Harry Potter and the Redundant Exposition

Before I get into this, a couple of qualifiers: Firstly, I realise that I am not the target demographic for this series, and haven't been for a little over two decades; and secondly, I acknowledge these books were designed to be read with about a year between each, rather than hammering through the entire series in a couple of months.

However, them's the circumstances, so the best I can do is make you aware of that from the off.

And them's being the circumstances, my quick caption review of the original Harry Potter saga is...*pausefordramaticeffect*... It's alright.

In brief:

1. Philosopher's Stone is good, but the ending sucks
2. Chamber of Secrets is better, but only by merit of being Philosopher's Stone with a better ending
3. Prisoner of Azkaban is the same again with a smattering of character development
4. Goblet of Fire is the same again, only now stretched out to twice the length and with some forced character conflict.  Though it does have some awesome bits
5. Order of the Phoenix is where we're finally given something kinda new within the same old setting, but it is still just the same old setting, and things are really becoming a slog
6. Half Blood Prince is, again, far too long, but it does feel like the over-arching plot is finally going somewhere, and the climax is fantastic
7. Deathly Hallows wastes the awesome climax of Half Blood Prince by turning into a tedious camping trip for over half of its excessive length, but eventually turns the former's ending up to 11...irritatingly broken up with acres of exposition, then dying a death with a rubbish epilogue

A big issue I have with this entire series is the repetitiveness.  While the over-arching plots in each book are different - and actually very interesting in their own right - their connective tissue is exactly the same for the first four volumes: Harry's having a shitty time with the Dursleys until he goes to Hogwarts; Malfoy's a stereotypical cartoon bully; Snape's a petty prick; Dumbledore's unnecessarily ambiguous; there's a bit of quidditch, some holiday celebrations, someone says Expelliarmus, Harry faces down a big bad, and everyone goes home for the summer.

Even Order of the Phoenix, despite the introduction of Delores Umbridge, can't help settling into the same old beats once she's established.

Each book reminds me of an American TV show: intriguing plots marred by tedious and repetitive sub-plots there purely for the sake of dragging out proceedings.  In the first four books especially, there is maybe enough plot for two.

The characters are also problematic, mostly there to fill specific roles and enjoying zero development throughout the series.  The elder Dursleys are a perfect example of this: introduced from the off as reluctant and abusive guardians, they fulfil exactly the same role in exactly the same way throughout the entire series.  Dudley is the only one to enjoy any kind of development, but he gets so little page time, and is ejected from the story so abruptly, it's rendered moot.

Not all characters require development - McGonagall, for example, never wavers from her role as austere matriarch, but we're given enough glimpses of her underlying personality (especially during exchanges with Umbridge) that keep her interesting - but there are key characters throughout who supposedly have a huge impact on proceedings, but remain paper-thin.

Take James Potter: school bully, turned hero of The Order of the Phoenix.  Why the personality shift?  'He grew out of it'.  How'd he win over Lily?  'She saw something in him'.  What did he do that was so heroic?  'Stuff'.

For those who do get a spot of fleshing out, any 'development' or back-story is generally withheld for Dumbledore's annual exposition dump in the final act, when we're asked to retroactively sympathise with and/or be horrified by a character's behaviour.

I feel none suffer this more than Snape.  It's no spoiler at this point to say he risks life, limb and sanity in the course of spying on Voldemort for Dumbledore, attempting to atone for the guilt he feels over Lily Potter's death.  Noble as that may be, it doesn't change the fact that he's a prick.  For all his supposed love for Lily, it's evidently nothing compared to his loathing for her husband; a loathing so deep he projects it onto Harry, grudgingly protecting him when he has to, but otherwise going out of his way to make Lily's orphaned child's life a misery for six years.

That's not to say the character's necessarily bad - in fact he's quite entertaining, in a pantomime villain sort of way - I just struggle to reconcile the sympathy we're supposed to feel for him with the wilful arseholeishness he consistently demonstrates.  Heroic as he may ultimately prove to be, for the most part he's a petty, prissy and vindictive man-child.

Though when it comes to unsympathetic characters, few hold a candle to Harry himself.  Though he starts out wide-eyed and innocent, and his consistent mistakes can easily be put down to child-like naivety, by the time of Goblet of Fire it becomes apparent that he is immune to learning from his mistakes, and come Order of the Phoenix, it's difficult to see him as anything more than a thin-skinned, belligerent twat.  And this is no way helped by the praise constantly being heaped upon him by half the Order, insisting he's intuitive, intelligent and brave, while he's acting like a prickly, ignorant, highly-strung dipshit.  It might make for an accurate representation of a hormonal teenager, but a likeable protagonist he is not.

