...ruffles...

Star Wars, even the original trilogy, wouldn’t have survived if it’d been launched today. We’re too prosperous and comfortable with the real world to accept innocent fairy tales based in galaxies far far away. Even The Invincibles was applauded because it dealt with the anonymity of suburban life and not because it was a cartoon about retired superheroes who return to save the world.

In our hierarchy of needs we’re well beyond basic survival, we’re beyond needing comfort and escapism; we can buy all these things. Finding spiritual enlightenment trekking in Nepal costs about the price as a packet of Pringles. With all these needs satisfied, we’re obsessed with a need for credibility. This requires cynicism and intellectualism; all part of a process of modern self-actualisation.

The achingly credible and intelligent are wanton to dismiss Star Wars with their breathtaking analyses that the films are riddled with poor acting and telegraphed plotlines. In 1977, nobody went to see Star Wars for a religious experience, they were living in drab times and the cinema was a quick hit of fun.

All six films are silly, but they’re fun and exciting silly. Whilst I could do a few less robots saying “Uh Oh” before being smote by a Jedi, Revenge of the Sith is great. It pauses only to set up the arrival of Luke and Leah and the death of Padme. But the rest of it is loads of fighting, lasers going “peowm! peowm!” and lots of running around like a bunch of pillocks… like just like innocent games played in the playground.

It’s not a historical document; it’s not trying to say much more than good is good and bad is bad. It’s just trying to entertain two hours, if we really had anything to worry about, we’d appreciate it for doing just that.

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I’m off to Toronto on Sunday morning so here’s something to read about Meet The Fockers. Read it slowly, there’ll be nothing new on here for week. Toodle pip…

Ben Stiller’s life is easy; think of a dumb plotline, make it dumber, point camera and shoot. For this read Dodgeball, Zoolander, Starsky and Hutch and his cameo as the anchor of the Spanish language channel in Anchorman (“Ben, put this moustache on and do something stupid for a bit”). He’s not trying to satirise or be clever or win Oscars although presumably he’ll get to a point as Spielberg and Tom Hanks did where he’ll want to be taken seriously and we’ll all hate him for it.

The mistake that was made in Meet The Parents was that he was put on a platform with Robert De Nero. This raised expectations; you expect a De Nero film to deliver something a little smarter. It was a half decent set piece, hapless goon meets uptight father of girlfriend and endures endless contrived mishaps. Maybe De Nero was too big for the film, or more likely they spoiled the simplicity of the concept with the De Nero as CIA agent subplot. It was garbage.

Meet The Fockers should be an even bigger bomb. Whilst playing down the CIA thing (though not completely, it’s just not needed) they treble the gravitas with by introducing Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Gaylord Focker’s parents. Both have weighty reputations for taking themselves terribly seriously (see Hoffman in I Heart Huckabees). As “Holly Hunter” says in Team America – “As actors, we have a responsibility to read things in the newspaper and then repeat them as our own opinions”. The problem with big stars is they have big brands to maintain, which means being terribly clever about everything.

So the formulae stinks – poor previous film, stupid plot in itself and enough weighty reputations to sink a battleship full of elephants. But director Jay Roach, presumably introduced Hoffman and Streisand to Stiller and challenged them to out-stupid him. Which they do, they are both brilliantly daft. If they’d cut out the CIA stuff (De Nero has a hi-tech investigation lab in the base of his mobile home, sigh) there’s a risk it would be the best comedy of the year.

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At first, the Aviator seems to be all sub-plot. You suspect that the story of Howard Hughes is simply too big and Scorsese should have chosen a more modest yarn, like biopic’ing Howard Hughes from Ever Decreasing Circles.

It jumps from one preposterous adventure to another, the world’s most expensive film, the world’s fastest plane, the world’s biggest plane, buying TWA, dating Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardener, taking on the US Government and Pan Am and winning. Hughes did it all, and in this film, he does it really really quickly.

You get no real sense of his impact or the perspective and environment in which he operates. He’s accused of being a war profiteer, but you don’t get a chance to understand whether that’s true, or even that there was a war on. This may just be a reflection of the general detachment the US had during the War. They probably ran their own World (Series) War (Bowl) at the same time proclaiming the Denver Spitfires World War Champions in the process. It feels like you’re watching Hughes’ life through a frosted window, with ear muffs on, and a towel in your mouth… and, well you, get the picture… or not, as it turns out. Eventually, however, the story emerges. It’s about his obsessions; his ability to pull off stunning audacious projects is simply the result of a neurotic fastidiousness he struggles to control.

