And While I Am On The Subject…

Re that EastEnders article. Look down the side for some of the “entertainment” headlines.

Sky TV to screen Michael Jackson seance.

Cheryl Cole to mime on X-Factor.

Edison gave up so much to discover electricity. John Logie Baird pioneered the TV. Mozart and the classicists produced music of complexity and depth. All would probably look down now and say “why the hell did we bother”.

A few years ago there was a fantastic comedy series called Hot Metal. It parodied the workings of a newspaper with ludicrous stories, ridiculous headlines and stupid stunts. That seance headline would have been right up their strasse. Parody has become fact.

Let us look at the first story. No lets. It is Derek Acorah who is going to try to contact him, which stretches credibility, such as there was any, to breaking point. It is this particular piece of bilge that had me reaching for the pins to commence eye gouging…

“Speaking about the show, presenter June Sarpong said: “I’ve always been a huge Michael Jackson fan, he truly was the King of Pop, and I was shocked and saddened by his sudden death. I think viewers will find this programme intriguing and will want to tune in to see what happens.

“It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this but I’m open-minded and can’t wait to see what Derek uncovers,” she added.”

June Sarpong has obviously been offered a fair deal of money to front this buffoonery. I must confess I’ve never heard of her before, so she obviously doesn’t have a stellar career to kill off by appearing in this must-see TV!

Sky’s official line is no less bile-inducing…

“There is an insatiable appetite to find out more about Michael Jackson. He was an extraordinary figure and the curiosity surrounding his life – and his death – stretches well beyond fans of his music.”

And if they can lure enough of the suckers in, we can sell more advertising! To paraphrase their nauseatingly insulting football promo…”We know how you feel about Michael Jackson, because we feel the same.” You dumb fucks!

Personally, I’d rather them get up Glenn Miller and ask him what happened to his plane. But then, it is the King of Pop and there are enough freaks out there to eat this nonsense up. It makes me worry for the world…

As for the second story…

What? You mean she has sung live? Really?

I thought the world at large could not be taken more for fools, but on a show where the contestants have to perform live and are then subject to comments by c***s of various orders of c***itude about the quality or otherwise of their choons, and to then have one of those stand up and mime some pop-tripe of some lamentable quality is a bit like being taken the piss out of. “Hey you, if you have talent, you can lip-synch just like me.” Providing some deranged numpty doesn’t punch you in the face first, eh Leona?

And so to the patronising, insult-your-intelligence, take you for the c*** you are statement from an “insider”.

An X Factor insider told the paper: “Cheryl is the break-out star of Girls Aloud and there are big plans for her. Nobody – either on the X Factor nor her record label Polydor – wants to see her fail, which is why we thought it was better for Cheryl to mime her performance.”

Can’t take a chance on her fucking it up, eh?

If you fear for the future of this country, I would seriously advise you not to read the comments section. This lot couldn’t care less about recessions, the EU superstate or war in Afghanistan. It’s all about the X Factor innit.

For the love of Christ. Someone shoot me.

A Traditional Happy Christmas!

As per bloody usual, the BBC seeks to celebrate Christmas with an uplifting and optimistic schedule of programmes, to bring out the best in everyone and elicit a warm glow in every household.

Christmas Murder in EastEnders

I may be a moany old git (you moany old git) but for the love of fucking God, can the BBC can this load of unmitigated old wank for one day? I don’t know who Alfie Mitchell is. I don’t care who Alfie Mitchell is. Why, on what is our holiest celebration, do we have to have yet another unremittingly depressing, criminal-infested episode of this cack.

We’ve had divorces, deaths, failed marriages (I know all this because my Mum watched this nonsense) and famously in our household the Mitchell Christmas re-enacted a famous Christmas in the related-Dmitri Old family (involving a 9-iron and a car windscreen in our case) but the schtick went from a little dark to just totally depressing nearly year on year (Shane Richie once got married in a sort of uplifting one I seem to recall).

No. Back to murder. It is a ratings winner.