It would justify Snape's attitude towards him if Snape wasn't so petty in his attacks.

Fortunately. there are some strong characters amidst the weak.  Ron and Hermione are a good double act, and despite what Rowling has said on the matter, I thought their relationship developed well.  Ginny enjoys a solid arch from mute, love-struck ten year-old to boisterous, self-assured young woman with an adventurous and mischievous streak.  Even Fred & George - the perennial pranksters - grow from childish japery, to savvy business men.

None, however, see quite the development of Neville Longbottom.  From simpering mouse, to sword-wielding badass.  From frightened little flower with a love of botany, to laughing off torture and attacking people with man-eating off-cuts.  One second he's screaming in fiery anguish, and the next he's decapitating a giant snake.

"You think I've got time to stop and recover from all-consuming agony when there are still bitches to be spanked like an E.L. James heroine?  What do I look like, some kind of girly-girl?  I'm Neville Fucking Longbottom!  I came here to chew bubblegum and to kick ass.  And since I'm all out of bubblegum, the still beating hearts of my fallen enemies will have to do!"

Overall, I find myself frustrated with the series: The over-arching story isn't exactly original, but it is solidly handled in an at-the-time somewhat unique setting; and the plots of each novel are strong, and entertaining, when Rowling finally gets around to them.  Unfortunately, there is far too much chaff to wade through to get properly invested in the stories, the strongest characters are sidelined in favour of unlikable gits, there's far too big a reliance on exposition to fill the gaping holes in the plot, and I haven't seen so slack and unsatisfactory an ending since Bioware's first swing at Mass Effect 3.

I Don't Believe in Gravity...

In a previous post, I suggested the Big Bang may not have been the almighty universe-spawner it’s made out to be (if the universe did expand from a single point, wouldn’t it have done so in a uniform fashion, rather than bits of it clustering together to form galaxies and nebulae and whatnot?).  For the latest episode of Bollocks My Scientifically Illiterate Brain Comes Up With During Its Downtime, I’m going to attempt to explain why I don’t believe in gravity… Buckle up, kids!

As I said previously, such nonsense is not born from - or backed by - any cold, hard scientific knowledge; it is merely how I interpret what little I’ve picked up from what little I’ve read and watched on the subject.  This particular theory spawned from an interview Prof. Brian Cox gave with Robert Lewellyn, when he mentioned massless particles are always moving at the speed of light.  Not from any outside influence (unless one considers the (or a...) Big Bang the initial ‘push’); it’s simply what they do (28m22s):

(the whole thing’s worth watching)

One thing that has long bothered me in physics is how light appears to be affected by gravity.  Light bends around planets, supposedly diverted off course by the planet’s gravitational pull, but if the strength of gravitational attraction is determined by mass, how can something massless be affected by it at all?

It depends on how you view gravity.  The idea of gravity as an attracting force between objects of mass was initially (supposedly) put forward by Newton, and was the established view for centuries.  Then Einstein came along:



So the fact that light is always moving means it isn’t attracted to the object at all; it just follows the curve of the object’s impression in the fabric of space-time.

This also helps answer another query: A black-hole is an object of such dense mass that even light can’t escape its ‘pull’.  However, a black-hole is (at least initially) no more massive than the star that formed it - it’s simply more compact - so why is its gravitational pull apparently so much stronger, to the point that even light can’t escape?  Stars come in a range of sizes, from those smaller than our own sun, to those that could swallow our entire solar system as an appetizer.  And yet, no matter how big, all stars emit light, while, no matter how small, all black-holes swallow it.

Going back to the demonstration above, if you were to compact the weight in the centre of the sheet to a fraction of the size, it would sink just as deeply into the fabric (as it’s no lighter or heavier than it was), but the diameter of its impression would be smaller, and so its sides steeper.  In terms of a black-hole, its mass is packed so tightly that the ‘sides’ of its impression become sheer.  Therefore, regardless of how massive (or not) the core of the black-hole is, the shape of its impression on space-time causes anything caught in its ‘pull’ - no matter the speed it’s travelling, or its angle of approach - to be diverted directly to its centre.

But what about objects of mass themselves?  They certainly appear to be attracted to each other, but are they really?  What if, like light, everything in the universe is moving at its own pace, relative to its mass?

Well, everything is.  Supermassive black-holes drift through the cosmos, orbited by stars, that are orbited by planets, that are orbited by satellites; the smaller objects moving at the speed of the larger, plus their own orbiting speed.

So, if everything from light to black-holes is moving at its own pace, and its path through the universe is only interrupted when it hits the space-time impression of another object, then where does gravity come into it?

