Those of you who have visited Schiphol, the Netherlands’ capital airport, in the last couple of months may have perused the latest issue of Amsterdam Magazine.  It’s a free publication, designed to attract the English-speaking tourist.  Naturally, within four pages there’s a full-page ad for an escort service.  But I don’t wish to seem too down on the city’s red light district and largely healthy attitude to sex.  It’s also unfair to connect the two with this fairly whimsical article on dating tips, but I did find it odd for an ostensibly progressive society to revel in such ostensibly dated attitudes.  Particularly as it’s nestled amongst what is intended as an interloper’s first taste of Amsterdam.

Kindly permit me to make fun of it…

Above the more egalitarian concerns of distributing the onus of a relationship evenly between all participants, the key piece of advice here is to be awesome.  Be awesome and say the right things, preferably at the right moment.  Not at the wrong moment, like on the loo.  That’s the wrong moment for almost everything.  Excited?  You bet I am!

This one’s pretty much a no-brainer; take some care with what you wear.  Open-toed sandals (and I guess flip-flops as well, by default.  Crocs? Borderline.  Can’t commit) are apparently something of a dramatic faux-pas in Dutch fashion.  For such a permissive society, they still frown on toes.  Where’s their union, eh?  We’ve a long way to go.

First off, anyone who uses the phrase “Got a light?”, especially when picking up women, needs to burn in a fire.  With that in mind, “Your place or mine?”, a bold opening gambit for even the most broad-shouldered drunkard, has to be an upgrade.  You know, already I feel humbled.  So many lonely evenings in front of QI with a Findus Crispy Pancake.  All this time I should have been actively asking women on sight to fuck strangers.

To be fair to this one, it did come alongside an adorable hand-drawn image of a man popping his head from a corner, with the word ‘BOO!’ in a giant bubble from his mouth.  So, perhaps there’s a sense of irony at play that I’m not properly honouring.  Nevertheless, the article states ‘don’t be afraid’ to try this particular tactic.  Yes, it’s silly, not to mention borderline psychotic, but it nevertheless belongs in your arsenal, alongside not wearing flip-flops and the phrase “your place or mine?”.

This is where it becomes the sort of thing  I got from people paid to give advice in job interviews.  The prospective employer might not be into sports, so don’t bore then with the latest footy results. ON THE OTHER HAND, they might be a raving Chelsea supporter (especially if the job is in Crouch End) so don’t leave out football entirely.  Try to talk and not talk about everything in the correct amount of time and tone, plus also don’t.

I also like the bit at the end about getting her blind drunk to increase your chances.  That’s a little nugget my job coach never got round to.

Not in the bath, you fucking pervert!

Here’s a new one; mild racism and outright duplicity. It doesn’t matter what you look like, just say you’re Italian and Dutch women will swoon like Emmett Brown. Would I have to put on an accent as well?  How long would I need to keep that up?  What if we get married?  I smell a romantic comedy!  Starring Kevin Kline!  From 20 years ago!

On Friday nights, I like to visit my local hole in the ground, say Bed Bar or Chameleon, spot a girl from across the dancefloor, her silver crucifix glints amid the fluctuating colours.  I sidle up against her, give a cheeky little wink, then yell “THERE IS NO GOD, YOU CREDULOUS BITCH!” in her lughole, before aggressively boogying to Sweet Like Chocolate by Shanks & Bigfoot, all up in her face, whilst yelling “WHAT! WHAT! WHAT!!”.

Overall, the lesson to learn is be confident. Don’t be passive, like the lowly Dutchman.

It’s also worth pointing out at this stage, in true Rod Sterling fashion, that the author of the article is a woman, who goes by the name of Caroline Goralczyk. That’s right, a woman! Not a man, like you definitely thought to begin with.  NOW who’s unenlightened?

In summary then, the Dutch tourist board is overly eager that you plough their women.  They’re strong minded and independent, but will fall for the most rudimentary solicitation from pasty-faced charlatans with 48 hours to slaughter.  Sandals and flip-flops are a no-no, even without socks.  Dutch women secretly wish to submit to you during intellectual combat, ESPECIALLY if you’re either Silvio Berlusconi or Jeremy Beadle.  No baths.

Despite Super being conceived back in 2002, it unfortunately arrives at what appears to be the waning arc of the modern flirtation with superheroes. Perhaps not financially, but coming as it does in the shade of numerous ‘real life superhero’ deconstructions, most notably Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, who themselves are shadowed by such iconic Marvel monoliths. However, it’s a sub-sub-genre it dominates with ease via simple psychological fidelity to its characters and a strong pedigree of cast and crew. Particular stand-outs are Ellen Page as Libby, a comic store clerk who becomes Frank’s confidante and partner in lunacy. She commits as fully as any actor can to a role that would remain goofy and unbelievable in lesser hands. Similarly, Kevin Bacon is hilarious, giving well-needed dimension to an almost too likeable villain. Rainn Wilson, best known for his role in the American incarnation of The Office, acquits himself splendidly in a lead role, fitting the part like a wrench-wielding glove.