From compulsive hand washing to fully blown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Hughes struggles to channel his mania into something productive, and then fails completely. Whilst it’s an overly long film that broods rather than thrills, it’s this that lifts it from a straight Biography Channel story.

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OK, it’s not Ghandi, it doesn’t even have the emotional texture of Dodgeball, but Team America – World Police is as funny as your mum starring in a blaxploitation flick. Using Thunderbirds style marionettes gives Trey Parker and Matt Stone licence to do things that wouldn’t normally get near a mainstream cinema. Alongside songs about AIDS (whether you’re gay, straight, white or spade, everyone’s got AIDS) and hard core pornography is a clear ridiculing of the breast beating Americans and bleeding heart liberals that Hollywood is otherwise scared to touch at the moment. Every time Team America is deployed to save the world they’re accompanied by red neck soft rock soundtrack which goes “America, FUCK YEAH!” It says it all really.

Along side is the typically brainless South Park stupidity. Terrorists communicate with each other using a combination of just three words – Mohammed, Jihad and Dakadaka. Kim Jong Il is a Dr Evil type character with a daft evil plan for world domination. He talks by switching his Rs and Ls round (like what Koreans do). Whilst you shouldn’t, you can’t help laughing every time he says Herro Everlybody! His song, Ronery, is truly touching. Of course there’s endless jokes that can be drawn from the limitations of marionettes (stupid walks, imprecise movements, strings everywhere) they use every one, about six times each.

As a piece of satire, I’m not sure how clear the message, if there is one, really is. There’s something to do with pussies (liberals, depicted by Hollywood Actors) don’t like dicks (Flag waving Americans) because dicks fuck pussies, but dicks also sometimes fuck assholes (evil dictatorships) and if they didn’t we’d all get covered in shit, and that pussies aren’t that far from assholes anyway. There’s something there, but I don’t know.

It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it’s very big and very clever. Hmm.

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To prefix The Phantom of the Opera with the chillingly exacting qualifier ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber’s’ is not a good start for the ‘lavish film production of the smash hit west end snore’, but it is particularly difficult to articulate the a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e g-a-r-b-a-g-e the film turns out to be.

Of course, I should have known, I’ve seen Starlight Express, but with a clear blue print in Moulin Rouge, it surely isn’t that difficult to produce a modern musical film which is, at least, a decent waste of time.

Minnie Driver’s histrionics as diva Carlotta and Jennifer Ellison’s girly charm aside, the entire cast have been painted grey, unlike La Rouge which is spectacular in pace, rich in colours and bold in characters.

Most unforgivable is the appalling technical production – the dubbing and sounding mixing makes the songs flat and distant. The signature song – The Phantom of the Opera – should be a journey of horror, love, lust and beauty taken by the virginal soprano Christine into the menacing Phantom’s lair. Whilst the rest of the orchestration is classical, this song switches to a vague mid paced electroclash soundtrack which reaches its crescendo with a god awful pomp rock guitar solo. I found myself involuntarily crying ‘Oh God no’ at every agonising turn.

The director can’t decide whether the narrative should be played through song alone or with a mixture of speech included. It switches between the two approaches throughout finally deciding, wrongly, that the whole thing should be done sung. The story gets lost (you can’t hear the lyrics) and the supposedly touching, tender moments are more painful than having your testicles pulled. It makes you prey for double DVD box sets of extended versions of Scooby Doo 2 and Barbed Wire for Christmas.

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Regular readers will know of my love hate relationship with Michael Moore. Something that will make the man himself sit up and think, when you’ve got a Ruffles on your tail it’s got to be a worry. I loved Bowling for Columbine, but thought Stupid White Men was, generally, pish. So it’s one-all with Moore’s latest venture in the cinemas.