Book Review – “A Walk In The Woods” by Bill Bryson

There has always been something in me that has stopped me reading a Bill Bryson book. I mean, hasn’t nearly every regular reader read one? I’ve been told Down Under is brilliant but I thought – no, I won’t. Then I went through a phase of hunting around charity shops for bargain books. The main factor needed to be (a) interest in the subject matter and (b) although secondhand, preferably not in tatters. I have picked up most of Bryson’s books via this route but only just got around to reading one. I chose this first as I would love to see some of the scenery he mentions, I love Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and the bits of Maine I saw and we’ve seen the Delaware Water Gap. I am not a hiker, and will never profess to be one, but I like reading travelogues, even if many are garbage.

This one wasn’t. I love the raconteur style of Bryson, and his bit about facing up to bears had me laughing out loud on the DLR – no mean feat for a morning curmudgeon like myself. The book fades a bit towards the end as the author and his pal’s commitment to the cause wanes, but the book was a cracking commuting read and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. It has made me want to visit the Great Smoky Mounties, Centralia, and even more, to drive up Mount Washington (in someone else’s car). It makes me yearn even more for Vermont, which is just the nicest spot I have seen in the States, and to visit New England again.

I will be awarding it 4/5 on Facebook when I get around to it!!!

This Amused Me – From Amazon Comments

Looking through the reviews of “There Will Be Blood”, it seems as though the opinions were mixed. Some thought it magnificent, others dull (I have never seen it, and I am not sure I reall fancy it either), while some raved at Daniel Day Lewis (a WindyBrick by repute) and his performance, while others believed he’d joined the Al Pacino School of “Overacting Through Shouting”.

But this comment, among the naysayers, amused.

“Slow, uninspired, over hyped platform for a Hollywood `method’ (yeah right!) pre-Madonna.”

Ms Ciccone has a lot to answer for!

Random Thoughts From A Week At Home

The injured shoulder meant a week and a bit confined to barracks. Although some of that time was spent getting to and from doctor’s surgeries and hospitals, the majority was spent in front of the TV or in the sunshine. Some observations from my time off…

Good to get the chance to watch most of the action from the World Athletics Championships and the performances of Usain Bolt. The bloke is a phenomenon and while I usually get turned off a sport (golf) by one man’s dominance over the field, this is different. In the current world, no-one should be able to touch him. I always thought Michael Johnson’s 200m record was the Beamon of the track. I was wrong.

Just how many price comparison websites are there, and are they the sole source of the Digital channel’s advertising revenue. While Compare The Meerkat has some sort of amusement factor, the tosser in the Go Compare advert (the one wearing the poweder blue sweater and who jumps into the monitor) needs to be terminated forthwith. He goes beyond annoying, and is certainly not the sort of twat who helps an injured patient.

Just how many property shows are there on the bloody telly. For chrissake, I hope all these pricks go bust in this property slump and show that there is no easy way to make lots of money by adding little or no value. Again, blood pressure up as some wanker decides whether he wants the £500k barn conversion or the £520k town house near good schools.

Got to watch House of Cards while on my leave, and it really is the business. Ian Richardson is just superb as Francis Urquhart and while the plot seems to have thinned with age, it still more than meets the mark for a DVD purchase. I still have the other two parts, To Play The King and The Final Cut to watch, and given my increasingly worrying OCD tendencies, I won’t watch them for a while so that I always have something I need to do in the future. It took me a year and a half to watch Last King of Scotland, even though it had been on Sky, when I bought the DVD. I can be strange.

I have never seen a dog more fascinated by water.

If you think Big Brother is bad, please avoid the following. Charm School with Sharon Osbourne. Rock of Love with Brett Michaels (Is that his name? He was out of Poison, of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” fame). Shot At Love with Tila Tequila. I make no further comment.

To the people who sold me my camera battery – the damn thing took around 30 photos before flunking out. What sort of crap are you selling? My old battery still takes nearly 100, so why is it the newer gear is so awful.

I am following the US healthcare debate with glee. Fox News does nothing else but bang on about it. While I know our NHS has many failings, it does the best it can (I got an X-ray straight away, my waiting times were not too bad, and I have an orthopedics appointment in short order) especially when you consider some of the absolute muppetry you have to put up with. When I was queuing at Lewisham Hospital last Monday, a bloke in front, who spoke little English, presented the receptionist in Accident and Emergency with a solicitor’s letter. While there were people on crutches, people with blood pouring out of head injuries, and yes, correspondents with arms hanging out of their shoulder sockets (dramatic effect), this numpty was trying to get Injury Lawyers For You action. “You must sign. Say I was here 11 hours to be seen” – the receptionist did very well not to tell the bloke to “Foxtrot Oscar”, and at one point I thought the drunk on crutches was going to sort him out. Meanwhile an ambulance patient was waiting to be admitted as this bloke tried to milk the state of a few quid for his time.

