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David Wickes

17

July 21:07

Potter and Eduction

Having seen a twelve year old interviewing J.K. Rowling, witnessed the kerfuffle occuring on The Rundown whenever I turn up to gaze at my own reflection, and been approached by an Asda store greeter (emloyment never came at a higher price) I am now fully aware that the new Harry Potter book is in stores NOW!

The Asda chap was the funniest. They're selling them for around £7.89 each at the front of the store, a huge stack of 'normal' covers mixed in with the 'adult' covers for people who for some reason attatch shame to reading a work of children's fiction (I look forward to being able to buy the 'adult' cover version of The Hungry Caterpillar). The greeter greeted (and grated with) me by using the salutation of 'Do you need a new Harry Potter?' while waving one around. Well, I guess my old one is getting a little tatty...

Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince is obviously and was inevitably a sales phenomenon, and has had a very good 'opening weekend'. In that respect it isn't so much a book as an 'event' on the same scale as a Hollywood blockbuster. For those reasons it no longer matters if J.K.R. has written a decent book: it was going to sell millions no matter what happened. This is why a lot of films today are a bit crap, and also why I went to see The Avengers in 1998, one of my all time great regrets. Avoid.

I'm not saying J.K.R. has written a bad book; I haven't read this on yet (the last one was over-long) and I'll probably get round to it in around two months when this firestorm of publicity we are all suffering has finally finished and I can pick it up for three quid in a second-hand book shop (sorry Ms. Rowling!)

The exciting news for good/bad Catholics like me is that il Papa has surreptitiously nodded against the earthly powers of the Potter. A couple of letters written when he was still a cardinal indicate that he feels that Potter has "subtle seductions" (subtle? has he seen the marketing of the books?) which "deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly."

Maybe the Pope's on to something here, at least to the point where he is raising a problematic: what is it that we are teaching our children in what they read? Potter is a good guy, nice chap. I'll buy him a pint when he turns eighteen. But is isn't good in an unproblematic way. Quite often he's an asshole — he has terrible anger management and fear of abandonment. But these are modern words, modern conditions, very novel to the form of the 'fairy tale'. Potter is a good guy, but he's not perfect, nor does he try to embody perfections of any kind.

Now this may not be a bad thing: it's more realistic, it's more exciting – we all like a bit of a rogue. But the "subtle seductions" Ratzinger mentions are the drift in the children's story from an ideal hero to a realistic hero – and what that does to children. We (or at least I) was brought up on a series of different sorts of stories - some fairy tales, Tolkein, Lewis, Sendak, Dahl, Hughes, etc. - most of which had some sort of moral message implicit. Some heroes were so squeeky clean and good that it jarred a little, but it was never revealed that they had skeletons (literal or metaphorical) in their cupboard later in the book. Sometimes people really were just good.

As marvellous as moral ambiguity is – as 'real' as it is – is it really what we should be exposing a child to? If the point of reproduction is to produce more things the same as us, then why don't we experiment with trying to maintain as similar developmental environment as we all had? That would be silly, obviously, but I'm trying to underline a point: children's fiction is not just a problematic for literature, but a problematic for child rearing and society as a whole. We are reminded of Book II/III of the Republic, where Socrates has argued that the some poets of comedies and tragedies will be left out of the ideal state, and even Homer himself will have to be edited, as stories where the Gods do wrong do not educate the children to be free – and cause them to have a low opinion of the supernatural. Thus:

And therefore when any one of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our souls' health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.

Republic III, 398a

No matter how realistic an authors work (as realistic as Gods fighting were to the Greeks) the 'real' was not what interested Plato. The 'real', this world of images, is not important in eduction. What is imoprtant is the ideal – the world of the forms. Thus art is being reserved in the republic for the sole purpose of education, with all 'unimproving' art expurged.