It’s like a shadow.  A shadow isn’t a tangible thing; it’s simply the effect of blocked light.  It seems to me that gravity isn’t an attracting force at all; it merely describes an object’s interaction with another object’s space-time impression.

In the next episode: what if light is space-time?

A Somewhat Late-In-The-Day Review

Way back when, in a bygone age, when kids were doing normal kids' stuff, like playing Playstation and Gameboy, and trading Pokémon, a brand new craze was sweeping the nation in the form of these clumps of pocket-sized paper, bound in cardboard and full of words, that made sentences, that made paragraphs, pages, chapters and, when taken in their entirety, whole stories!

Many, including myself, saw it as a bit of a fad, but one of these clumps in particular caused it to catch on.  It was about a scrawny little orphan with bad hair, living with his aunt and uncle, who finds out he's destined to be a great magician, and with the help of a doddery old man and a pair of companions - a stuck-up little princess a little more gung-ho than she seems, and a pragmatic boy just out for the easy life (though hiding a brave, loyal heart) - he takes on a powerful dark lord and ultimately triumphs through a mixture of ingenuity, luck and trusting in himself.

And that story was called Star Wars: A New Hope.

Or, at least, the remastered, cinematic release was: the papery version was titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (I assume for copyright reasons).

Two decades, a few more books, an entire film franchise, a theme park and now a stage production later (as well as a pound or two flooding the bank account of its author), and the thing is such a British institution, I figured it was about time I saw what all the fuss was about.

This isn't the first time I've picked up a Harry Potter.  I did give it a try back when it was just becoming a thing, but I failed to get beyond the first two pages.  When I was the target age for Potter, I was reading Roald Dahl, and I found Rowling's writing to be a bit too amateurish and patronising in comparison, but I was still a precocious, pretentious, high-strung teenager at the time, so what did I know?

Now that I'm a precocious, pretentious, high-strung adult, I find it easier to detach myself from those earlier misgivings and (paradoxically) appreciate her style for the audience it's aimed at.  In that, I find myself wishing Rowling had picked up her pen ten years earlier, though I also question whether her, frankly, higher-brow stories would have distracted me from the whimsical ease of The Witches, The BFG, George's Marvellous Medicine and The Twits.

The big problem with reviewing this now, of course, is it is such a part of our social identity, it's impossible to view it through the eyes of someone introduced to this world for the first time.  The Hogwarts Express left me at the station, with my nose in a copy of The Hobbit, long ago, and I've only ever been aware of it on the periphery; observing its growing popularity, cultural integration, and critical and public acclaim as one would the impact of the Tomb Raider franchise from the perspective of someone who believes entertainment peeked around the time of E.T., and even I was well aware of what 'Muggle', 'Golden Snitch' and 'The Boy Who Lived' meant.

Still, outside of someone twice my age, who thinks fantasy's for five year-olds, I'm about as detached and objective as it gets, so here goes...

It's rather good.

I'm not going to bother regurgitating the plot as those who don't already know are either too young to be reading this (go to bed!), too old to care or haven't yet evolved far enough up the ladder to understand the concept of language; suffice to say, these days at least, it isn't particularly original.  However, it is worth noting that, back in 1997, the concept of a child of destiny taken from his mundane, everyday existence to learn about his true power at a school for other gifted youngsters was a tad rare (lest it was run by a bald, crippled mind-reader with severe split-personality issues).

The writing itself is breezy and whimsical, though while clearly aimed mainly at 8-12 year-olds, there's enough colour, depth and darkness to engage older readers.  It moves at a good pace, has enough twists to keep the narrative involving, and is set in a well-constructed universe just close enough to reality to be relatable, while still incorporating every fantasy trope under the sun.  In fact, one of the biggest strengths of the novel is how many of these tropes are effortlessly subverted by their mere presence in this particular world; whether it be giants getting tipsy with goblins in their favourite local, or the arrival of ancient, mystical centaurs getting on a character's nerves because they're too distracted by the state of the planets to answer a simple question.

What I found most surprising was how well the ending worked.  It has been many years since I watched the film, and I wasn't particularly engaged with it when I did, but I do remember the ending encompassing all of my worst fears about the franchise.

*SPOILER ALERT* (for the ancient cave dwellers among you who might not know)
After going through a bunch of trials to reach the final confrontation, Harry looks in a mirror, finds he actually has the plot's MacGuffin in his pocket, and the bad-guy dissolves on contact with our 'hero' because of his love for his parents.

Blech!

I found it so sickeningly saccharine and toothless, any vague interest that may have lingered to see how this thing played itself out was wiped clean from my mind.

