Also, “The librarian and the stripper” sounds like a cool name for a film. (Not that kind of film.)

I am disappointed.

Medium summary

When I pay to see a psychological thriller, I want a psychological thriller, and not Biblical prophecizing cock-and-bull. Please disregard my religion or lack thereof for a minute; Ezekiel meets Star Trek is not the ideal resolution to an intriguing supernatural and numerological riddle, and I find it hard to believe that I would have thought it was even a year ago, when I classified myself as religious. The catchline of the film was “Knowing is everything”, well, let me rephrase that: “Knowing” is apparently bloody pointless.

Long summary

All right, we’re talking about this film called “Knowing”, featuring Nicholas Cage doing his patent concerned face for 120 minutes in a story about an MIT professor who gets his hands on a numerical prophecy about the end of the world, written on a sheet of paper by a primary school lass named Lucinda, fifty years ago. Of course, we spend the first hour waiting for him to figure out that the sheet of numbers is an end-of-the-world prophecy, and only after that does the action really begin, with Cage’s persona running about trying to figure out, first whether the prophecy is genuine, then who the hell this Lucinda girl was, and finally, trying his best to save the world from impending disaster.

He is of course doomed to fail. Lucinda’s prophecy lists “all” major accidents since 1958, with dates, co-ordinates and death tolls, and when our hero goes to the sites of the two upcoming tragedies, try as he might he can only watch people kick the bucket around him. How he plans to stop the end of the world is unclear.

What is also unclear is how this so far relatively promising story along the lines of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable could so desperately paint itself into such a ridiculously stupid corner. I have a policy of not revealing the endings of films to people who haven’t seen them, however, this only applies to films that I consider at least vaguely worth seeing. Then again, sure, if you like embarassingly predictable plots, mysterious-looking guys who follow the main characters around and then turn out to be some sort of angels-cum-extraterrestrials or a-new-heaven-and-a-new-earth themed endings (literally), this film might just be for you. If not, then not.

LA Times, according to Wikipedia, writes that “Knowing” is “moody and sometimes ideologically provocative”. “Ideologically provocative”, are you kidding me? It’s ideologically propagandist, plotline intelligence challenged and a huge bloody disappointment. Alternatively just lame. Definitely a must-not-see.

The story begins with Mrs Kowalski’s funeral, and Walt’s scowling at his grand-children’s bad posture, navel piercing and Austin Powers quotes, respectively (the cinema audience giggles). Then, the young padre who Mrs Kowalski talked to before her death tries to get a confession out of Walt, who confesses “that [he doesn't] want to confess to a boy who’s just out of seminar” (the audience snorts). That’s about the most polite we see him.

One day, a gang convinces/bullies the boy next door, Tao, to go steal Walt’s Gran Torino, an expedition which ends with Walt very nearly shooting Tao but the car left untouched. This sparks a reluctant and rather weird connection between Walt and his neighbours, and when the gang comes back for Tao, Walt is there to back him up. That is the start of the War.

– — – — –

I was sure that Graeme had ruined 90% of the film for me when, upon Anna asking what it was about, he told her and everyone else within earshot how it ended. (For shame, man! You don’t tell the ending to someone who hasn’t seen the film. You just … don’t!) However, even knowing what was coming, I was on the edge of my seat from about halfway through on. Something else that impressed me was that while many films start off tedious and slightly forced before the action commences, “Gran Torino”’s subtle dry humour and Walt’s — mildly put — colourful language made the introductory bits not only bearable but a joy to watch. I stopped counting insults and bigot jokes after fifteen minutes and even laughed out loud at “So a muslim, a jew and a chinese walk into a bar. The barman looks at them and says, ‘Get the hell outta here!’” and our hero’s stout refusal to call one particular Chinese girl anything other than Yum-Yum (the audience tries, and fails, not to laugh). And the ending — whoa, the ending is just brilliant. If I hadn’t known it beforehand, it would have been such a shock. A brilliant shock.

OK, I shall restrain myself. I shall not say that “Gran Torino” is the best film I have seen in a year. I have seen far too many films in the last year to be able to honestly say that without thinking it through first. It qualifies as a nominee, though, and it has a good chance of making it to the top. If you have the chance, don’t hesitate to go and see it.

Because films that surprise by having you sit there for two hours feeling like a question mark might feel if a question mark would be capable of having feelings is one thing, if most questions are answered before the end, that is. It is another thing entirely to see the end credits scrolling up in front of you, still feeling like a question mark might feel, wondering whether you were slightly stupid when you asked yourself if this film would get ever so slightly interesting at some point. What if there are never any grand, intriguing questions to start with?