So maybe J.K.R.'s new book is fantastic, and maybe the cardinal only had his vestments in a twist because Potter is nothing more than the Satanic end of Christianity but with the Satan and the Christianity removed, thus leaving a morally neutral metaphysics of magic (obviously worrying for the new Pope – the subtle seduction revealed). But whatever we do we shouldn't regard children's fiction as unproblematic, either because it's for children or because we are resigned to telling ourselves the same old bedtime story about the inevitable decline and fall of our society. Children don't need to be protected or exposed at certain amounts in certain ways; there is no perfectly right way to raise children. We should not settle for easy answers and programs from either libertarians or conservatives. We should simply remain permanently installed in the problem, and constantly worried about the best way to raise children.

(but not too neurotic, eh Mum?)

D

NB. I've linked to J.K. Rowling's website above. It's really rather well done – brava!

16

July 05:07

The State the I am In

Well I find myself on a semi-dysfunctional laptop (somewhat aided by by moderate skill in computer hoo-doo) at 4:17 with the strangest compulsion to write something. Anything.

Bizarre thing: some of my homies (I'm street) discover I have a blog today. Today?! Wow. They tell me that I'm meant to tell them that I have a blog, that that's what people do. But that just seems weird to me. All I wanted from my blog was for it to be discovered as a pleasant surprise. Now I'm meant to advertise my innane ramblings. The real question is why aren't my so called friends googlin' my name every 24 hours?

But this entry is dedicated to Mike Lewis – a lovely chap. Why? Well, simply because I'm sat here with an acoustic guitar playing Belle and Sebastian songs to myself and whenever I play anything from Tigermilk, especially 'The State that I am In', he is conjured to mind. Mike is of course better than both me and all you scum-bags out there as he has achieved what I know you and I all crave: he's actually written a book as opposed to endlessly talking about it.

Note: Paul Knapp, you my friend are forever preserved in the song 'Get me Away from Here I'm Dying'. Were I ever to have my own sit-com in the way that most American celebrities seem to be able to possess at their whim, that would be my theme song. I see the camera pulling out as the first verse miraculously becomes the outro and the words 'I'm dying' are repeated to fade. This introductory sequence is of course all neatly planned out. The pre-requisite talk-show/sit-com is pure fantasy.

Editor, dear Editor – I'm sorry you don't get paid. I will try harder to be less, well – crap. But you'll have to forgive this miserable excuse for an entry as it's graduation day here at Warwick and my good-buddies Dan Byrne and Chris Allen have just got their 2:1's. (I of course got a 1st but lets not brag too much, eh?) Well done them. I have celebrated quite enough though...

Word up (can we still say that? I think inevitably of that Cameo chap in the red leather codpiece) also to Jill, Casey, Michael and James, all of whom I share a space with virtually.

Thanks to Heather for the unknowing use of her laptop. A rare beauty that one – I hope she knows it.

Ciao,

15

July 06:07

Rock it, Man...

Good ol' buddy Adam K showed this to me some time ago. William Shatner, the mighty Shat, interpreting 'Rocket Man' in his own unique way. It is very important. Very important. Whether it's any good is up to you. But I think it's awesome. I think that it's quite possible that Big Bill is 100 years ahead of his time in popular music.

I may be wrong.

But then again not that wrong. Not if cult groovy cartoon Family Guy regards it as a worthwhile parody for their peculiarly English baby Stewie to engage in.

Everybody singalong now...

14

July 21:07

Syndication

Exciting discovery today.

I recieved an email from out of the blue from some nice person asking me if it was alright if he could use my blog on some sort of collected student blog type thingumy. Naturally I agreed. Also naturally I assumed that this had been sent to every person in my University, and that (naturally) I would be 'left out' owing to the sporadic nature of my blog, its naturally esoteric content and the way it's not so much a blog as a series of nonsenses titled with a date.

note: Strange nature obsession at work above. Probably due to staring at vine weed for half an hour outside. Not to worry.

I was therefore surprised to find that a Google search for my name, after producing information about the David Wickes who produces/directs films (evil name stealer that he is), pointed me towards my blog at a place called The Rundown, a lovely place of studenty news, advice, distractions and other doubtlessly amusing things. This I found quite exciting.