I can't say whether my reaction was due to my already dismissive attitude and fleeting interest at the time, or simply poor film-making (I'd have to re-watch it to find out), but I found that same ending as played out in the book far more satisfying.  As far as I recall, the final confrontation in the book is far more drawn-out and graphic than it was in the film, ramping up the excitement, as well as giving a stronger sense of catharsis when it was all over.  And Dumbledore's explanation for why everything played out as it did seemed to make more sense, and didn't feel at all (or as much) like a Dues Ex Machina ending, as the film's did.

My one concern about the series going forward is the length of each subsequent novel.  Philosopher's Stone was a good length; packed with plenty of goings on, without feeling bloated or outstaying its welcome.  Before the series reaches its conclusion, the individual novels grow to Lord of the Rings scale, and I struggle to imagine these characters engaging me for so long a stretch in a single story.

Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed book 1, so I now head into the rest of the series with an open mind.

Hate to Say I Told You So

It has been well established by now by every review out there - whether positive or negative (and I’ve seen plenty of both) - that Suicide Squad is a mess.  Personally, I had fun with it, but the issues are far too jarring for me to recommend it, or argue with anyone who thought it was utter dog-shit.

The issues are glaring from the off, with the film opening with not one, but two scenes of Amanda Waller explaining her plan to a room of military officials; with the first interspersed with a few quick character bios almost as clumsy and forced as Batman’s Justice League email in BvS.  The trailer featured a line from Rick Flag describing the characters - “Shoots people; burns people; eats people… Crazy person” - that does a far better job of establishing the characters than the opening ten minutes of the actual film.

This clumsiness is prevalent throughout film, with poorly placed and repetitive flashbacks, nonsensical character beats there purely for the sake of plot movement, lazy exposition, terrible pacing...and so on (it’s like a bad Arrow episode).

The list of problems is long and, as I said, already well-established, but I’d like to highlight one in particular.  It’s something I’ve previously mentioned, that I’ve been concerned about since the film was first announced, and a prime example of which we saw in BvS: Who are these people?

Way back in the days when The Dark Knight had just been released, and Marvel’s Avengers experiment was just starting to come together, Warner Bros. announced they would be making a Justice League movie: not kicking off a Justice League cinematic universe - establishing the characters and the world they inhabit - but jumping straight in with Justice League, complete with new versions of all your favourite characters.

It was a terrible idea, and it wasn’t long before internet backlash seemingly made WB see sense, shelve the project and instead allow Christopher Nolan to finish off his Dark Knight trilogy, before bringing him on to oversee a new Superman film that would set the stage for the rest of the Justice League, just as Iron Man did for the Avengers.

Unfortunately, under the hamfisted fan-boy direction of Zack Snyder - that had served him and us surprisingly well on Watchman and 300 - Man of Steel was a dour, tedious, inconsistent, underwhelming mess.

Rather than scratch this off as a false start and hope for better from new Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman origins, WB panicked and jumped straight ahead with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

And we all know how that turned out.

One of the few highlights (and possibly the biggest surprise) of BvS was Ben Affleck as Batman - contrary to fan-boy fears the world over (including my own), he proved a good fit for the roles - but that didn’t mean the character himself wasn’t weakly established and poorly represented.  This was a bitter, angry Batman, pushing his violent nature to the extreme, to the point of no longer caring whether he kills.  In one scene, we’re shown a Robin suit, apparently graffitied by the Joker, suggesting Batman’s anger and bitterness stem from the death of the Boy Wonder, as in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns - an idea confirmed (to some extent) by the presence of the anti-Superman Batsuit from said book - but even in that, when Batman is at his most detached, desperate and willfully violent, he never crosses that line.

Not that you can’t have Batman killing people - if anything, showing the Dark Knight pushed over the edge to a point where he’s perfectly willing to break his one golden rule is an interesting piece of character development - but the issue in BvS is it is not shown.  Yes, we’re given a glimpse of the reason behind his mindset, but how much did that event really change him?  Has this always been a more violent Batman?  Was he closer to Tim Burton’s version, Joel Schumacher’s or Christopher Nolan’s?  Did Robin’s apparent death push him just an inch too far, or completely flip his personality?

The same is true for every character in Suicide Squad.  Amanda Waller calls them ‘The worst of the worst’, but that doesn’t hold up.  All we see of them in the movie is Deadshot is an assassin-for-hire who loves his daughter, and never kills women or children, Killer Croc lives in the sewers, and seemingly only attacks people who attack him, El Diablo is a pacifist,Captain Boomerang is a bank robber and Harley Quinn is a mentally-ill gymnast with Stockholm syndrome.  Hardly the worst humanity has to offer.