Director and writer James Gunn cemented his reputation on the underrated horror-comedy gem Slither, as well as his work on the surprisingly worthy Dawn of The Dead remake, ex-wife Jenna Fischer’s mockumentary Lollilove and, um…Scooby Doo. Coming as he does from the stable of Troma, a studio notorious for combining schlock with gore to an endearing degree, Gunn has a knack for injecting a potent amount of genuine horror into horror-comedy. It’s a cross-breed that is as hard to market as it is in appealing to both of its demographics. The scene where Frank experiences his ‘Road to Damascus’ moment, done in glorious Takashi Miike/J-horror fashion, would be played not nearly as violent or gory in any other film. It would seem egregious to much of the audience, but it’s a marvellous scene, organically signposted and contains an odd sense of authenticity to religious delusions. It’s also a neat representation of the movie’s indie spirit, its willingness to effectively sabotage itself for the sake of idiosyncrasy.

Frank’s motivation for becoming a superhero is not based on some errant love of comic books, or Tick-like blinkered enthusiasm. He stumbles upon the idea as a device to channel his frustrations towards ‘fighting evil’, beginning in earnest by rugby tackling drug dealers and getting beaten up. Super goes much further than “haha, superheroes don’t work in real life”, which is by now a thoroughly rinsed trope. It also doesn’t fall into gleefully adhering to the formula that it’s mocking, as did Kick Ass to an admittedly genial effect. As much as it jettisons a great deal of baggage surrounding the premise, it’s also the most incisive in terms of the emotional underpinnings of superheroes. At their heart, they aren’t about power and responsibility. They’re berserker vigilantism; someone exasperated by injustice and have the ego, damaged or otherwise, to inflict unilateral correction. Frank remains our protagonist throughout, but we aren’t allowed to forget in a hurry that he’s a dangerous man. It’s one thing to subvert clichés, but it’s similarly undaunted by subverting their subversion. For example, his estranged wife is a recovering drug addict who has relapsed in the hands of her new lover, so in effect does need a knight in shining armour to rescue her. Conversely, the movie is smart enough to know that this relationship should ultimately not be healthy or sustainable.

Super is  not without flaws; some of the indie comic-style captioning is forced and misguided, plus an abandoned sub-plot involving a police detective leads to a slightly limp denouement, particularly after such a stunning climax.  Within this ending, it actually ends up making a fairly coherent case for braining people for cutting in line outside a cinema (“YOU DON’T BUTT IN LINE!!”). In a lesser movie, this would be reprehensible, but here it’s done with a true-blue sincerity befitting the finest of superhero fiction.

In an age of cuts and rioting somehow distinguishable from other ages of rioting and cuts, it’s always good to find bohemianism is still alive and well, and paying £4.30 for a bottle of beer.

Is Dalston a particularly trendy hotspot? Not really for me to say, being the Surrey-bound interloper that I am. Having said that, a quick Google of the phrase “Is Dalston hip?” does reveal an article suggesting it has trumped the likes of Shoreditch as the latest place for art-minded folk to congregate and not get mugged. Last night I had the good fortune to be invited by my good friend @Helicule to an evening of music at Cafe Oto, slap bang in this new hipster heartland. That’s ‘slap bang’ as in ‘near the tube station’. It’s a terrific venue, one with a dynamic enough sound system to allow decent band performances and comfortable natter in-between. After all, half of the fun of these places is in the conversation/networking with attractive people in loftier social circles. That and bagsying a dilapidated couch in the corner and refusing to move through sheer comfort and fear of usurpery.

The evening is in benefit of Shoppinghour, a biannual magazine with a stated remit of “bringing art, philosophy, poetry and critical theory together in exposing the nuances of everyday culture”. Shoppinghour, the name itself a pun on German philosopher and professional misanthrope Arthur Schopenhauer, is a refreshingly cerebral yet pretence-free addition to a slender publishing niche. While said remit is certainly broad and accounts for a solid gamut of perspective, a magazine ostensibly dedicated to modern philosophy is presumably not an easy sell in such a beleaguered marketplace. The publication is currently on its seventh issue, titled ‘Rights’, featuring writing and photography from numerous contributors, (Jovita Berlin, Stik, Elise Boularan etc). It’s printed on good quality paper, with strong binding and a decent page count. Flicking through the copy I have in my hands (to give a flavour of the magazine rather than trivialise the contents), there’s an article about kettling in the recent cut protests; a piece on communism’s place in the history of human rights, some splendid photography by Dana Popa and a pair of articles on natural and animal rights respectively. I describe it as ‘pretence-free’ despite some of the more precious subject matter (RE: dealing with the ‘rights’ of islands) and dense invocation of academia. It’s simply not claiming to be anything else and, while certain concessions would be welcome to ingratiate a relative layman such as myself, it’s always a refreshment to find any piece of work that, for lack of a more affectionate turn of phrase, ‘gets on with it’. All-in-all, It’s a decent balance of thoughtful prose and interesting imagery.