The other thing I found quite exciting was that not all of my entries were up there. The funky groovy ones were all there but the boring ones ("Hey guys, does anyone know anything about the Stooges?") were all left off. Now we all know what this means: someone is editing me. Someone, somewhere is being paid to read my blog. And it isn't me.

So, anyway – hello you crazy Blog reading person. How're you doin'? I'm sorry. Generally. For everything. Sorry that I don't write more and so that everytime you have to read my blog to find something new and groovy there's never anything there. Sorry that when there is something there, it's usually nonsensical and rambling and badly spelt and structured. But, hey, thank you anyway! You get paid in some way – can I have your job? Seriously, I'm going to be a little short of cash really soon. No more blogging then as I'll have to sell the computer for smack. Which I'll then sell for food, obviously. Anyway, thanks again.

So now I better greet everyone who reads this at the Rundown, as they probably have no idea what's going on. So – Hi. My names Dave and I go to the University of Warwick (looking at some of the other bloggers, they do too.). I study Philosophy, but not as well as I should. I am 6' tall, overweight, blonde hair, green eyes, black plastic glasses and freckles. But I have a grrreat personality. At the moment I sport a fetching sunburn. I am said to look like a combination of Colin Baker (6th Doctor Who) and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Or possibly Jack Osbourne. Frankly kidz – fear me.

I enjoy musicals, computer games, music, guitars, wine, women, whisky, food, songwriting and my friend Alan Reiss doing his impression of Maverick from Top Gun playing beach volleyball. And then maybe joining in.

So 'howdy y'all!' as we say here on the outskirts of Coventry.

In conclusion, I've got my toothbrush back. I think I go and clean my teeth now – ah, these small pleasures we take for granted.

Ciao for now.

Message from the Editor: I don't get paid. Seriously. Hi to everyone from Warwick, though.

13:07

Discovering Magenta

So, it's been a while since I wrote anything. Apologies kidz.

Here's an old poem about Almu I wrote during last summer when she was busy next door finishing her thesis. Oh, and she'd just married. Que clearing of throat to give dramatic atmosphere...

Mrs. Brown
sits down
among her stacks of papers
inordinal
on cardinal
s of the Avignon papa
cy
she
has photographs
and monographs
and tries to finish her thesis
oh, Mrs. Brown!
please do not frown
if only just to please us

Que adulatory applause. We were exiled that summer to Heronbank, Warwick University's newest and grooviest accomodation near the lakes of (goodness) Lakeside. The doors, carpets and some of the walls there are magenta. I mention this only because magenta is not the first colour that pops into your head when you decorate a building, not unless you are conducting some sort of bizarre psycho-chromatic experiment. My present room is in nauseating shades of pink.

Dr. Alexander Schauss, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma Washington, reported that when prison cells were painted pink, it reduced aggressive behavior among prisoners. "Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can't. The heart muscles can't race fast enough. It's a tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the color-blind are tranquilized by pink rooms", according to Dr. Schauss. Such a effect, unfortunately however, was short-lived as later studies would show. It appears that once the body returns to a state of equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state.

This explains a lot of things. I'm in a badly painted prison cell. For what is a hall of residence but a prison by another name? It is well known on campus that one of the residences (Tocil I believe) was designed by the same architect as a Swedish womens prison. On refelction I'm fairly sure the Swedish part is an embelishment, but hey-ho.

But magenta? A really viscious one at that, it is the magenta that was one of only eight colours your Sinclair Spectrum could produce--if you can remember such stone-age computers as I grew up with. (I've been watching films on my computer. FILMS. We never would have dreamed of such a thing...). This magenta scheme must be a part of some experiment though—perhaps to turn Heronbankers into a psychotic army of super-soldiers. Or to make them breed like rabbits. Or perhaps it will make them eat loads. Goodness knows.