In fact, other than Enchantress - an evil spirit awakened from a 2,000 year imprisonment, so understanderbly miffed - the only character who truly shows themselves to be a cold, calculating sociopath is Waller.

The most glaring example of this lack of background, however, is Jared Leto’s much-touted Joker.  After all of the behind-the-scenes reports of how scarily ‘method’ he got with the role, the Joker’s entire on-screen character is that of a violent, but strategic gang boss with a weird growl and an obsession with Quinn.  The elements are all there for this to be an interesting new take on the character - how did he establish himself?  what’s he done to earn his reputation?  why is he so obsessed with Quinn far beyond the simple pleasure the character’s previously taken in having a loyal attractive pet around to play with and abuse as he fancies? - but we get none of this, and as a result, he’s little more than a caricature.

Leto has stated that a lot of his scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor, but no matter what’s in them, I struggle to see how a few deleted scenes would cover the gaping holes in the character.

Again, this isn’t just an issue with Suicide Squad.  We’re now three movies into the DC Cinematic Universe, and the only character with a true origin story is the one character who, not only everyone knows - comic-book fan or not - but whose entire character relies on being consistent and immovable.  In other words, the only character in this whole enterprise who doesn’t need an origin story.*

*I realise we also get Batman’s (wholly unnecessary by now) origin story, but that’s just

why he became Batman, not what turned him into this version of Batman.

In WB’s rush to catch up with Marvel, they’ve completely missed what has made the MCU so successful: namely the balance struck between staying true to the characters’ comic-book origins, while making them accessible enough to a new, cinema-going audience.

That said, at least Suicide Squad has added a sorely-lacking element of fun to the franchise.

Teetotality and Transitions both Terrible and Tremendous

By the balmy bloated ball-sack of Beelzebub, it's been warm!

Rather difficult to concentrate on any form of work or writing when the inescapable heat is causing one's head to throb like the temple vein of an anxiety sufferer caught stripping by their in-laws.

Fortunately, clouds have returned to our scorching British skies, so let's talk cinema.

Absolutely Fabulous (on the slim off-chance you don't know) was a truly inspired show of the nineties and naughties that saw Jennifer Saunders as Edi, a middle-aged woman-child, getting up to all kinds of slapstick debauchery with her best friend, Patsy; a drunken fag-hag and relentless cougar played to gut-busting perfection by Joanna Lumley.  At its best, it was awesome: slick, sharp, acerbic, well observed, geniusly performed by main and supporting cast alike, and with a hit-rate Morcombe & Wise would've been proud of.

Alas it does not translate to the big screen.

To be honest, the show has been flagging for years, since it ran its course over three or four series, before the set-up got tired and attempts to keep it fresh - mostly in the form of cameo-ridden specials - got desperate, but even the last brief TV run had its charm.  Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the feature-length format: the comic timing's off, set-ups are lazy, too obviously telegraphed and/or lacking in pay-off, the characters - always the driving force of the show - have become obnoxious to the point of being insufferable, and the only thing about the whole affair that works - and will always work - is Lumley (because, let's face it, how ever shoddy everything else might get, Patsy is one of the all-time great comedic creations, and will never cease to be magnificent).

Happily, something that did translate well to the big screen was The BFG!

The BFG was by no means the first of the 'spunky little orphan taken on a mystical adventure by a fantastical being' genre, but it remains one of the all-time greats and most beloved, so it was always going to be a risk.

Riskier still in the fact that not a lot happens in the story: it's essentially about the friendship of a little girl and an doddery old man, and what thrills there are mostly don't come until the very end.  As a book, this wasn't much of an issue due to the brilliance of Roald Dahl's writing: his wit and whimsy kept readers hooked, regardless of what was (or wasn't) happening, and managed to be perfect for a pre-teen audience, without ever being patronising to older readers.

Without this luxury on film, even a colourful whimsical setting, and the presence of giants, will only get you so far.  A slow-burn character piece - regardless of setting - must be carried entirely by the cast: in this case, Mark Rylance - seasoned veteran of stage and screen - and Ruby Barnhill - a twelve year-old girl.

Even as a Shakespeare vet., Rylance can't have had an easy time of it, not only having to spend much of his time reacting to nothing but a ball on a stick, but having to deliver an almost alien language and speech pattern as if he'd been using it for millennia.  And it would have been all for nought, of course, if he'd been playing against a bland, obnoxious and/or unconvincing Sophie.

Fortunately, they are both superb; with Rylnace both funny and forlorn; wise, yet oblivious; and Barnhill mixing child-like wonder with a far-beyond-her-years maturity that at no point felt fake or forced.