Assisting their promotion are three acts of disparate yet complimentary style and scope. Beginning with a set from Naomi Kashiwagi, a performance artist armed with little more than a gramophone and a set of strategically sabotaged vinyl. The record skips backwards and forwards to a regular, kickdrum-like bass thump, which Natalie carefully manipulates though gentle blowing on the stylus. The overall ambience veered from warm to grating, but also inspired an odd sense of nostalgia and sentimentality. I used to make Hip-hop. A large part of the process was the chopping of dusty old bargain bin records, often in short one-bar loops, creating a compelling atmosphere from something otherwise benign. Hearing the familiar old vocal glitches and pitch-shifting gave me a bit of a Ready Brek glow, so cheers for that!

She was followed by Florian Lunaire, a three/four-piece of piano-led rock, reminiscent of Spoon, or perhaps Grizzly Bear, but with more of a focus on dramatic, arpeggiating keys. It was a lovely performance, though the nature of the sound system  meant that much of the vocals went unheard. Of course, in any live music night, the overall sense of atmosphere is more important than the calibre of performance, though the latter certainly has a large effect on the former. The final act was Hejira, a European-style psych rock group who, thanks to Joni Mitchell releasing a record with the same name in 1976, are difficult to do impromptu research on. Musically, they were the most impressive of the bunch, with guitar noise over male-female harmonies and thick drum sounds. The acts were flanked on either side of their set times with numerous DJs, providing more in the way of backing tracks than anything demanding attention. An unfortunate case of dodgy planning meant that the final DJ only managed with about 5 or so minutes of play. Sad, but at least it gives me a bit of a non-anecdote to finish this off. Thanks, Dave!

Issue 7 of Shoppinghour is available through www.shoppinghourmagazine.com

Music and info available at http://www.naomikashiwagi.co.uk/ http://www.florian-lunaire.com/ and http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/hej

Information on the venue at http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/

Brothers Andy (Phillip Seymor Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) Hanson have money trouble. The company where Andy works faces an upcoming audit, threatening to reveal the systematic embezzlement of funds that fuel his drug habit. Hank is behind on payments for his child support, as well as his daughter’s private school tuition. Both have an increasingly fractious relationship with their father Charles (Albert Finney), who was emotionally distant throughout their childhood. Andy approaches Hank with a plan to solve both their financial troubles; they rob their parents’ jewellery store. The place is well insured and absolutely nothing will go terribly wrong. Something then goes terribly wrong.

Befitting the overly grounded production are characters that are not only flawed, but progressively inept. Despite writer Kelly Masterson coming from a background in Theology, there are simplistic pronouncements upon good and evil. There’s also no rumination on ‘respect’ and ‘honour’ and other such bloated conceits usually associated with the genre. In fact, the family dynamic is more akin to an indie drama, with such classical themes rendered less explicit. Crime is decided upon through sheer desperation, with both spiralling alongside each-other as the story develops. It’s also refreshing to see a film largely avoid portraying crime as a kind of lifestyle choice or, even worse, a moral equivalent to capitalism and the rule of law. Every character has failed another in some way, from adultery to murder to simple emotional reticence. The botched robbery acts as more of a catalyst for already pregnant issues between the characters, whether emotional or financial. In this way, it maintains the film retains its heart without giving way to style or spectacle.

In the accompanying Making Of documentary, it is made clear that what was initially perceived as a contemporary crime thriller was interpreted by the director Sidney Lumet as grand melodrama. It’s perhaps this distinction above all others that rescues the project from the crowded stable of ‘worthy but dull’. Despite some terrific scenes of raw, bloody emotion, there’s never a sense of pompous histrionics or stagey contrivance. Despite the chronologically loose structure, with POVs and time-frames intermittently shifting in an abrupt manner, there’s a deceptively airtight narrative at play. At points, this ‘flashback’ style can appear a little obnoxious, or obfuscate a crucial plot detail. Overall, there’s no sense of it becoming abused as a Pulp Fiction-style opportunistic gimmick. It also has the benefit of blurring the three-act structure, leading to a greater tension over when and how the story will end.

Since the sad loss of director Sidney Lumet earlier this year, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead has greater notoriety for becoming the last addendum to one of the finest resumes in the industry. Being the capper on a list that includes Twelve Angry Men (1957), Fail-Safe (1964), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976), to name but a few, is not an enviable position for any movie. After several misfires in the last decade of his career (Gloria, Find Me Guilty), it’s at least some consolation for his final effort to be welcome among his best.