Losing interest? Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

All right, long story short: “The Young Victoria” is a reasonably good-looking film played by reasonably good-looking actors, but having waited for two hours for it to even start I must confess that as far as I noticed, it has no plot whatsoever. The end came merely as a dull surprise, I mumbled “That’s it?” to myself and walked out the room feeling somewhat cheated of my money. Pity, really.

Conclusion: Not a complete disaster, but I don’t recommend paying to see it. The lasting impression is that it left no lasting impression.

The plot reeks of all sorts of conspiracies. Young slum boy scores big in “Who wants to be a millionaire”, upsetting another man, the first and until then only person to have taken the exact same from-the-bottom-up route, who would much rather keep the ‘title’ to himself. The big question is, how does a boy from the slums manage to get every question right? Is he a genious? Was he lucky? Was he cheating? Will a round of mean-ass torture open him up?

Films that surprise, for another, in the sense that such a relatively bland-looking (to my eyes, at least) concept turns out to be a big winner. (The poster even said “Feel-good film of the year”, for heaven’s sake. That genre is normally kept firmly out of arm’s reach, because they make me feel annoyed, not good. And by the way, for a very, very long time tonight, I was seriously wondering about that “feel-good” thing.)

Let us end here, before I accidentally start dropping spoilers. Conclusion: Highly recommended.

Let it also be noted that every film ought to have a dance number during the end credits. It doesn’t necessarily need to be Bollywood, it could be glitz disco overload à la “Mamma Mia!”, general silliness à la “The Love Guru” or whatever you like. Every film should also have a soundtrack as cool as this one. I would never have guessed I liked Indian-style dance music.

(And oh, did that dance number make me ache for Student Show … <3 )

It must have been during my Mathieu Chédid-surfing on YouTube in early 2008 that I came across track 5, “T’es beau”. I also managed to find a performance of “M’en voulez-vous ?”. “T’es beau” swept me off my feet, and just as with Viva La Vida (which I think we’ve heard enough about now), I watched that video about fifteen times a day for a couple of weeks, learned the lyrics, in this case even learned to play a decent version of it on the guitar (and impressed some friends) and found myself humming it, in my crappy French, more or less 24/7.

Perhaps it is the somewhat frail quality to her voice that makes her songs sound so special. Or the fact that she seems sometimes to be breating out the music, and sometimes to be almost screaming, forcing as much voice out as she can fit into her lungs (first she sounds a little like Gwen Stefani, then she suddenly sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before). Or, that I get the strange but inescapable feeling that the microphone seems to be (please pardon my excessive poetic imagery) directed at her heart rather than at her mouth (excessive poetic imagery ends here). Her voice sounds so close, and I know it’s not due to my expensive hi-tech sound equipment, because I’m listening from my laptop through the cheap headphones that I bought at a supermarket in 2004.

To conclude; I bought this CD for “T’es beau”, but have on first listen fallen helplessly in love with the other eleven tracks as well. (If I swinged that way, I promise you I would have fallen in love with the little black-haired lady who sings them too.) Congratulations, Pauline Croze. You have ripped my heart out of my body and somehow made me like you for it.

Martin Sturrock desperately needs a psychiatrist. The problem? He is one.
Back cover of “All In The Mind” by Alistair Campbell.

I am partly having to force myself to write. While half of me claims, quite convincingly, that this is pointless (How many people read this anyway? What difference does it make in the grand scheme of things? What peace of mind will it give me?) and that I should just not give a damn, the other half is itching to put thoughts in writing.

The irony is that is wasn’t even “All In The Mind” that made me walk up to one of the five or something WH Smiths at the Edinburgh airport. I was very close to not buying it at all. The book that caught my eye was “Outliers - The Story of Success”, and the decision to buy “All In The Mind” was very much due to the quotes from Stephen Fry on the cover, saying that the book is out of the ordinary and that it describes extremely well “the agonies and insecurities of mental trauma”.

Oh yeah, it described them well.

More than anything, I believe that if you are ever so slightly emotionally unstable, reading “All In The Mind” is probably bad for you. If you believe you are emotionally stable, then by all means, go ahead. I don’t know if you will enjoy it as much if you have no insight into the world which the book describes, but what the hell, you might enjoy the political commentary and the brutal honesty about everyday life without fully understanding the chapters that dive headfirst into the dark ocean of mental illness.