Couple that with some seamless CGI, an entertaining and colourful supporting cast and Steven Spielberg bringing his '80's A-game, and you get something that had Rhiannon - a devotee of the story in her youth - weeping tears of joy for the best part of two hours.

In other movie news, DC have released a couple of trailers, and, boy, has the reaction to the miserable dross they vomited up a few months back put the shits up them!

First, Wonder Woman:


Along with Batfleck, Gal Gadot was one of the pleasant surprises of BvS.  When she was cast, all I'd seen her in was the Fast and Furious films, where she appeared to lack the muscle mass to lift a tooth-pick.  For her to not only turn up in BvS looking the part, but be the only one of the 'holy trinity' to show some balls against the Incredible Doom Troll was almost as welcome a surprise as the former Mr. JLo's turn as Bruce Wayne.

Her solo outing - by evidence of the trailer, at least - looks to build on the badassery, not just in terms of kicking arse, but in the character's attitude and the way she caries herself.

My one concern is how long that final moment with the secretary is drawn out, but I'll get to that in a sec...


I will say from the off that, yes, this does look better than Dawn of Justice - the new Flash is funny, Mamoa looks like an interesting Aquaman, and DK appears to be less of a right-wing douche - but I have some serious concerns about this 'footage'.

The first is the same concern I have with Suicide Squad:


Who are these people?

Okay, I know who they all are, and anyone who doesn't can look them up on Wikipedia, but this is the first cinematic outing for most of these characters, and brand new interpretations of others, yet we're supposed to care about a history that will likely be dumped on us in exposition.

Whether it be Flash and Cyborg, or Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang, we're being shown these characters for the very first time (BvS's bullshit flash-drive preview does not count) and are expected to give a rat's hairy left bollock about their thoughts, feelings and motivations.

My other concern is the same I have with the end of the Wonder Woman trailer: there is an emphasis on humour (yes, there is in the Suicide Squad trailer, too, but at least there it doesn't feel out of place).

Don't get me wrong, after the previous two outings, this series is clamouring for some levity, but there's a desperation in how hard they're pushing it here, as if WB, in their typical accountancy approach, has looked at Rotten Tomatoes and said:

"Jokes!  We need more jokes!"
"How many more jokes?"
"Well, we're averaging 46%, so 54% more jokes!"

It reminds me of Microsoft's furious back-peddling following their horrific pre-release promotion of the Xbone.

Again, the trailers don't look bad, I just have concerns about WB trying too hard and heading too far the other way.

In other non-movie news, I'm off the booze for a while.  It's been apparent for some time that I drink too regularly, but I generally don't binge.  On Saturday, however, I purposefully only wanted to have a few, but then mixed that with too much wine, and realised afterwards that I am rubbish at restraining myself after a certain point (you can see it in my gut).  So, I'm giving it a rest for a while.

Until Halloween, in fact (save for a friend's birthday in September).

Wish me luck!

(I'm gonna need it)

Sticking (reluctantly) With Politics...

One of the aims of this blog was a repository for the vast amount of junk that swims around in my head on myriad subjects from film, to politics, to art, to astrophysics, to the nature of the 'self' and what it truly means to be a tomato (you're a fruit, but you're used in salad, and no-one wants you on a cake!).

Unfortunately, the western world is currently in a state of political upheaval, with conservatism under threat, and hitting back at anything and everyone it can paint as a target.

In the US, broadening social openness and awareness - which has led to improved civil rights for the LGBT community, closer cross-cultural integration, questioning of gun laws, distrust of those in power and the realisation that perhaps religion is not the sole source of morality in the world - has drastically reduced the number of 'enemies' conservatives can claim to be the nation's shield against.  As a result, they've gotten even more hard-line in their actions and rhetoric, ignoring increasing calls from all sides for stricter gun-control, denying (against all evidence) their unending issue with institutionalised racism and allowing state laws created specifically to restrict the rights of certain pockets of their citizenry.  They've even gone so far as to promote privileged, extremist halfwit  Donald "If I wave my tiny hands enough, people might mistake my ignorance for passion" Trump (nay, Drumpf) as leader of the GOP.

Then again, ineffectual and self-defeating as it may be, at least the US has a government.  Here in the UK, our PM risked our country's economic stability, generational prospects and global standing on a referendum he thought would secure his office, but managed to lose to a gibbering buffoon and his entourage of racists, sycophants and ignoramuses.

So he quit.

The resultant leadership contest was set to be between Theresa May - a former equalities minister who changed her mind on gay adoption when it suited her career, supported the invasions of Iraq and Syria, backed Trident renewal, fox hunting, tuition fee increases, welfare caps and cuts to low-income households, a tax on households with 'extra' rooms (regardless of whether that room is for carers, or specialised equipment for the severely disabled) and scrapping the Human Rights Act, and voted against environmental controls for fracking (including a report to determine how harmful it might be) and exempting cancer sufferers from a rule that only allows the claiming of certain benefits for 365 days - and Boris Johnson; the aforementioned buffoon.