“The world is a really terrible place. It’s too…..precarious”

Based on the 1988 play by Craig Lucas and directed by Norman René, it tells the story of a straight-laced publishing employee Peter Hoskins (Alec Baldwin) who falls in love with free-wheeling, mildly ODC’d insomniac Rita Boyle (Meg Ryan). Upon their wedding, an elderly stranger (Sydney Walker) requests permission to kiss the bride. She acquiesces and, shortly after, suffers a dramatic personality change. A wary Peter sets about uncovering the truth, which turns out to be more outlandish than he could realise. Rita has switched bodies with the stranger, so Peter must find him and reverse the spell before it’s too late.

Prelude To A Kiss is bizarre, but not simply through its morbid approach to the normally light-hearted whimsy of body-swapping. Its oddness stems from the somewhat sparse directing choices and sincere handling of depression and (in the latter half of the movie) homosexuality, through the chosen medium of a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan. Ryan had already suffered the career breakthrough of 1988′s When Harry Met Sally, transforming her from the supporting love-interest of action capers like Armed and Dangerous and Innerspace, to a rom-com fixture for the remainder of the 90′s. This subsequent success and its influence on Hollywood romance leads to a retroactive appraisal of her character here, becoming almost an earnest satire of the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl‘ (all credit to Nathan Rabin) trope. What begins as a ‘Dharma and Greg’-ish free spirit colliding with an uptight Conservative, with all the potential malarkey that would entail, soon reveals a surprising emotional fidelity. Not only is Rita a long-term insomniac who suffers apocalyptic fantasies. She’s a ‘communist-socialist’ (this is an actual plot-point) and has no desire to bring children into such an appalling world. It’s still a sanitised portrayal of anything approaching mental illness, but rare for a character (or indeed a film) of this ilk to contain such existential ennui.

“At night I could feel the loneliness coming off both of us like heat…It was as if we had been married forever, suddenly, without the sex”

It’s a great cast, with the particular stand-outs being Meg Ryan and Sydney Walker. Both have the task of alternating between polar opposite characters, with a palpable shift in each of their demeanour. More so than perhaps any other film in her career, Ryan is genuinely lovable. Walker is frequently heartbreaking, particularly during a stand-out monologue detailing all the cumulative injustices and sadness of life. Alec Baldwin carries the weight of the story well, but has a gravelled intensity that largely alienates him from empathy, as though you’re actually watching his character from Glengarry Glen Ross. A stellar cast; comprising of Ned Beatty, Stanly Tucci, Patty Duke and Kathy Bates are rewarded with roughly two scenes of screen time each. It’s very much a sparse affair, from the competent direction to letting the economic, theatrical dialogue take centre stage. The mystical aspects of the plot are handled deftly, with just the right amount of incredulity and acceptance.

Craig Lucas’ play was very much intended as an A.I.D.S. allegory. Erstwhile happy couples faced an early future of frailty and physical degradation, as though suddenly partnered with an elderly equivalent, now mere months away from death. Director of both the play and adaptation, Norman René was a frequent collaborator with Lucas and sadly succumbed to complications related to the disease in 1996. Without being able to appreciate or compare both versions, it’s still an effective and moving parallel, albeit one tempered by its magnanimous finale. The film received mixed reviews and has largely eluded a decent cult following, leaving it a curiosity reserved for those chasing up the early 90′s of mainstream American cinema. What could have easily been saccharine and inert has enough emotional clout to justify its themes and portent.

Before vindicating her career with the success of 2009′s The Hurt Locker (and further capitalising with the rather ominous-sounding Untitled Osama Bin Laden Project), director Kathryn Bigalow was perhaps best known for marrying James Cameron and, somewhat more charitably, the director of 1991′s Point Break. It’s an unfair summation, of course, as her admittedly sparse filmography also includes 1995′s Strange Days, an eve-of-the-millenium sci-fi thriller, well-casted and with a great dystopic atmosphere (rather odd considering it was only set four or so years into the future). Her first feature was a modernising of the vampire myth sandwiched (chronologically and tonally) between the camp of 1985′s The Lost Boys and the colour-drained portent of 1995′s The Addiction. Superficially, Near Dark is ahead of its time, providing a vampiric romance set in the then-present-day American South, several decades before HBO’s True Blood and the current, overly cloying renaissance of the sub-genre. Stylistically though, the film is very much a product of the 80′s, with an ethereal score by Tangerine Dream neatly accompanying numerous lovely shots of our photogenic anti-hero staggering through an Oklahoma desert.

Recognisable to fans of the TV show Heroes (they’re still out there somewhere), Adrian Pasdar plays Caleb Colton, a hedonistic young pretty boy with an off-the-peg penchant for liquor and women. After picking up succubic lady-drifter Mae (Jenny Wright) for a protracted date in his truck, a make-out session aggressively (and somewhat creepily) imposed by our hero results in a bite to his neck. She promptly runs away and, in pursuit, Caleb gets lost in the wilderness, with the beginnings of blood addiction affecting his constitution like so much heavy-handed drug metaphor. Still in a state of confusion and with a freshly developed aversion to sunlight and ordinary human food, Caleb is promptly kidnapped by Mae’s extended vampire drifter family. Mae is given an ultimatum by her clan to train him up in the art of homicidal blood-letting, as he’s currently a huge liability to their survival.