Ah well…enough for now. Back at work, and the days just fly by… and for the millionth time  “I WASN’T THERE LAST NIGHT”.

No Lino’s Piece De Resistance…

I’m really not sure what is more bizarre. The song, or the beloved’s video capture of the bizarre goings on. Be warned, midway through the first clip, you will get neck ache….

The longer version….

53 Second Black Magic….

Short, but not necessarily sweet…..

All That Was Missing Was The Global Warming Story…

BBC Breakfast News. My favourite.

This morning, after a restless, painful night fighting the sands of time as my body gave its view on a forty year old chunkster pretending he can still play cricket, I awoke to find out that the Sox had been handed their lunches in a 13-6 beatdown in the Bronx, and that it was a dank, grey cloudy morning to match my mood.

And then, I switched on BBC. First we had a story that the TUC wanted to ban high heels. On came a podiatrist to say they weren’t banning them, they wanted to offer women a “healthy choice”. When the government and its apparatchiks start offering me things which include the words “healthy” and “choice”, I am bolting the door and getting out my shotgun. Because we all know where that road leads, and choice isn’t the word I’d use to describe it. The only thing missing is the “voluntary” code of conduct, which surprisingly turns very “involuntary” in a short space of time. As a defender for high heels, they dragged out a past winner of the Apprentice (female) from the rolodex, who gave as vacuuous a defence as one could muster (did Michelle Dewberry really win, or has she just become an airhead overnight) against one of the smiling assassins of killjoy health fascists this regime seems to have grown from a pretty rich brainwashed stock. No. If a woman wants to wear fucking high heels, let them. If they don’t. Don’t worry about it. Fuck your choices, and your healthy options.

Next up (or was it before – they all segue into one) was my favourite journalist / reporter Robert Peston. I have to say I am incapable of listening to him. He has my back up in a millisecond, my rage burning quicker than a Usain Bolt pick-up phase, and the vitriol spews forth like Mount Tambora in 1815. What is it about the condescending, stuttering, patronising, odious twerp that I can’t stand. Perhaps its the way he explains simple issues as if they are the knowledge of him and him alone. I would understand what you were on about Peston if you didn’t stutter and sneer your fucking answers, pausing at all the wrong places, as if you’ve been infused with some gravitas from somewhere. You may have had your nice source to put you where you are now, but he’s never stopped you being an odious twerp, and your report may one day have the desired impact on me, as an insignificant critic, of blowing my fucking head off in rage. Against the wall you go. And don’t let him have a last word. He’ll stutter it it it it it it it it it it it it before you know it and your head will explode.

And just as the breathing came back to normal… “Over to [whoever] at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival”. Oh my fucking stars. Please God no. The reporter, whoever it was, then handed over to two white blokes who went on some dismal fucking rap/poetry about Breakfast News. These two really should have been incinerated before a syllable came from their lips. What BBC prick thought, after Peston and high heels, to let these two fucking students loose on our screens. If I had my way I’d napalm Edinburgh and take all these pricks with the firestorm that would ensue. I am very much with the Daily Mash on this one.

I didn’t stick around for the eukelele orchestra. Ripping my eyeballs out might have been less painful.

No More Mihir Bose… For Now..

I had a good friend work on the Manchester Commonwealth games. Most observers of these games put them in the category of “marvellous success” or some such pigeonhole of that ilk. My friend absolutely despised Mihir Bose, because, as he put it “he couldn’t wait for them to fail, so that he could gloat!” It seemed in his time as a press scribe, Bose did all he could to put a negative spin on these games, and someone close to them made his views very clear to me…