However, that contest never took place, and May instead had to fight off a delusional prat  - already sacked once for handing a mate tax-payer money for a job that didn't exist - who thought keeping out Johnny foreigner was more important than being a part of the single market (dumped when no-one voted for him), a homophobe who 'totally, totally' wasn't really (quit when no-one voted for him), whatever this is (quit, presumably, when he caught himself in a mirror), and some batty woman who apparently wasn't aware that, when you say something to a journalist, they're liable to share it with other people (quit when she found out).

Things are even worse across the aisle, with the Labour Parliamentary Party deciding it's more interested in tearing itself apart than mounting any kind of opposition.  A large bulk of the Labour front-bench quit in protest of a leader (elected by an overwhelming majority of party faithful) who voted against the invasions of Iraq and Syria, keeps his parliamentary spending to a minimum (I understand he once claimed for a sandwich) and believes there are better things to spend £200,000,000,000 on than a shiny new end-of-the-world delivery system.

If there's one thing that makes politicians nervous, it's one of their own having principles.

Standing against him is Angela Eagle.  In brief:

• Stood for Deputy PM under Gordon Brown (came 5th)
• For the invasion of Iraq
• For the increase in tuition fees
• For 90 day detentions without charge
• For Trident renewal
• For airstrikes on Syria
• Against the investigation into the Iraq war
• Abstained when the Tories proposed £12bn welfare cuts
• Abstained when the Tories proposed forcing the unemployed to do unpaid work

In other words, Theresa May without a spine.

Her leadership bid didn't exactly get off to a shining start when it was revealed her campaign manager had set-up her leadership website before the EU referendum, despite citing Corbyn's supposed inability to convince the Labour masses to vote Remain as her reason for quitting.

Things went downhill from there when, during the announcement of Eagle's leadership bid, Andrea Leadsom quit the Tory race, effectively making Theresa May the new PM.  By the time poor little Angela got to the Q&A section, any journalist that might've had a Q was hightailing it across London for quotes from someone who suddenly mattered.

Her cloudy day appeared to have a slight shimmer at the edges when reactions and comments went through the roof on her Twitter and Facebook posts, but a closer glance revealed the majority of those reactions were HAHA! accompanied by a slew of #VoteCorbyn.

As things stand, Corbyn's opponents are desperately trying to skew Labour's own rules to suggest he needs the backing of 50 MPs to challenge for the leadership - "Where there is no vacancy nominations may be sought by potential challengers... In this case any nomination must be supported by 20% of the combined Commons members of the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] and members of the EPLP [European Parliamentary Labour Party]. Nominations not attaining this threshold shall be null and void." - not noticing, it seems, that the post is not vacant, Corbyn's still leader, and is therefore the challenged, not a challenger.

It also goes without saying that those party faithful who put Corbyn in there in the first place, aren't exactly overjoyed at attempts to oust him.

The most concerning thing about all this is - despite repeated assertions that bringing forward the General Election would just add to the uncertainty already rocking the country - the Tories are now perfectly poised to hold a snap election.  Not only would they effectively be running unopposed, May could claim the easy victory as confirmation of her Premiership, and a mandate to drag the UK kicking and screaming out of the EU how ever she sees fit.  Not to mention lumbering us with the Tories until at least 2022 (instead of 2020).

Great plan, PLP. Great plan...

Is This All We Have To Offer?

The names are in, the gloves are off, and we have our five contenders for the new leader of this supposedly once-great isle.

Lead candidate, Theresa May, is pro fox hunting and spying on the internet habits of every single UK citizen, and anti gay adoption (though changed her mind on the latter when it conflicted with a new job).  Not a great person to be leading the pack, but when considering her opposition...

Michael Gove (now out) has failed dismally at every office he’s held under Cameron, rode Boris Johnson’s coat-tails throughout the Brexit referendum, and used his new status as a ‘winner’ to piss on the blonde bollock’s leadership ambitions.  He’s also being supported by Nicky “any suggestion I’m not in complete control of my department is sexist, and all schools should totally be academies, regardless of what experts say...what’s that, David? Sorry, my mistake, I’ve decided we’re not doing that after all” Morgan.

Stephen Crabb (now out) voted against same-sex marriage, and sponsored - and employed interns from - an organisation that claims homosexuality is a curable disease, but - like May - now that he’s after a better job, he “totally, totally” didn't mean it, and supports gay marriage, and any suggestion otherwise is a “falsehood” (regardless of historical evidence).