The successes of Near Dark stem almost entirely from the aforementioned sound/cinematography, but also by the great character actors who comprise Mae’s clan, made up as they are from the cream of 80′s horror i.e. a bunch of people from Aliens who aren’t Paul Reiser. Bill Paxton’s charismatic psychopath Severen, whilst something of an aggressive cliche on paper, is done with such gusto and commitment that it steals the film from its comparatively bland star-cross’d lovers. Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein are believable as Hooker and Diamondback, a couple of attached, mutually dependent vampires content with their directionless amorality. Said cinematography comes courtesy of veteran Adam Greenberg, whose post-Near Dark career sadly led him through increasingly benign territory. His work here contains a quiet beauty, with recurring compositions of lone figures struggling through dusty plains.

The movie has since developed a cult following, befitting any neo-vampire tale that missed the Twilight boat. It’s central addition to canon is the second act reveal of ‘curing’ vampirism via a complete blood transfusion. Rather than a cop-out, it helps render the story more satisfying in its substance abuse parallels and the parental anxiety of ‘falling in with the wrong crowd’. It also provides a more interesting dynamic, where allegiances can shift and salvation can be earned. It’s a shame to see it ultimately abuse this notion in the underwhelming denouement, but overall the premise adds more than it takes away. The movie largely usurps the clunkiness of its oppressively po-faced tone with a genuine atmosphere and decent setpieces, allowing for appealing lapses into modestly surreal imagery. It also largely avoids the camp and cod-thatricality so common in the vampire sub-genre, but it doesn’t have the will of, say, Let The Right One In, to fully disregard expectations.

As a side note, this cover for the blu-ray reissue is really shameless in its Twilight baiting:

Not only do they change the main character’s appearance into the charcoal features that the movie itself eschews, but it saturates the colour of Jenny Wrights face, despite her character remaining a vampire for almost all of the screen time. I can understand a spot of opportunism when re-releasing a vampire film of modest popularity in the wake of Twilight, but that’s plain misleading! Besides which, wouldn’t that alienate any of the existing ‘Near Dark’ fans who probably signed the petitions to get the thing a blu-ray release in the first place? Cuh..

Befitting any movie about absent parents and fledgling storytellers set in the recent past, Super 8 feels very much like a personal effort. The trouble with any ‘personal’ movie in Hollywood is that it’s all the more excuse for sentimentality and well-worn troping, albeit largely done in this instance with sincerity. It’s all very well making any piece of art about the aching vacuum left in the absence of a mother’s love, but what does it tell us that we didn’t know already? Super 8 appears to flirt with more complex themes (the distancing effect of the camera, how adulthood is an assault on the innocence of youth) but is ultimately just about letting go of pain, because pain is, you know, bad. There’s also a message of abandoning nostalgia; somewhat hypocritical given the Amblinesque, magic-hour sensibility throughout.

As with previous Bad Robot (Director J.J. Abrams’ production company) productions, such as Cloverfield and most notably Lost, a sense of mystery pervades the build-up, and is then revealed to be a fairly robust trope (giant monster, time travel, various other gubbins). In the case of Super 8, it centres on the escaped contents of one of the train compartments, presumably responsible for the subsequent strange goings-on. Left deliberately ambiguous in the accompanying trailers and very much a sub-plot until the third act, the mystery, coupled with a very ‘Spielbergian’ amalgam of warmth and spectacle, satisfyingly drives Super 8 for the majority of its runtime. Come the time for the reveal, in a surprisingly clunky manner, much of that aura is sapped and ‘Spielbergian’ becomes more a conceited stick with which to beat the production. Not only is the reveal wholly predictable, but it’s more underwhelming than the majority of what would be scuttling around the mind of the average moviegoer. After considerable and successful effort in realising small-town Americana, with dimensional characters reacting convincingly to impressive effects, the conclusion owes much more to numerous other movies than anything approaching reality. The homage becomes an exercise in derivative dot-joining, where events occur in obligation to genre and structure, rather than character and plausibility.

Meanwhile, the laundry list of plot-holes gathers steam to replace the burnt momentum. Characters somehow know exactly where to go, and somehow manage to cheat death in the most dangerous of circumstances. There’s even a scene where extraneous characters are suddenly reintroduced, simply so that they can be picked off horror-movie style whilst leaving the principles intact. I’m thankful it’s not the sort of film to slaughter children for shock value, but it certainly reaches a point where the tension collapses partially as a result.