So when I read of Bose’s departure from the BBC with immediate effect yesterday, and given my take on the stuff I’ve read and seen him present I am not shedding any tears of sorrow for that, I was reminded of Rich and his work. Bose was all set to unleash his brand of sports scepticism on the public over the London Olympics. He was chipping at the edges and I’m sure he would have unleashed hell at some point. My old mate Charles Sale has had his tuppeny worth on the barely sentient pages of the Daily Mail - Jesus, Charles, suppress your glee in a more subtle fashion, please – by saying that the Beeb couldn’t cope with his more journalistic approach to sports. What? He was a dirt digger, and what we want on TV is the sport reported, not a bunch of ill-attributed tittle tattle dressed up as “world exclusives” – if we want them, we get newspapers. I doubt I’m alone in thinking the BBC thought employing the most prominent Asian sportswriter in the business was sexy, right on and a nice equality move. Bose may well have been the strongest candidate – my displeasure is a matter of taste (for the record I think Manish Bhasin is top notch with the cricket and deserves more exposure, especially if the BBC decide to really put their toe back into the water.; and Rishi Persad is also bloody good – so no complaints on my account if you want to throw the “Asian” angle at me) and to me he seemed like a rambler, a gossiper, and someone convinced of his own abilities while others thought he was, well…..crap.

No tears here, and I’m not sure why the BBC treated it like a death in the family yesterday, but I’m sure he’ll turn up, and if he has left due to his sick mother in India, that he has a happy outcome to that. Now the BBC might be better concentrating on someone with a bit more camera savvy and a reporting / presenting style we can warm to? How about Manish or Rishi, perhaps?

The irony of Charles Sale pointing out blog comments though is spectacular. The irony of Charles Sale deriding someone’s ability to move from the print media to TV (I so wish I had a copy of that Hold The Back Page episode) is beyond satire… I quote..

Bose’s immediate departure means there will be no farewell post on his blog, where he was a particular target for readers’ vitriol. “Not your worst blog Mihir – b4 every1 slates u” says the first comment on his final story. High praise indeed. “Just re-read this for the 3rd time and still trying to work out the point of this.” Now they are going to have to find someone else to moan about.

Perhaps you, Charles. You deserve it!

I’m Back. And I Want To Rant…

The holiday is over. The weather may be glorious and sunny, but not glorious and sunny enough that it can withstand me laying out on a sun lounger on Saturday - within 20 minutes we had thunder and lightning. Bob and Bonio shouldn’t bother with concerts. Send me out to Ethiopia or Sudan and I’ll turn the Sahara into a very wet sandpit.

Turned on BBC Breakfast news, where we had some odious fascist bint preening herself about how wonderful she and her fellow councillors were to enforce a ban on alcohol being drunk outdoors in Brighton. Coming from a town that employed the gestapo to enforce the most un-driver friendly parking restrictions known to man, I’m sure the Hitler wannabes are well and truly proud. The gurning idiot Richard Westcott suggested that the police had been enforcing the rules over-zealously, you know, by probably stopping a law-abiding citizen coming out of Tescos with a four pack of Stella in a carrier bag, but the preening Eva Braun was having none of it, saying she knew nothing of these “isolated incidents”. Missing the point entirely, she said that the council and the police had a great relationship. Which is nice. Maybe if the police had rounded up the drunken idiots in the first place as the law allows, then maybe, just maybe, someone who’d like a cold beer while lounging on the beach – and who is totally law abiding – could do so without the Waffen Brighton Council SS descending on them. As many have said, they’ve pretty much done all they can with smoking, so now it is the alcohol consumers they are coming after.

Anyone not in East London know where the “Eastway” is. Well, I know now. But I didn’t on Friday night at the end of a 12 hour drive down from Newtonmore in Scotland. According to the board on the North Circular, the Eastway was closed. I found out that it was the underpass between Old Ford and Leytonstone that takes M11/A12 drivers down to the Blackwall Tunnel. At 10:30 on Friday night it was shut. Now I know what Homerton and Hackney look like. I also know that the authorities who decided to close the thing at this time are fucking inconsiderate morons who assume that everyone who uses the major north-south London cross route will know what the fucking Eastway is, and for shutting the thing at a pretty busy time judging by the considerable queue. If I had five minutes with these pricks.

When we got home, our beloved gestapo Met Police were on helicopter duty, buzzing over area nice and low, nice and noisily, and nice and considerately at 12:30 in the early hours of Saturday morning. After a week of relative peace and quiet, this intrusion was most certainly not appreciated, given my eyes were popping out of my head, and the dog didn’t know whether it was coming and going. I’m sure Chopper Squad were doing invaluable work. Probably trying to find someone who drunk a shandy on Brighton Beach in contravention of the law!