Andrea Leadsom is a befuddled non-entity still regurgitating all of the Brexit rhetoric from the referendum build-up that even the head Brexit campaigners went back on the day after they won.  She’s also received the possibly poisoned chalice that is BJ’s backing.

And Liam Fox  (now out) - who once housed and employed (with tax-payer money) one his mates as an undeclared aid, just so he could jet about drumming up some business - has placed himself as racist pond-scum's candidate, declaring leaving the single market is a price worth paying to ‘regain control of our borders’ ("But that’s fine because the US isn’t a member of the single market, and they can trade with it, so we’d be totally fine, because we can be like the US, and afford all the same tariffs and contributions, and totally stop anyone else coming into the country ever again, ever").

In other words, he’s a delusional prat.

Additionally, every candidate is pro-Trident renewal, because hey, when it comes down to a choice between feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless, and being ready to efficiently ignite a million people to the surface temperature of the Sun, an apocalyptic fireworks display wins every time.

Whatever happens, in a mere two months' time, one of these people will be the new British Prime Minister...how ever much is left of Britain by then.

Yes, the UK may not be quite so U for much longer.

And on the off-chance Scotland does remain united to the kingdom, the SNP - currently the third largest party in the nation, but with the most sitting MPs - may soon be deciding between a coalition with the Labour Parliamentary Party, or the Labour Union Party.

So that's the state of British politics today: our ruling party is leaderless, and choosing our next PM from a puddle of unsuitable cretins, our opposition is tearing itself apart because a pack of Blairites are uncomfortable with being so different from their more successful Tory counterparts, and the closest thing we currently have to a genuine opposition may be ruling their own independent nation long before we have anything even approaching a suitable working parliament.

I don't suppose Canada is accepting immigrants...?

**UPDATE**

With three down and two to go, the one shock we've had of this leadership election is the rise of someone less well known, but seemingly even more sickeningly clueless than Michael "I drink a glass of water like a goldfish giving a blowjob" Gove.

In the brief time anyone outside of the parliamentary Tory party has been aware of Andrea Leadsom, she's gone from befuddled outsider, to right-wing Christian homophobe, to militant matriarch.

However, some context is required for these latter two.

"I didn't like gay marriage law because it hurts Christians..." was the direct quote taken from Leadsom that the Independent ran with as a headline, thus painting her as a devout, anti-gay dip-shit.  And while she did say that in an interview with ITV - and while it is a monumentally stupid thing to say - it is nevertheless worth noting that, in the very same interview, she clarified that she did not agree that marriage should be a strictly Christian service between a man and a woman, and that she 'positively abstained' from the vote (actively voted both for and against).

Personally, I feel that makes her pathetically mimsy over the subject - she's all for it, unless it insults a bunch of religious homophobes - but that doesn't justify running a headline that paints her in a very particular light, and I'm disappointed in the Independent for stooping to Daily Mail levels of gutter-press shenanigans.

On the subject of 'gutter press', The Sunday Times recently ran with the headline: "Being a mother gives me an edge on May - Leadsom"

This one is not a direct quote, and Leadsom and her campaign team have been eager to stress that she has been taken wildly out of context on this one.

Except, she wasn't.

While she may have been careful not to utter the words, "I'll be a better leader because I'm a mother", she did say that two of her advantages over May were "economic competence and family".

"So really carefully - because I am sure...she will be really really sad she doesn't have children so I don't want this to be 'Andrea has children, Theresa hasn't' because I think that would be really horrible - but genuinely I feel being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.
"She possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people, but I have children, who are going to have children, who will directly be a part of what happens next.
"So it really keeps you focused on 'what are you really saying?'. Because what it means is you don't want a downturn but 'never mind, let's look ahead to the ten years', hence it will all be fine. My children will be starting their lives in that next ten years so I have a real stake in the next year, the next two."

So, in context, Leadsom suggested May has less of a 'stake in the future' because she doesn't have kids.

Leadsom, of course, went bat-shit over the article being framed in this context, but I personally couldn't care less how often you use the qualifier 'I don't want this to be a thing, but...': When you raise a thing, you make it a thing.

Leadsom had the brass ones to suggest those of us who don't - or, in May's case, can't - have kids have less of a stake in the future than she does.


I am not a supporter of Theresa May - she has proven herself to be two-faced, conniving and untrustworthy, and I believe she'll be an awful leader for this country - but Andrea Leadsom is a moronic, blinkered, ignorant, self-serving scum-bag; a description I use only because I am endeavouring to keep swearing on this blog to a minimum.