By all means, Super 8 is far from a bad movie. It succeeds in providing a thrilling adventure story, simmering but never quite curdling its nostalgia. In fact, I doubt any younger viewers would find its period settings alienating and there’s very little ‘an actor in the White House?’ type irony to be found. The effects, editing and sound-work, particularly in the spectacular crash scene, are never less than stellar. There’s some over-ripe dialogue scattered amongst the otherwise fine performances, but both Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning are particularly adept considering their age. Despite its derivation, it does well to relegate the more fantastical elements to the background, something that’s still a relatively original approach to Hollywood. It only fails by setting up a twist it cannot deliver, ending with a lurch for sentimentality via a murder of appalling clichés before redeeming itself with an excellent during-credits sequence.

Not to be needlessly comparative of entirely different movies, but Joe Cornish’s Attack The Block was made at a fraction of the budget and is a far tighter, funnier and more entertaining throwback to early 80′s cinema. Super 8 nevertheless has an earnestness to separate it from the glut of summer blockbusters, plus it’s hard to be too mad at its over-reverence when it still amounts to an original and presumably singular franchise.

Reese, the eldest and most rampantly antisocial sibling, is sent to cookery class as punishment but soon proves himself a natural in the kitchen. However, true to his gleeful misanthropy, he needlessly sabotages everyone else’s work during a competition he was already set to win. In the ensuing reprimand, parents Hal and Lois are shocked by the depth of their son’s clueless malevolence. It’s a neat bit of writing, mainly as it helps provide a psychological bedrock for a character that could otherwise remain two-dimensionally comic:

Hal: Reese, do you know what empathy is?
Reese: No.
Hal: Well, empathy is putting yourself in other people’s shoes so you can feel what they do. If you hurt someone, empathy makes you hurt as well.
Reese: Then….why would you want empathy?

Reese, yesterday.

Now, I’ve been little more than a passive observer of the week’s events, but as the looting spread and the crisis worsened, my interest cultivated a gnawing tension in my stomach. It’s a tension I normally associate with realising I’m wrong about something, and embarrassing myself in debate. It soon became clear, especially by the evening of the 8th, that these attacks were not politically motivated. At least, not in the explicit sense of the student protests/riots of November 2010. People weren’t just throwing rocks at police and trashing bank branches, as though this is somehow effortlessly justified in comparison. They were looting independent retailers, newsagents and homes, in areas where friends of mine live. A Croydon landmark and hundred-year-old family business went up in flames for little other reason than mattresses burn fast. In a clip that has now become viral and therefore eminently disposable, a wounded exchange student is helped to his feet and promptly mugged in what amounts to the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Of course, you already know this. It’s the awfulness that 24hr news was made for. Even typing this feels a bit like so much dry rot, but I’ve only just found a way into it by bringing up the ‘Malcolm In The Middle’ thing.

I felt ‘wrong’ because these events weren’t only an assault on our general values and way of life, they felt like a personal assault on my left-leaning sympathies. However much the root cause could be attributed to Tory policy, or the convolution of economic fiasco, these were still people who would rob your bloodied slumping form while their mate points his Android for posterity. These were people who had squandered any moral high ground on appliances and tracksuits. The concerns and values of the liberal left were inadvertently incubating such looters, similar to how the conservative right were harbouring white-collar crime, like tax fraud and expenses fiddling.

Meanwhile, people are conflating excuses with explanations. Understandable, but still damaging to the discourse (and therefore progress) in this country. What was once about politics and protest is now about thugs, ‘pure and simple’. ‘Scum’ we can all agree on, numbered in their hundreds across the country. The fears/secret hopes of an entire tabloid readership ingloriously realised, transcending any need for context. After all, what could possibly justify all this?

Yes, that's the spirit.

The problem in addressing the numerous failures that led to this tragedy is that they largely meld with concerns leading to criminality and arseholery in general. Capitalism is trenchantly unfair; the poor afford less rights and opportunities; parents and peers are a corrupting or non-presence, people ‘abuse’ the welfare system and ‘don’t know the true value of a shoe’, or something. That’s not to mention various neuro-scientific discoveries, suggesting the subconscious is far ahead of our decision-making. The quantum mechanics of the particles comprising the atoms comprising the synapses in our brains are well out of our jurisdiction. Free will is an illusion and our parents f***ed us up, as did their parents ad nauseum. Justice is a composite patch-job on the leaky basin of reality that doesn’t quite work and never quite did. Nevertheless, we do what we can and it gradually improves through revision and nuance, honouring valid social movements as belatedly as possible.

With all that in mind, the well-meaning liberal search for communal rationale is in danger of redundancy, dwelling on flaws too impractical to fix in our lifetimes and offering no applicable solution in its place. This leads to the greater danger of the right-leaning reactionary, demanding a tangible drug for the freshest wound, regardless of its sustainability or consequence. They don’t just want them evicted, and their property seized (including that of their family). They want them shot, strung up or, worst of all, clipped round the ear hole. These people, without wishing to draw too much of a fatuous parallel, also don’t want empathy.

It can be misguided, or patronising, or offensive, but empathy is crucial to understanding the cause of any atrocity. It can also help dilute the blame to a mushy, unsatisfying gruel, where society, or even reality, is the ‘real’ criminal and ‘true’ justice is listlessly elusive. Nevertheless, the fact remains that facts remain.