Moore’s central argument in Fahrenheit 9/11 still makes a lot of sense, America is built on rampant capitalism, capitalism’s central theme is greed, and those who are more successful at being greedy use corporately funded fear and alienation (or more specifically, the fear of being alienated) to maintain their position. I agree with all this, although you could argue that the land of the free, means you are equally free to succeed and fail by any means necessary and it’s just that Bush and his cohorts are better than most at succeeding. Perhaps the true argument should be that the model of the American Dream is fundamentally flawed, for which all Americans must take responsibility – but Moore isn’t brave enough to make that kind of accusation.

Fahrenheit 9/11 isn’t a great documentary in itself; it’s a bit one paced and his central argument barely develops as the film progresses. Moore’s clearly struggled to get together decent footage to support what he’s saying (either that or his deliberately used grainy TV footage to give it that gritty ‘urban warrior’ feel). His interviewing style is frustratingly leading, expressing his own personal feelings as questions that his hand picked acolytes are happy to agree with.

It’s difficult to know what Moore’s objective truly is; this isn’t an intelligent commentary on the state of America and therefore the world post 9/11. If that’s what it’s supposed to be then it will fail to rouse the chattering liberal middle classes. If it’s a wake-up call or call to arms to America’s great unwashed, then the message itself is sound (watching the aggressive recruitment of troops for Iraq in mid-America shopping malls will raise a few eyebrows) but its stylistic execution is unlikely to draw people away from Spiderman 2. If it’s simply a historical social documentary, it’s really quite poor, but if it’s just another voice to add to the anti-republican cause then I suppose it’s sound, if undeserving of the publicity it’s had.

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Director Alfonso Cuaron has made a much better fist of Prisoner of Azkaban than Chris Columbus’ primary colouring of the first two Harry Potter’s. Banking left and swooping into the darker layered side of the story, Cuaron’s direction provides the texture JK Rowling surely envisages for the tale (and curiously, rarely captures in her books).

One notable technique he introduces is a series of analogies marking the passing of time through the school year. There’s the single leaf spiralling to the floor showing the onset of autumn, the owl swooping from an autumnal vista into a bleak snowstorm depicting winter, the snow melts around a snow drop portraying the oncoming of Spring.

The most intriguing of all, however, is in the opening scene. Harry, who in the film has just turned thirteen, is in his bedroom at the Dursley’s. He’s hidden under the sheets on his bed secretly playing with his wand, each time he successfully makes it light up he gives a satisfied smile. When he’s finished playing, he lies down and falls asleep with a grin on his face.

Now what in a young boy’s life could that be referring to?

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Bowling for Columbine identified the fear of failure is the lynch pin to dysfunction within American society. Stupid White Men is a naively irritating rant by comparison. Michael Moore’s central argument is that ‘Stupid White Men’ are ruling and destroying the world. A fair point. Amongst some fairly generic views on the environment (we should care for it more) and capitalism (it’s not fair) his central solution is to employ black people and let women rule the world. His proposed solution to Northern Ireland? All Irish Protestants should turn Catholic.

It starts promisingly with a chapter on George Bush engineering his presidential victory through the manipulation of the courts, the electoral register and the media. It ends well, questioning the relationship the Bush family has with the bin Laden’s (although even here it’s their relationship with the respected Saudi oil family not their enfant terrible Osama). The rest is as insightful as an A Level politics and economics essay. Moore reveals that big corporations don’t make people redundant because they’re losing money, it’s because they’re making less profit than they originally promised to shareholders. Greedy white men, says Moore, but anyone who didn’t realise that stock trading is a measured bet against a company’s future growth is more stupid than the stupid (but rich) white men Moore rallies against.

To a moderate liberal like me Bush is undoubtedly a scary right wing fanatic who believes in the power of the market (and the bible) to cure all social ills, but just because Michael Moore is a left wing idealist, it doesn’t make him look any less stupid.

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According to Sara, The Last Samurai (or Last of the Summer Wine as it's hilariously known in our house) has Oscar buzz.

The film takes you to back to Japan (not China as stated in earlier editions) about 150 years ago. It's a country in flux; battling the implications of a modernisation programme. Japan's ancient social structures and traditions are being dismantled by a few greedy bureaucrats who see riches in an arms deal with the US. Agreeing to buy the modern weaponry not only secures a trade agreement but supplies the westernised bureaucrats with an arsenal powerful enough to destroy the arcane Samurai that stand in their way. US vets are brought in to train a ramshackle army of Japanese conscripts. Japan gets rich, destroying the samurai and losing its identity in the process. It's all very zeitgeisty, an imperialist regime imposes an ideology at odds with the natural law of a society, only to suffer a cataclysmic cultural kick back. Or something to that effect.