There is something I do know about magenta though. It doesn't really exist. Well, ok – it exists, but at the level that peace and love exist. Well, ok, not really. Look, here comes the science bit. The only colours that are are the colours of the spectrum. No, not the Sinclair, the rainbow. Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. Now, there's no magenta there (Richard of York Gave Battle Vainly in the Midlands?). So where's magenta. Magenta is just equal parts blue and red. So whenever you see magenta it's just a trick of the light from an equally blue/red object (which as any phenomenologist will tell you is just a load of bollocks, as by what right are blue and red the atomically chromatic units of my vision? but here endeth that...).

Embarassingly enough I learned that from possibly the worse peice of Musical Theatre I have ever heard (there are many contenders): Discovering Magenta. Thanks to Mike Cryne for subjecting me to this. Go now and have a look at this case study for why psychology students are never interesting (unless they're ex-squaddies from Hull) and should certainly never be used in the plot of a musical.

Well, I'm off out to retrieve my toothbrush from Leamington now. A series of unfortunate events has led to it being there and me being here for some time, involving illness and ill-feeling and various other maladjustments of myself. And my phone charger's there too. Gee.

Peace out, kidz.

22

June 09:06

Another day another essay

I once read somewhere (it was a review of a film about a newspaper with Michael Keaton in it, the quote is dialogue from the film. If you must know. Pedant.) that nobody gets older and wiser. For some reason when we are young stupid asses we hold to this strange belief that the passage of time will make us change radically somehow. That we will stop being so goddamn stupid and useless and lazy and all of a sudden be those dedicated rigourous organized masters of Kung Fu that we always could be.

Unfortunately what really happens is that you get older. Just that. You remain the same lazy, useless and stupid asshole that you were when you were 18 (or 16 even). But now you are around 2 stone heavier, have crows-feet around your eyes and are beginning to lose your hair. Same jack-ass + wrinkles.

Which is all to say that once again I have completed the minimal requirements of my degree by finishing an essay four hours before it is due in. It's now a quater past eight, all the printing is done, and I've cracked open the last remaining Carling in the fridge to celebrate.

Celebrate. This really isn't much of a celebration: 'whoop-dee-doo, Dave. You are not a complete failure bum. Hey, you tramp wannabe, why not crack open a beer for breakfast? This English piss-water lager imitation's for you!"

So maybe nothing does change (apart from weight, skin and hair), but you gain stuff (not just weight). A whole arsenal of techniques opens up to you, subtle and refined techniques that you learn from years of practice. If you put them on a CV they'd take up at least three pages, maybe more. They are the key skills that you must learn. No, not leadership and teamworking. Much more important. These skills woul best fall under the heading of 'how to pass this twisted fool (yourself) off as a regular human being type guy'. People who go to AA would pretty well as much know what we're talking about here, because they have to deal with one particular aspect of their idiocy—alcoholism. But what about all the other less respectable dysfunctions? What about laziness? Or swearing too much? Or finding cancer funny? Where are the support groups for people who can't help fidgeting? Or can't help finding fidgeting annoying? Where's 'Far Too Cocky Anonymous'?

Face it, kidz, we're on our own. We've got to work out the best way around these ourselves. The only thing we have to cling on to is this small intuition that everyone else is struggling to be normal too. Not that I'm saying we should all be ourselves. God, can you think of anything more horrible? No, none of this American touchy-feely crap of constructing a 'genuine' self behind all the societal crap. All there is is the societal crap fighting itself and finding cancer funny.

I'm really sorry; I know cancer isn't funny. But I remember a conversation in the Graduate with this guy called Alex who I barely knew. Chatting away, he gets a text.
"What was that?" says I
"Oh my friend from home. He's got cancer" grin.
I guffaw
he laughs
"No, really; he has"
"Oh. Mate, sorry."
He laughs
I guffaw
"But he's got cancer."
I'm embarassed "mate"
he laughs...
etc. etc. ad nauseam

You see the problem there? That twisted fuck was playing with me and my finding cancer both funny and deadly serious depending upon what, aw shucks, language game I was playing. We've got to keep finding cancer funny as if we don't everything will become crap and simple. Everything will mean what we say. I hate that.

So to summarise: meh.