As for myself? I belong to the former category, and I am not sure buying this book was a good idea. Rarely have I to such a degree lost myself in a story, and rarely have I come out of one with my mind in such a state. It is a marvellous book; the way it shuns nothing about the ugliness and the beauty of life and of the mind is extremely compelling, and the way that the last three or four chapters turns everything on its head is shocking, terrifying and, ultimately, totally unforgettable. I read the whole book in about eight hours, which is a personal record for a full novel, and I recall myself gasping loudly, cursing the turn of events, laughing and crying simultaneously. Whereas most of the book is wonderfully well written, the already mentioned last few chapters spoke to me so directly that it literally scared me. I don’t claim to ever have experienced a deep depression, and for that I am desperately thankful, but I have had some very tough moments (at one time I was even diagnosed with something; as it later turned out, wrongly) and “All In The Mind” was so frighteningly precise in its description of that agony …

*loses track* … Pages upon pages of confused, unfocused rambling, paragraphs full of commas and unfinished sentences, not a full stop in sight; the kind of racing panic that I recognise far too well from a worrying few notes in my old diaries. I can’t remember writing those notes or the thoughts in my head that made such terrifying nonsense on paper, but somehow, “All In The Mind” spoke to that panic and when I had finished the book, it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing it out the window. I don’t know which I was more; scared or angry. The back cover said “Set over a life-changing weekend” … dear god, “life-changing” can mean a lot more things than I imagined.

I have a habit of looking for morals in whatever I read. There normally is one, and once I put down the book, it is usually obvious. “All In The Mind” confused me, because every time I thought I had figured one out, just as I had found it, something would happen that would tell me almost unequivocally that that couldn’t be it. I lay awake and thought and thought, I went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea — at 4.35 a.m. — I watched the water boil and thought, and the only conclusion I could come to is that perhaps, there never was a moral. “All In The Mind” is so honest, so believable, that no moral would make sense. Of course, there are many bits and pieces of lessons to be drawn from it, but no large, all-encompassing Grand Conclusion. As with life, I guess.

I am sorry for a rather rambling and inconclusive post. I never bothered to mention the synopsis of the book (check Amazon for that), and I’m not quite sure whether I recommend it or not. Although, I notice that I haven’t wanted to disclose the ending, which means that in a way, I enjoyed it. Whether you dare dive into it or not is, I suppose, up to you.

Oh, I’ll get back to The God Delusion in a few days. I just need to recover.

Not working wasn’t difficult; the other bit took some determination. All in all, a guilt-free day is something I ought to do more often, although not too often of course; that would take too much time away from actual work. (It’s almost sad that one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had was one when I got no presents and the only thing out of the ordinary was I took away the guilt. I said almost sad, because it’s really everything but. )

It was a happy morning online at the library and a happy afternoon about town (until my bag started getting a little too heavy). When I had bought a few things that I needed, I very sternly told myself to stop being such a bore and go straight to the music section at Fnac, where another couple of hours were thus passed happily listening to random CDs that had pretty covers. And then.

Then I found Prospekt’s March EP.

A few CDs-with-pretty-covers later I bounced out of the store with it in my hand. Although I did feel a tiny twinge of the old money-induced guilt when I handed over the 9€ (not much for a CD, of that caliber no less), I knew that if I hadn’t bought it there and then, I wouldn’t have been able to get my mind off it for days and I would have gone and bought it on Friday anyway.

I would write a review, if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t know what to write (and I wouldn’t call “man it’s ace man it’s ace man it’s ace” a “review”). If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d have to quit giggling and bouncing for five minutes and figure out where I put my brain. If it wasn’t for the fact that this record is so unbelievably ridiculously spectacularly fantastically (I can’t come up with any more adverbs above waist height right now) splendid and I want to do silly-dance all night to “Rainy Day” (in my closet-size room where I’m more likely to go crash-boom-ouch into the furniture) and I believe letting Jay-Z loose on “Lost!” might have been among the best ideas of the year and 7/4 time in “Glass Of Water” is top of cool and … well, et cetera, you know. Right. That’s my review. May I go now?

Conclusion. While Prospekt’s March looks a lot like a thinly disguised excuse for making some extra cash on songs they could just as well have chucked in with the others on Viva La Vida, it is freaking marvellous and if this is what it’s like being screwed for money, I might easily end up the happiest totally skint person in Europe.

Tip of the day: Try a guilt-free day. It’s liberating.
Tip of the day #2: Buy Prospekt’s March (or borrow it or steal it or whatever floats your boat).

Next time I’ll write something about “The God Delusion” and how it made my skin crawl in a (for the most part) strangely pleasant way. Reason I won’t write about it now is I need my brain for it, and listening to Coldplay doesn’t do much to help with that.

I just saw a new film called “Make It Happen”. Let’s be honest about it, it sucks. The (excuse for a) plot is, and this is obvious from the first minute, one long, straight (one way) road leading up to a monumental Don’t Sell Out On Your Dreams. A very nice moral which has of course been used, worn out, washed, tumble-dried and recycled about 250.000 times already. I mean, I could have figured that one out from reading the title of the film, duh.