Here’s Reese fighting a goat.

Jeff Daniels stars as Ben Wilson, a still-grieving widower in the process of renovating a guest-house on the outskirts of town with his daughter Hilary (Ariana Richards).  The pair are joined by a tour group, headed by the dubiously magnanamous Madame Iovine (Marilyn Lightstone), who insists on paying upfront for themto stay in the largely unfurnished building.    Ben is instantly wary of the party’s eccentric behaviour, but has bigger problems in the shape of his late wife’s father, Judge Caldwell (George Murdock).  Caldwell explicitly blames Ben for her death, and is encroaching upon his custody of Hilary. Long story short, the tour group are in fact (spoilers follow) time travellers from an immaculate-but-dull future, passively witnessing historical disasters in a callously decadent fashion.  Their presence heralds the arrival of catastophe, as a meteorite decimates the town and its population.  Before their subsequent departure, a sympathetic time tourist slips Ben one of their passports.  With his daughter’s life in the balance, Ben travels back in time to help set things right.

The film plays out like a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, where the one-shot, high-concept premise is often contained within a folksy, small-town setting.  In fact, the film is based on a short story called Vintage Season, written by one-time Twilight Zone contributors Lawrence O’Donnell and C.L.Moore.  The Grand Tour avoids the pitfalls of similar-minded movies by not spending the post-reveal runtime on a futile expansion of its own mythology (see Richard Kelly’s The Box, be my guest).  Instead, once the penny drops and the second act begins, the plot takes the premise to a logical conclusion, but one that’s unafraid of cutting the gordian knot at the expense of a more coherent finale.

The trouble with time travel stories is simply this; messing with time means messing with plot.  Certain events already established may become undone, paradoxical, or rendered arbitrary by the protagonist’s ability to change it on a whim.  If the traveller cannot change the past, say due to some form of predeterminist cosmological policy, then that can also feel arbitrary, not to mention unsatisfactory to the audience, as ideas are refused permission to conclude.  What would actually happen if you went back and killed your grandfather?  What’s more satisfying to see, the gun jamming for no reason, or the very fabric of reality unweaving in a psychedelic visual feast?  Well, both are pretty stupid, but at least the latter would make foa better screensaver.  ‘The Grand Tour’ has no such dazzling display, but it does allow the third act to delve into willful paradox, as Ben travels back 24 hours and teams up with the Ben from earlier on in the film.  This twist allows for another unique trump card, as Ben literally confronts himself about his cowardice and complicity in his wife’s death.  It’s a surprisingly harrowing sequence for such daytime-style melodrama and provides an unusual wrinkle to some otherwise forthright characterisation.

There’s no denying the TV-movie production values, but Jeff Daniels provides a much-needed emotional centre, judging the tone perfectly and inhabiting the everyman role with relative comfort.  There’s a pleasing incongruity to the tourists themselves, as they for the most part seem to have escaped from a casting session in the epicentre of the 1980s.  Meanwhile, their resident ‘retropologist’ blunders against passing cars whilst gawping at contemporary telephone lines.  It’s hard to imagine such a party spending much time in history before getting rumbled by someone at somepoint, but therein lies the joy of imagination.  Also endearing is the reveal of their ‘actual’ clothing; a barmy assortment of esoterica replete with Tin Man face paint and New Romantical garb.  Truly the future is a place of wonder.

As is the way with much of live action science fiction, ideas triumph over compromised execution.  In the case of The Grand Tour, ideas include the emotional detachment that Time and Space afford us from tragedy and ultimately how arbitrary that detachment is.  More satisfying is the notion that, for lack of a better metaphor, perhaps reality can let us kill grandad.

]]> http://nikdrou.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/the-grand-tour-1992/feed/ 2 http://nikdrou.wordpress.com 1246490050_timescape vlcsnap-2011-05-24-11h56m00s186 vlcsnap-2011-05-24-12h04m41s124 http://nikdrou.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/the-dead-island-trailer-and-video-games-as-art/ http://nikdrou.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/the-dead-island-trailer-and-video-games-as-art/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:21:10 +0000 http://nikdrou.wordpress.com http://nikdrou.wordpress.com/?p=394 ]]>

This trailer for Dead Island, a zombie survival horror game set on a remote holiday resort, is not only already a viral success but the chief inspiration for an in-development Dead Island movie ( http://uk.movies.ign.com/articles/115/1151065p1.html ).  According to this article, “the film will will follow a Memento-like storyline, even though the video game does not”.  For those unwilling to sit through the clip, it concerns a young married couple and their pre-adolescent daughter as they’re the victim of a zombie attack in their hotel room.  The Memento influence being that the clip largely plays in reverse, from the freshly-undead child being flung upwards through a five-story window to the father heroically leaving her in a corridor full of zombies.  This backwards carnage is accompanied by a Sigur Ros-style piano and string arrangement, with intermittent forward-motion cuts of the terrified girl being chased and ultimately infected by a crew of flesh-hungry holidaymakers.  It’s equal parts affecting and obnoxious. The evocative music and dramatic irony acting as a form of emotional sophistry that the game and subject matter presumably can’t live up to.  Also, as the clip below highlights, it does give the impression that this was made by people who don’t have children.