27

May 02:05

More Sith fun for people to disagree with...

I've never walked out of a film, not once—and I went to see 'The Avengers' and 'Lost in Space' during one long summer of near endless bad films. I didn't even walk out of the third Matrix film, but I did spend most of the first half asking the guy next to me if it would be a better idea to sneak out to the pub and come back for the end, leaving everyone else to suffer.

But I am at the very least glad that glueboot managed to stay for that scene. She's right; it wasn't very good, it wasn't ironic—it was just Darth Vader shouting at the sky and suddenly becoming a lot less scary. Oh well.

I am sorry that she saw it in an audience full of solemn Jedi types. If there's one bad thing about most religions, it's the extremists (OK, OK, that's another debate...), and Revenge of the Sith is certainly not a film to be approached in awe and wonder. In fact, a lot of it made me (and the audience I saw it with) laugh quite a lot. Right from the beginning where the exclamation of the scrolly-text, 'War!', led everybody to chuckle and hum Edwyn Starr. Then little Yoda knocking over those red-robe dudes who we'd always assumed were quite tough, what with their big red robes and scary red masks. I mean, if you weren't laughing at some of it (not the jokes, though) then you were definitely approaching this from the wrong angle. So, indeed, laugh it up fuzzballs.

I was probably pushing the limits of forgiveness in my original review, so I'm sorry if anyone for any reason assumed they'd be seeing the greatest film ever. Completely false advertising on my behalf. But I would be concerned about the other extreme (only Sith think in absolutes - oh, shoot me...), namely outrageous comparison with the other trilogy. I can feel the warm an fluffy hand of nostalgia reaching out to change history, that idiotic drive to name Star Wars (sorry, Empire—let's stay canonical) the Greatest Film EVER, and any move to add to the mighty story as equivalent to messing with precious memories of childhood. I mean, get over it! You're old, you're 30-odd, generation Jedi—let go. Greedo shoots first now, and that's just the way it is. The dialogue was crap then too. The special effects look better when they're done on a computer; stop hankering after stupid stop motion and model shots.

Sure, maybe the reason I really like it is beacuse the pretty picture of a double-sunset over a desert with soaring music was pretty well as much drilled into me as a child; Star Wars was one of my first films. So you only so much as have to wave that in front of me again to kick the nostalgia bug into gear. Maybe that's the key to my appreciation; I'll forgive anything if only to feel the mad rush that Star Wars gave me again, as excited as only a two year old can be.

Revenge of the Sith is not a very good film. But pick that food which you used to love to eat when you were really young, that ultimate comfort food 'like Mama used to make'. You cannot rationally accept that this is great food, exciting in the same way as, say, sushi is for me now (my mum made wholemeal pastry pizza's in a baking tray using cheddar and tinned tomatoes, if you're interested in my example). But you really, really like it still. You're constitutionally set up to like it, in a way.

That's why I like Sith: I cannot do otherwise. It's faults are my faults, it's idiocies reflect the way I laugh at myself. And when two suns set over a desert I am overcome with a strange mood that makes me cry a little. It might be nostalgia for youth, or security, or ignorance—I don't know, I can only describe the affects.

So, in answer to glueboots final point: yes, I do suck—I'm a sucker for this stuff. Oh well.

20

May 16:05

Revenge of the Sith – Redemption of Lucas

So today Dan phones me and asks if I'd like to go and see Revenge of the Sith. Now if you don't know what I'm talking about, go away. Stand in the middle of the highstreet. You see all that crass merchandising that's everywhere—that's what I'm talking about. Would you believe that there's actually a film beneath all that crap?

But anyway, we go along. That's Dan, Josh, Chris and myself. All toddle off for the 5pm showing of Sith at the Apollo in Leamington.

Perhaps we need some context. It's not easy coming back to Star Wars, especially this 'new' trilogy (which is getting on for seven years old now--as long as I've been at university). When Epsidode I came out the world became a wonderful, magical place ever so briefly. All the amazingly geeky boys I lived with (including myself there) went out and got merchandise-crazy. The ammount of Star Wars Lego floating about in that hall was quite insane. I went to see the film with my parents, and for the two seconds between the opening musical 'boo!' of the titles and the first seven year old in the audience to start talking, I was somewhere close to heaven. I did rather like the first three, y'see...