Why are weather people warning us about the effects of heat by referring us to NHS Direct? In extreme cold, like we had in February, they weren’t referring us to the local council for help with our fuel bills, or snow ploughs are us to get us out, so why now? I mean, heat kills a lot more than cold, doesn’t it? Pricks.

Don’t even start me on Michael Jackson. Oh well, you did. I happened to admire a lot of his music, and some of the stuff not from the Thriller / Bad era. I liked the Dangerous album, which had some cracking tracks on by Teddy Riley, and also some of the later stuff too. I maybe glossed over all the lurid personal life stuff, which is a bit hypocritical, but as a musician, I had the utmost respect. He was a freak, no doubt, in all senses of the world. But really, the media went all Diana on us and the zombie populace followed with bells and whistles on. An amusing interlude came as I careered down the A12 on the way to the Eastway blockage. It was on a Radio 5 show hosted by Stephen Nolan. A level-headed gentleman did the decent thing in ringing in by saying the media were stoking up hysteria and that people who came on crying in grief at the loss of a remote, isolated, lunatic were not exactly reacting in proportion.

If you blame the media on these phone ins, watch out. Nolan got all prissy. The chap ringing in said the reaction had amused him. Nolan said what was amusing about the gut-wrenching reactions of people who had never met the bloody recluse (I’m paraphrasing). He then teed up someone from his Ulster show who was blubbing away. Proving the point to me, that these people are a trifle unhinged. As I said to the beloved “these people have evidently not lost someone really close to them…” We then had a breathless need for the mostly garbage line-up at Glastonbury to name check Michael Jackson, as if it actually meant something if they did. Why? Why does it matter if there is any reaction? Some no mark band made a stupid joke, which is a bit like Jimmy Krankie having a pop at Mike Tyson. Huw Cornwell said he wasn’t going to dedicate a song to Michael Jackson, showing how edgy he is at 94 years old. Someone who I never heard of laced a line of a Jackson song in, as if it was some momentous reaction rather than saying about the artist who did it “who?”.

No. Diana syndrome. A freak dies in mysterious circumstances. The freak’s family are going to play this for all its worth. And the actual importance of the bloke, as genius of his age, will be consumed in more freakery than could ever be imagined. I’m not so much amused, as bemused.

Later, for more of the same.

Some Vital Information Everyone Needs To Know..

Today’s question is brought to you by Jake The Border Collie (and I can tell you, having read his blog, it is a damn fine piece of work) who asks..

“Dmitri, I know from the DVD the beloved bought you which is still unwrapped, that you are a fan of the Wacky Races. Could you please let me know who the most successful team / driver is in this competition, as laid out by, say, the FIA points scoring rules?”

Well, Jake, I can tell you now that I once had this discussion in a box at Lord’s at which some luminary like the Surgeon General was present. Now it is obvious that Dick Dastardly wasn’t going to be in the running, but my money would have been on the Arkansas Chuggabug to confound the critics and walk away with the crown.

It turns out the FIA Champions, with 87 points, would have been the….

I attach the description given to them on wikipedia

The Slag Brothers in the Bouldermobile 1

Rock and Gravel Slag are Cavemen driving a wheeled boulder. The Slag Brothers sometimes reconstructed their car from scratch just by using their clubs on any large boulder that was available. Like the Gruesome Twosome, the Slag Brothers can summon up appropriate creatures – such as Pteranadons – to help them. The Slags also speak by combining stereotypical caveman language with normal English, e.g. “Raga-radda, wheel gone. Get new one!” (Rock Slag). In one episode, the Boulder-Mobile had a “flat” tire, when a wheel turned cubular. In another episode, a wheel fell off, and Gravel Slag accidentally made a square wheel from a rock (To which Rock Slag responds, “Rah Dummyhead! You make square wheel!”). They can speed up by hitting the car (or at times, each other) with their clubs. The Slag Brothers design was re-used for Captain Caveman.

Thank you for your interest, oh Border Collie….

An American Idol….

You seriously have to hand it to politicians for their brass neck. No, not my country’s but that of the USA.