Sounds good doesn't it? Lavish sets, historical context, intricate plotlines; it's got Oscar buzz written all over it.

And then there's Tom Cruise, the westerner thrust into the lost culture, battling the language barrier, struggling to understand the customs played out around him. Is he the silent observer whose battles the contradictions in his head? Nah, he's the most powerful actor in Hollywood, no such understatement here, after all nobody says no to Tom Cruise.

• Nobody says no to the fact he has to become a samurai
• Nobody says no to the fact he's the last samurai
• Nobody says no to the fact he has to be the best samurai there ever was
• Nobody bothers to explain whether an attack by a gang of ninjas is a government backed assassination attempt on the village's powerful leader (BORING!) or a vehicle for Cruise to get cool with a sword.
• Nobody says no to Cruise bucking a thousand years of tradition by turning Japan's Emperor from a distant and impassive demi-god into a compassionate humanist by the power of one well constructed monologue
• Nobody says no to Cruiso endlessly winning mock training fights with other samurai whilst ignoring the sub plot of rampant westernisation happening in Yokahama
• Nobody says no to Cruise falling in love with the only young woman in the village
• Nobody says no to her falling in love with him despite the fact he killed her husband
• Nobody says no to Cruise turning her from the brink of suicide to unstinting love by saying he was 'sorry'
• Nobody says no to Cruise standing with a horse in the middle of a mountain range as the film closes
Nobody, presumably, will say no to him getting an Oscar for this pile of self indulgent shite. The nob.

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In Episode 2 of Star Wars – Attack of the Clones we learn the formidable Stormtrooper army is made up of clones recreated from the perfect genes of Jango Fett. Once constructed, the army goes on to become the most powerful force in the entire universe.

In Episode 6 - Return of the Jedi, Han, Laya et al are tasked with capturing a heavily guarded power generator on the planet Endor. The guards, the formidable cloned Stormtroopers are caught out by tricks which include; an Ewok stealing a speederbike and flying off upside down, to which all but one of the guards sets off on foot in pursuit shouting “GET HIM!”, the remaining guard is caught out by Han who runs up, taps him on one shoulder before around the other.

Schoolboy error.

So flustered is the Stormtrooper he runs straight into a bank of cutthroat rebels.

These are rather rudimentary errors by the Stormtroopers, can this really be the same spawn of Jango Fett? what happened at the cloning factory that caused a whole batch of clones fall foul to such playground japes. Can it really be that somewhere in the lab somebody switched the genes of a Jango with the genes of someone capable of falling for this kind of trick.

Step up Paul and Barry Chuckle. These giants of comedy have made a career from doing this kind of thing to each other. I can only think that the Empire was planning a giant celebration party once the rebel alliance is crushed, wanting the most perfect of entertainment for the most perfect of clone army’s, not wanting to risk the domination of the universe being dampened by poor entertainment from, say, Jim Davidson, they turned to create the perfect comedy duo. Having scoured the universe with probe droids they kidnapped the Brothers to be taken back to be cloned. Credence is given to this argument, when watching Chuckle Brothers, every show is identical, they are clearly just re-runs with the Brothers on a different blue screen.

Somewhere along the line the genes were switched and a massive batch of clones were recreated in the image of the Chuckle Brothers. Dressed in their white suits that could tell of the mistake until after the battle of Endor.

Let their names be added to the roster of heroes: - Skywalker, Solo, Calarisian, and now Chuckle.

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I’m heavily tuned into the sentiment of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. It’s not exactly your average Romcom Saturday night in with a tub of Haagen Daz but it’s well worth a couple of hours of your life.

