

While similair things have been attempted in sketch shows, these characters work on a long-term basis (nine seasons, no less) because we know what awful, awful people they are. We know the lengths they’ll go to, and we’ve seen them go further-and this works on the double stakes of managing to slightly ground the majority on the wild exploits they wind up on (highlights include: performing an impromptu and highly destructive Extreme Home Makeover on a bewildered Spanish family, kidnapping and torturing a reviewer who fails to heap praise on the bar, applying boot polish to a baby in order for it to have an illustrious career as a latino child actor) because that’s the kind of terrible, terrible people their characters are. They make me want to kill myself in a wonderful way.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s just a funny show. Not since I discovered Community and heard Angela Bisset deliver the line “white-ass cracker bitch” in AHS have I laughed so hard at the wonderfully engrossing world they’ve created in Philadelphia (like all great comedies, the cast of supporting characters are genius creations-look out for the stomach-churning MacPoyle family). Yes, it’s sick, surreal, horrible and shouty, but it’s also one of the most consistently well-written, well-performed and tight half-hours of comedy you’ll find anywhere in the world right now. Cheers to that.

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January 9, 2014

World War Bun

With the last season of The Great British Bake-Off nothing but a distant memory, I’ve been grappling around for another competitive baking show to while away the hours. And I thought I’d found it in Cupcake Wars, an long-running American show in which professional bakers battle it out to create cupcakes for a glitzy event-sort of Masterchef: The Professionals meets Glee. Perfect, eh? Well, no.

To start, we’ve got the host. Now, I’ve watched about seven episodes of this nonsense and I couldn’t for the life of me actually give you his name: turns out he’s Justin Willman, enigma. Some casual research reveals he broke both his arms as a child trying to ride a bike while on rollerblades (brilliant), is a magician (superb), and presumably has a twisted fetish for presenting low-stakes gameshows in his spare time (as well as Cupcake Bores, his credits include Last Cake Standing and the momentously hilarious Scrabble Showdown). We can only hope that he’s created some elaborate illusion of himself and sent it to daytime TV, laughing all the way to the magic bank.

Anyway, Willman is cursed with both an impossibly terrible script and a surgical lack of charm; his witty comments basically amount to “A man walks into a bar…cupcakes” or “Knock knock…frosting”. His only use is explaining the self-explanatory rules of the game and looking simultaneously slightly inhuman and infuriatingly like someone else you can’t quite remember.

If Willman is a charisma vaccumn, the judges are a positive black hole of likability. First, there’s the magnificent Florian Bellanger, co-owner of Mad Mac Macaroons (get it?) and full claimant to a French accent last heard in a crass 1970s British sketch about the frog-eating continentals. Seriously, you can’t prepare yourself for how screamingly unbelievable this voice is; maybe that really is how he speaks English, but as long as people continue to laugh at me for sounding a bit plummy when I’m drunk I shall continue to piss myself every time Florian croons out another sentence about candied walnuts or fondant. A guest judge, usually linked tenuously with the event the winners will be catering, rolls up to plug their existence and attempt to say anything other than “huh, cupcakes” and nod sagely as Florian speaks entirely in vowels. They’re joined by someone so dramatically unremarkable that even this sentence about her isn’t worth writi

The contestants are delightfully predictable; you’ve got the down-to-earth, endearing ones (usually with the word “soul” in their team name; one went by the moniker of “Soul Cups” which, to me, sounded like a pair of especially spiritual tits), the shrieky, “You go girl!” chicks, the clear winners, and the overly-confident losers who end up setting their bun cases on fire or something equally unlikely.

As my closing statement, I’d like you to consider this: over the course of its entire run, Cupcake Wars has created somewhere in the realm of 231, 380 glorified afternoon teas. That’s enough to start World War Bun!

I’ll see myself out.

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December 18, 2013

The Last Action (Man) Hero

Hilarious wander through the landscape of early Action Man.

The Man Place

Action Man was, frankly, a bit of a disappointment. Like so many toys in the 1960s the reality didn’t live up to the intense anticipation and hype. Not that you would have guessed that when Palitoy launched their new “moveable fighting man” in the UK in 1966 to a fanfare of publicity.

Action Sailor. C’mon now, really?

The problem was that the initial launch included just three figures – Action Sailor, Action Soldier and Action Pilot. They were, without exception, crap and were rightly and justifiably shunned by most small boys. The box art for Action Sailor for example, showed a dramatic scene of a wetsuit clad figure complete with aqualung, dynamite and dagger. The actual contents were very different – Action Sailor came with just a blue shirt, boots, jeans and a perky white cap. Even to my nine year old eyes he looked worryingly like a bloke in jeans. In…

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