One of the benefits of having a Beloved from the Ungrateful Colonies is that I get to watch Fox News a lot more than is healthy for me. Before the beloved retired to the Dmitri Boudoir, I can get to watch the brilliant Studio B on Fox news with a fine upstanding member of the news profession, David Smith. However, it seems to make it on news networks this day, you need to be called Bret or Brit or something, so David wasn’t really going to cut it. So he took his middle name as his nom de plume, and we now have Shepard Smith.

This bloke is a star, and he gets it. What do I mean by getting it? Well, he once had one of the Jeremiah Class come in to discuss driving with mobile phones. The woman made the point that driving while on the phone should be banned – as it is in the UK. Shepard nodded and went, “so you get this through, what’s next? You going to stop me eating my Big Mac?” The Jeremiah thought that this was also a very sensible policy, so then Shepard went “What’s next? You going to stop me changing my CDs?” The Jeremiah spotted the well signposted trap – oh yes, you think I’m into bansturbation don’t you, Shepard? – so she riposted with the oft-trod line of the safety junkies “Well, we make people wear seatbelts in cars, and no-one disagrees that this is a sensible policy”.

And then Shep showed he got it… (all paraphrased) “As a matter of fact, I believe the state should not interfere with my personal safety. It is a matter of personal responsibility. If I don’t wear a seatbelt and I get injured its my fault. The state is going to tax me to save me from myself.”

Well, Shep yesterday hit the Joe Biden story beautifully. For those living on Mars, we have swine flu among us. The VP of the US went on to an American programme and said he would advise his family not to travel on any aircraft or subways for the time being…

 “I would tell members of my family, and I have, I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now. It’s not that its going to Mexico, it’s that you are in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes, it goes everywhere through the aircraft,” Biden said.

Biden continued, “I would not be at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway. From my perspective, it relates to is mitigation. If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft, a closed container, closed car, a closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”

Joe Biden therefore gives all Americans who do not drive to work in the major metropolises of America a reason to bunk off. Sorry boss, but the VP, Barack’s next in charge, has said I shouldn’t be going on the subway…

Once the clip was played, Shepard’s grinning face came onto the screen. “Of course, if we follow the Vice-President’s advice the already weakened economy will crash all around us.” He then said that the VP had “clarified” it to mean that’s the advice he would give if you were sick….which of course is not what he meant, but as a politician, lying is second nature and the truth is something to bend when it suits.

I see on the limited research I’ve done for this post that Shep is a bête noire for the liberal establishment in America on the grounds of an “f-bomb” regarding torture (oh, and I suppose because he works for Fox News has something to do with it).

Oh look, I don’t suppose professing my liking for a right wing newscaster’s style and demeanour is going to win many votes from the cognoscenti, but if only we took our politicians and quangocracy to task in the way the Americans do, certainly on Fox, and we might actually get some engagement in the political process. However, while I don’t agree with all of Shep’s outbursts, at least Studio B is a passable hour.

Next. Has Major Garrett ever been accused of taking himself too seriously?

A Short Film Review – Last King of Scotland

Well.. I wasn’t sure what to write about this. I’ve had it on DVD for a while now and have been meaning to watch it. The beloved has never been that keen, so I took the chance this weekend after the Red Sox and Yankees games finished and I had the ironing to do to stick the film on and finish off the weekend.

It was ditchwater dull. I just could not get into it. I had little sympathy for McAvoy’s character, and I thought Whitaker’s performance was hardly Oscar worthy, as it seemed he played the role pretty rigidly and without any great plausability. I am always wary of fictionalised accounts of factual events, hence I’m steering clear at the moment of The Damned United, and this reinforced my view. The plot, as it was, wasn’t up to that much.

Indeed, although I wouldn’t give it one star, as this reviewer did on Amazon, I agree with much of what he said…

5 Stars?? What level of satisfaction do some people have for a movie. This is a tedious non story whose plot is about as opaque as a broken window. What riled me most was the subtle way the film’s credits before and after tried to suggest by association (focussing on what happened to Amin ‘after’ this) that this film was in some ways an historic document. Once you wake up to the fact the Scottish doctor never existed and that none of this is anything more than fiction in front of an imagined factual backgound you have to ask yourself what is it for. It casts no fresh light on Amin. Its makers could be forgiven if it was a great story well acted, but it is neither (Whiteker’s Amin is a masterclass in over playing and McAvoy was a much more convincing character as the boyfriend in Early Doors).
Don’t waste your saturday night.