Marylyn Manson and Trey Parker were both implicated in the Columbine massacre because they played loud rock music and made adult cartoons. They were also most informed in their assessment of the situation. Manson describes America as a country built on fear and consumption. Where success and consumption are one and the same. Be perfect, drink Pepsi like Brittany, eat McDonalds, like N’Sync. Ate too much Pepsi and McDonalds? You’ll get fat and nobody likes fat people, so take these pills, or buy this exercise regime. If you become fat and unpopular you won’t get a job and there’s nobody to look after you. And where do failures go? To the ghetto, an evil lawless world like the one portrayed on TV every night, like the Bronx or South Central i.e. where black people live. Parker wisely assesses that America is so prescriptive in its approach to success that kids could easily believe that their failures at school are permanently scarring. It’s one messed up country.

America is so fearful that its empire will fall apart that it’s taking its paranoia onto the world stage. Fear of Iran? Fund Iraq. Fear of Iraq? Fund Iran. Fear of Russia? Fund Afghanistan. Fear of Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan? Threaten to tear them to pieces. Suddenly they’re threatening to kill you if you do, and kill you if you don’t. So you do, right into the World Trade Center, hell why not, there’s nothing to lose.

Stoking the flames is, of course, George Bush announcing that the Justice Department had announced “a blanket alert of a general nature”. Like that statement informs you of nothing more than you should be scared of something or other. Still, there’s always an upside; sales of gas masks, duct tape and bottled water rose again. Is it any wonder that with this constant picking away at your fear, crime falls but the fear of crime rises?

At the pointy end a couple of kids in Columbine began to believe they were already failures by the age of 16. Having cashed their chips in so painfully early, with their bleak destiny laid out in front of them I guess it didn’t really matter what they did next, so they went and got famous.

And the blame? Well that was placed firmly at the feet of ‘mixed ethnicity’ (said Charlton Heston) which is no greater than in Canada, the break up of the family unit, which is no greater than the UK, and the old favourite, rock music promoting death and destruction, which is no greater than in Germany.

What was left was fear. Without healthcare or welfare, failure leaves you working in the Orc mines eating mud for a living. A welfare system is the one thing that all the above countries have that America doesn’t. It relieves the tension by giving people an alternative and a second chance. People are too damn mean to look after others without supervision, so freedom is a dangerous game, is pure freedom not anarchy? Is America not the land of the free? Do not Mr Heston and his chums at the National Rifle Association not exercise their free rights by having guns that can kill people?

Of course wherever America goes we follow, blindly down the same path. Richard and Judy testing the latest in inflatable panic rooms telling us that terrorist attacks are imminent (ignoring the fact that this country has lived with imminent terrorist attacks for thirty years), even this morning Fiona Phillips telling us the ‘terrifying’ side effects of hay fever tablets. It all drives another wedge into your calm and your sanity. Before you know it you’re on the same roller coaster.

I, for one, am not convinced about it.

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Last night we went to see Harry Potter, well, I say last night, we actually saw the 5.45 showing. 5.45 is well before bed time for the 5-12 target demographic this film is clearly aimed at. Walking into the cinema was like walking into a pack of rabid Muppets, or the scene from Gremlins when the little monsters infest the town’s cinema - they were hanging from the ceiling and tearing down the curtains.

Nobby did his patented Cinema blag, we were allocated Row B (at Star Wars we had Row A), seats so close to the screen it burns your retinas, so close, if you started looking at the left hand side of the screen, the film was finished before you got to the right, so close I was in danger of having an image of Ron Weasley etched on my eyeballs forever more. But with Nobby's Cinema Blag you simply tell the ushers that the seats are terrible and can we have better ones, they instantly lead you to the best seats in the house, the middle of the middle. It's like some kind of Jedi mind trick.

Its a great film, Much Better Than The Last One (™ every reviewer in the world), like in the first one a lot of detail is taken out, but its done to clarify the story, Quidditch, for example, is merely a side issue. You actually leave the Cinema tying up the loose ends going "Oh yeah, that's why such-and-such did that".

Watching it with the 5-12 demographic provided added dimensions to the experience. The predictive commentary is slightly annoying: -

'Hrrrrrmmmmmmiiiiinnnnneeeeee!' drifts across the cinema like a callow wind.

Here's Hermione

Errrrrrooooollllllll!

Oh, here's Errol.

"This is a great bit"

Cue: a great bit.

But they live it, they laugh like drains at the funny bits, scream at the scary bits and applaud at the end, and there should be no other way of watching it. Vic insisted we stay until after the credits for the added bit... make sure you do too, it's great.

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