Now I wasn't as disappointed as everyone else; it wasn't a bad film. But it wasn't as good as the first three. I've grown to admire it more on replays (it gains in stature as it becomes embedded in time with the other films), like it's sequel Episode II. But they ain't really Star Wars--Lucas wasn't hitting the right buttons, the dialogue was (and always has been) clumsy. The CGI was too flash. It felt too glossy. It wasn't Star Wars.

That is, until today.

George likes to think of the united series, all six, as being a story of redemption. One little boy grows up to be super amazing powerful, but brings darkness and tyranny upon the galaxy, and finally redeems himself. This is exactly what has happened with Lucas: one fantastically talented young director creates a huge living mythology almost by accidents, and turns it into two and a half good films. But he falls to the Schmaltz Side along the way (Ewoks—the real sign of a fall...), and is unable to save his own little galaxy from being governed by the forces of cuteness. Everyone from episodes I and II looked nice—even Darth Maul. Even Jar Jar. But now, finally, George has saved the galaxy and redeemed himself by casting Dark Emperor Schmaltz into a deep, deep pit. With Sith Lucas brings it all back home, back to the beginning. And need I remind you that the beginning of Star Wars is nothing but pain and loss and torment: an orphaned boy looking for his place in the universe.

The dialogue is still apalling, but as I said it always was. We didn't sign up for carefully crafted scripts, we're here for grand 'Space Opera' in a Wagnerian mould. And we get plenty of that--the best scenes in the film are when nobody speaks and John Williams' gloriously retrospective score, embracing music from all the other films, can tell the story on its own along with with Lucas' lovingly created images. I challenge anyone not to feel a slight tremble as, near the end, the respective Leitmotifs of Luke and Leia are subtly reintroduced for their adoption scenes. This is a film at its very best when it is lost for words—it speaks in images and music; a silent movie.

But these silences are inevitably broken, and nobody breaks them better than Ian McDiarmid as Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious/The Emperor. In a shock turn of events, McDiarmid reveals himself to be the best actor in any of the six films. Finally given enough screen time to develop his character for us, McDiarmid (I'd feel funny calling the Emperor 'Ian') achieves the impossible with ease: he makes the fall of Anakin and his own transformation look like a natural progression, rather than just a 'and now I'm really eeeevil' reversal'.

Hayden Christensen must also be credited—he somehow makes you hope that he won't be seduced by the Dark Side, that he'll turn away. In this respect Episode III plays out like a good tragedy: you know it has to go horribly wrong, but you still hope it doesn't.

As for the rest of the cast, well, Ewan McGregor's Kenobi has calmed down a bit and is much more mature, and even has a nice and neat Alec Guinness beard. Natalie Portman again gets bugger all to do apart from mope and cry. Jimmy Smits is underused, but it's always nice to see him (great actor). Somewhere beneath all that walking carpet every so briefly is the return of Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca (which is nice). Samuel L. Jackson does not live out his worst fears and go down like some punk. But most touching are Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker, giving their final turns as C-3PO and R2-D2—the only actors in all the films. And that's enough to make me want to start crying again...

The film is full of the usual Star Wars eye candy, perhaps even more than usual. There is barely five minutes between lightsabre duels, and those five minutes are usually filled with some kind of fighting anyway. If you just want to see stuff blowing up then you won't be dissappointed.

But for the most part the sheer spectacle of the action is outdone, for me, by the carefully constructed 'framing' and 'lighting' of the more static shots. Some of the images Lucas gives us are just beautiful—the oranges of the sunsets on Coruscant blending into the glowing reds and black of the volcanic world where Obi-Wan and Anakin fight at the very end. I would wonder if it is right for me to be complimenting the 'filming' of this film, as very little was actually 'filmed' or 'framed' in any conventional sense. But the fact that Lucas is using the technologies at the service of beauty, rather than for realism or for their own sake's, may indicate a return to his earlier film student days.