I don’t think it was a waste of time, but I do think a serial maniac like Amin can’t be played in a fictional context, because his horrors were all too real. We have the hackneyed old cliche of a British diplomat being a total arse – they all are, of course – and the little Scotlander context of course. But overall, I’d give it 5/10 as it really failed to hold my attention. Maybe another watch and I’ll see bits I missed as the dog was driving me crackers and the ironing was more awkward than usual…..

One Of The Most Frightening Sentences In The English Language….

…”Quentin Tarantino has a new film coming out.”

 

Cue overwrought analysis by his chief town crier in the UK, Jonathan Ross. Cue a myriad of reviews of this “genius’s” work despite the fact in most rational people’s eyes, he ain’t released a decent film in eons (and in my eyes, he hasn’t ever released one if his best, Pulp Fiction, is anything to go by). No Quentin’s ego will be massaged, he’ll be told how brilliant he is because his dialogue is just so “fucking clever” and the world will keep on turning.

 

I thought Pulp Fiction was unutterable wank, and turned it off after an hour of utter tedium. However, everyone else tells me I’m wrong. So maybe I’m a bit biased….

An Irregular Book and Film Review

Book – Mirrors of the Unseen : Journeys in Iran - Jason Elliot

A book about a chap’s journeys around a country with a pretty dire image problem in the eyes of the Western World. Having dealt with Iranians in my job, I have come to like the ones I’ve come across. They may have thought of me as a bit of a whelk, but my English cricket inspired approach to negotiations – the straight bat defence – seemed to gain their respect and we also had a few laughs. This book conveys much of the Iranian psyche that I saw – but Lord almighty, he is a bit full of himself, this author. His snippy recount of an American with a baseball cap on backwards seemed to come straight out of a charicature I really haven’t seen a lot of in my travels. His obsession with Islamic art and architecture didn’t float my boat, but his recounting of history and ancient civilisations all moulding into this pot was of great interest. Truth is, when this book was dull, Jesus… it was dull. But he frustrated me by making the end of the book a lot more interesting to the degree that I asked myself, had his publishing company got fed up and just told him to end it there. A delicious irony is his lambasting of Lonely Planet tourists, but then we have a piece on how he forgot the battery for his camera! You damn tourists….

6.5 / 10 – A struggle, not unworthy, but a real slog. Added to my knowledge and feel for the place and I seriously would love to go there. The beloved may not share my keenness. I may dip into his book on Afghanistan if I come across it on my secondhand book travels.

The Bourne Identity

Lord, you may ask, why are you reviewing a film released in 2002? I’ll tell you why – because I watched it for the first time while doing the ironing downstairs when the beloved was upstairs moaning about me putting Goldfinger on! She was watching some old reality TV bilge, and I watched the first hour over the Timberland clothes…. I completed my viewing last night instead of watching tedious old Glen Beck on Fox News. The joys of being married to a lovely American lady…

Anyway, I thought it was excellent, as indeed I found the Bourne Ultimatum which clearly had a larger budget, a decent location allowance and more SFX. I don’t watch a film for the deeper meaning of life, to enable me to touch my chin thoughtfully on Newsnight Review or contribute to Pseud’s Corner with the Guardianistas. I want to be entertained in this life of mine, not lectured to or made to think any more about my wasteful existence, this waste of oxygen, this carbon footprint I am. And this film entertained me. Jake was upstairs not jumping all over me after his walkies, and I settled down on the sofa to watch the second half. The plot was implausible, the US secret ops playing the familiar role of villain, and the assassin with the heart of gold who did not shoot the president because he was surrounded by his cute African offspring. All terrific cliches, but still the film rolled along, at a decent pace and I now need to watch Supremacy to complete the list.

I have no idea if this follows the path of the book, that I’ve never read, but it appears from reviews it does not. Oh well. I might read it if I ever feel the need to devote my time to fiction again.

Excellent stuff. 8.5/10.

Currently reading a biography of Sachin Tendulkar by Vaibhav Purandare, which is showing early worrying signs of being a bit of a lovefest. Already had some interesting bits on Mumbai cricket though which I never knew, and that is always a good sign for me.