Despite the somewhat cynical and exploitative overtones, there is at least an attempt to be taken seriously and to dabble with a slightly different approach to marketing.  It also helps dredge up the ‘video games as art’ discussion, which interests me as it cuts a way into the heart of my affinity with pop culture as a whole.  It’s a land where many of its denizens were built to be disposable, but became quite influential and wealthy along the way.  So they can make billions, whilst still remaining the underdogs to their followers.  Despite very much being the billion dollar industry its been for quite a while now, video games are still more or less languishing in the same patch of artistic antipathy as porn.  Taking the collective goodwill and sheer denial of gaming fandom into account, Games are still culturally ghettoised in a way that books and films aren’t.  Dealing in really broad strokes here, it’s partly down to the inverted snobbery of the non-gaming literati, and partly the fault of the gaming industry and its followers for making inverted snobbery’s bed and tucking it in at night.  As it stands, a cut-scene from even the most high-profile game still has the relative production values of an Asylum mockbuster, with stiff acting/performance capture and even stiffer dialogue.  Rockstar’s upcoming LA Noire appears a genuine step up in terms of allowing a more human performance, so perhaps the technology (not to mention the budget) is more of a barrier at this stage than anything implicit about the format.

The more pressing problem lies in the fact these games are largely imports from genre fiction.  War movies, zombie movies, gangster movies etc.  The gameplay effectively takes the familiar action beats and tropes from those movies and extends them, until they are not just central but all-encompassing to the experience.  For the most part, the plots serve as simple backing to the main course of gameplay, while still absurdly convoluted enough to give an adequate context for the parameters of its particular scenarios.  For example, if the game level is set at sea, then the plot will need to explain why, rather than vice-versa.  Obviously this is because gameplay, level design and controls are and should always be more important than story, or characters, or believable dialogue.  The trouble is, that’s similar to the attitude in the porn industry, to which few are in any real hurry to tag artistic merit.  Whatever creative decision-making lies at the heart of Busty Cops Go Hawaiian is in the service of a product largely intended to be taken at naught but face value. Of course, this kind of dissonance is also very much alive in Hollywood, but a movie is arguably more capable than a game at complimenting the demand for both CG eye candy/gore/explosions/action beats and story/characters/nuance/dialogue.  The latter lends credibility to the former, but the interactivity and more flexible reality of a game makes those scales harder to level out.  Even a more cerebral, plot-heavy game, say Heavy Rain or the Final Fantasy series, the aim is more to provide an immersive experience than to tell a coherent, rewarding tale for its own sake. Alternately, Uncharted 2, more or less a straight action/stealth game, is certainly a high watermark for the industry.  Fat-free mechanics, responsive controls, gigantic set-pieces and impeccable presentation are all neatly buoyed by characters that, while archetypal, have greater dimension and personality than is demanded by the gameplay.  However, the plot is still just a convoluted hunt for mythical merchandise, during which our plucky adventurers commit the kind of large-scale genocide that even the worst excesses of 80′s Arnie action movies don’t live up to. The ‘art’ of the game is in the acute rendering, celebration and sheer amplification of the action genre template.  The problem lies in using movies (and Hollywood movies at that) as a template to begin with.

For a game, or indeed anything, to be taken seriously as ‘art’, it should focus the most on what is only or best achieved by itself.  By that token, the prime artistic successes in gaming lie in the kind of visual and conceptual abstractions that gameplay creates.  In retrospect, the stark, reductive territories of 16-bit platformers like Kid Chameleon and Decap Attack are wholly unique and compelling in their own right.  Horizontal landscapes that are fixed in the sky.  Squares marked with the letter ‘P’ dispensing magical hats when you destroy them with a jumping headbutt (or, if you’re wearing the right magical hat, by jumping on top of them).  Enemies that are impossible to define, dispensing over-sized artifacts when squashed.  It adds up to a world that is as compelling as it is, well, very much a place you wouldn’t want to be.  The Mario franchise, now in its 26th year, is a far more positive affair and maintains a commitment to very straightforward plots.  It even has the gall, in the year 2011, to still centre said plots around a falsetto-ed princess, decked entirely in pink and perennially in need of rescue.  This appalling sexism is more or less excused by its adherence to not just an efficient model of success, but to a potent gaming (as opposed to movie) archetype.  It’s just as much a part of the abstraction as the smiling clouds, or the green pipes that unaccountably warp you elsewhere.  It’s this surreality that should the prime artistic legacy of gaming, alongside of course all of the hours spent to make them fun and exciting to play.