It is, as I said, all about redemption. With Revenge of the Sith Lucas would almost appear to be saying 'Sorry' for some of his past creations. But of course, to describe redemption as 'saying sorry' would be to miss the point entirely. Redemption is what happens when something is redeemed, when it is 'bought back', when it is regained and recovered. Redemption transforms everything that goes before it, just as I feel this film, Anakin's fall, will necessarily redeem the candy-floss aspects of the previous two films. But more importantly this film redeems George Lucas as a film maker. It rescues him, swinging in like the Tarzan call from a Wookiee's lips, and bringing the last thirty years full circle, returning him to the innocent joy of film making he must have felt as a young director.

The film that Revenge of the Sith reminds me of most with its perfect marriage of image and music, is strangely enough THX-1138, Lucas' original film school project. They are almost completely different--five Star Wars films stand between them for one. But in Sith something of that younger, pre-StarWars Lucas has returned, has been redeemed. He can do whatever he wants now—he can do anything. He could tell stories of knights in armour, or perhaps a WW2 film. He could make a Dogme film in black and white. He could make a biopic of Francis Ford Coppola. Or documentaries. Or huge animated features. But after this film, I would be quite happy for him to keep telling me his stories from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.... But I'd also look forward to seeing something radically new.

Redemption: it's about getting back something you've lost. This film will redeem the very first time you ever saw Star Wars. If that doesn't make you want to see it then nothing will.

NB: Fran White - if you still haven't seen all of the Star Wars films then you should be very ashamed of yourself! Stop reading this literature junk and get hold of some real culture! ;-)

8

May 04:05

Fox's Glacier Fran

Finally tonight (oh gawd, turned into Trevor McDonald. Actually, no. Not at all. Not over fifty, not black, not TV legend. So not at all really. I'll shut up now...)

Finally tonight we hear from our roving correspondent Francesca Lydia Miles (Fun Love and Money – F***in' Love yer, Mate!), who has just sent me a postcard from a glacier in New Zealand (Tolkein country). The Fox Glacier. That's right kidz—where they make the mints.

Other than that—who can say? Half the card is made of the word 'GLACIER!', the other half is about the mints. We can learn a lot that isn't in words though—let's go all CSI-ey on it...

Well, it costs $1.50 to send a postcard from NZ, where, according to the stamp, there is a place (a town?) called 'Arrowtown'. Now a quick Google later and it would seem that this stamp is a part of a 2003 set of stamps with the title of 'Scenic Definitives'.

However, the postmark is from Christchurch. This would make sense as it is very close to the Fox glacier. Which she has been up. Hmm. Not really getting anywhere.

But if we look carefully at the writing under my household UV-lamp, we will immediately see that....just to the left a bit...
....no, nothing.

Yet, staring at the face of the glacial formation of the front, tilting it at a 45 degree away from me from one end, I can clearly make out...yes, just there, it's...
...damn all. Nothing. Nada.

No additional information, no hidden clues. No disguised message such as 'help me I've been kidnapped by horny feral Hobbits!'. Nowt. We can only really be sure of two things:

1. Fran has been up a glacier.


2. It rocked.

Good enough for me.

5

May 04:05

Oh No!

Writing about web page Googlefight

Disaster! Your dad really is better than my dad...

2

May 07:05

Doctor Who and Childish Things

Writing about web page http://www.gallifreyone.com/index.php

Joy.

Pure, unalloyed joy—this is something close to my feelings at present. We all know that Doctor Who is back (it would take something of an effort to ignore the BBC's blitzkrieg marketing program). This makes me happy. And we all know, if we've seen it, that it isn't half bad. In fact it's good. Really good.

By the look of the viewing figures, it's also popular. Very popular. More popular than Casualty on a Saturday night. More popular than those Geordies on ITV. According to a Newsround poll, it's now more popular with the kidz than The Simpsons.

Joy. Joy joy joy joy joy. Not only is he back, but he's back and he's loved. Not just by the bunch of fanboys and convention monkeys who have, if you like, carried the torch of Who for the last fifteen years or so, through the long black night. You can tell by the looks on some of their faces that, blinking in the sunshine, they can't quite believe the reception by the 'normal' people. They thought, ok, ok—I thought, that we would have to fight tooth and nail to keep the Doctor on TV once he was back, that he would be met by universal derision and hate. That we'd have to 'protect' him, somehow.

It all started when I was given the run of Wisbech public library. I can't remember any better place. Maybe I liked Who before I saw Star Wars, maybe it was after. I remember thinking that Peter Davidson was good, so I guess I remember him. I think he was my favourite Doctor. He might still be. Anyway, it really starts with the library, because on the wall of the childrens section there is a bookshelf rammed with the Target novelisations of every single Doctor Who story. Well, maybe not every at one time, but they rotated them. That's a lot of books.

I read every single one of them. Non stop. They were my favourite books without any doubt, and I'll still stick up for them today. Sure, you can have your children's classics like Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables, you can have your Hobbit. You could sit in the corner and try to work out where Wally was. But when everyone else in my class was reading about Jennifer Yellow Hat and Billy Blue Hat running around, or Topsy and Tim, I was reading Who. And loving it, it's pure unadulterated (un-adult, at that), joyous adventure. Crazy, experimental, science-fiction! It made Enid Blyton look boring (a shame, but there you are).

And so I got my idea of Doctor Who, without really having ever seen it properly (things always seemed to get in the way of watching the TV which had, by then, descended into something strange involving Bonnie Langford). I learnt about all the different Doctors, and the different companions, to the point I had favourites. Troughton-Doctor, with Jamie, a Jacobite rebel and Zoe, some kind of maths genius from the future, were probably my favourites. Especially when they walked into one of the traditional stories of 'Doctor walks into base under attack, Doctor helps out, the end'. It wasn't hackneyed or cliched when I was seven, it was just a bloody good story.

But I loved all the Doctors. Hartnell's grumpiness and paternal benevolence, Troughton's mad pixie – 'intergalactic hobo' (an image I may have tried to cultivate), Pertwee's derring do with Army types. The amazing Tom Baker, who's usual response to cosmic peril was the Douglas Adams-coloured offering of a jelly baby to whatever he faced. Then Davidson, who I liked because he cared so much, and probably because he was blonde and so was I (I was seven, ok). Colin Baker, who was a kind of mad bad version, fun to read (though not to watch...). But I didn't read any later than that. I didn't need to really. It was cemented—I was a fan, a fact I often had to bury or disguise through long years of teenage popularity challenge (as if dandruff wasn't enough to deal with).

But now the Doctor is back in the open, and he doesn't really need those funny looking people in anoraks to take care of him. The Doctor isn't sick; the Doctor has healed himself, regenerated both as a character and as a series. It's fast, it's fun, it's quite funny. It can even be bloody scary, and quite emotional too. It is, in fact, a well written series of the 21st century, in the style of Buffy (don't get me started there). The Doctor doesn't need geek appeal; Doctor Who has mass appeal. The kidz love it, the parents love it. Everyone can watch it together—crumbs! Doctor Who is the rebirth of Saturday evening family drama. It's doing what it was always meant to do.

And I still love it. It's just telling bloody good stories, like it always was with the books I read. Limitless adventures. Limitless. Stuff The West Wing, stuff Desperate Housewives. The best television is for everone, not just an HBO highbrow elite. It's all so damn adult out there, so grown up--especially for the ten, eleven, twelve year olds. Soon the seven year olds will be growing up too fast too. They'll do what I did and see Aliens around a friend's house. Nightmares for years.

We need drama that isn't necessarily dramatic, we need to see conflicts that aren't resolved with violence without resorting to Barney style moralising. We need to have some fun doing it. We need to stop dumbing down without having to grow up at the same time. There is a difference.

Doctor Who is that difference.

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