Don’t go see it for the intelligent plot or the good acting; both are mediocre at best. Then again, wasn’t this whole production just an excuse to show off some nice music and cool moves? It does that all right, and two of the tracks were so good I’m going to have to go look for that soundtrack. However, neither the bland plot nor the nice music was the reason that I sat down to write this post.

Even the most obvious stories can be touching, if they poke you in the right place. When the long expected “Now get out of here and go kick that audition’s ass” (or whatever the line was) came, I thought to myself, “Do I have a dream?” I mean, judging by this sort of film, we all have a Dream which we Must Fulfil or else we will become Grumpy Old Arses. All we have to do is find it. And I thought, “Well, I’ve wanted to be a web designer for a long time.” And I thought a little more; “… and I really want this degree, right?” And then I thought again. Sure I want to do those things, but neither of them is this big, awe-inspiring monumental thing that I feel half a person for not having done yet.

A little while ago, I used to go and see someone and talk. One thing that came up was the stupid daydream I used to have when I was a girl, of being in a musical (back then the dream was “to be in a Disney movie”, but it’s pretty much the same thing). Because I love to sing, and I wish I could spend more time doing it. When I was maybe five years old, I decided that when I grew up I would be a singer and everyone would love me. Now, I don’t think that will happen, seeing as I’m so busy becoming a mathematician and all. But I did (like millions of others I’m sure) spend many hours trying to learn the dances from Spice Girls videos, me and my sister made little dances of our own (very cute and simple things) and eventually I wrote my first “original” song (I put “original” in reversed commas because that song sounds exactly like ten other songs that were popular at the time). I sang and I wrote songs and I played instruments (everyone used to say I was so good at the trombone) and I went on stage in front of lots of people doing those things. Of course the dancing bit was forgotten somewhere along the way.

You see where this is going, right?

Yep, I’m a failed dancer. So failed it’s ridiculous. It’s the one thing I always wanted to know how to do but never learned. I took some ballroom classes in my early teens, but when I had to choose between dance and scouting I chose scouting because the drive was five minutes and not twenty-five. I don’t know what I would have chosen had they been at the same distance. When it was time to choose which college to go to, the five choices on my application were (in order, as I remember them):

1. (or 2) IT and European Studies
2. (or 1) Theatre/drama
3. Social Sciences and Language (I think I put down French as major)
4. Music; first instrument trombone
5. Natural Sciences — Computer Science

Number four was bumped out of the list when it turned out I had to audition for it. Not that I didn’t like auditions, I had already done one for choice number two, but my marks were such that whichever school I chose as number 1, I would get accepted at. It was a close run between drama and IT, but eventually IT won because the school was smaller and the food seemed better. And I did want to do web design, after all. (There was also a ‘reasonable’ little voice in my head saying, “Sure you’ll have three great years doing theatre, but then what? You’ll have to work your arse off on everything else to get into the cool courses at Uni and you’ll probably need to take some evening classes. Be reasonable; take the theoretical stuff.” This is not stuff you’re supposed to say, because everyone knows that every college programme in Sweden gives you the basic prerequisites for University.)

To get a bit closer to the point: There is a dance school not very far from where I lived. My sister eventually went to it. It wasn’t even on my list, because I figured that I would need to audition, and I was sure to screw it up because, come on, I couldn’t dance. I wish I had applied and put it as my number one. I would have got in even if I had borked my audition big time, that’s the class that my grades were. I probably borked my theatre audition (it felt like it), still I was apparently the “number one applicant”. I would have got in and I would have loved myself. Then I ended up at the newest school in the region, with tons of cool people, and I liked my life very much; then, two years later, my sister applied and got accepted to that dance school and I felt like physically hurting her for about a month.

I feel like writing page upon page of curses using every bit of knowledge of the English language that I have (refer to “Moab Is My Washpot” by Stephen Fry, particularly the chapter about music, for examples). I don’t have two left feet, not exactly, I just never learned to use the feet that I have. I look at dancers and see them do really cool stuff with their bodies and I think bitterly that that’s something I can never achieve. I loved being on the Student Show; we got to sing and dance and fool about twelve hours a day for three weeks. During the first week, I was bouncing happily inside whenever it was time for singing. Then during warm-ups one day, I suddenly realised that I could almost reach my foot with my leg straight (that stretching exercise you know — it’s something that I’ve never been able to do before) and when Show was over, it was the dancing that I missed.

I look at people who can dance and I love them and I hate them and I wish I were them. I suppose it’s too late now; it’s like being a model, if you want to be one you have to become one when you’re fifteen; once you’re twenty-three it’s game over. God, I wish I could dance. I don’t even require anything overly fancy, just that I don’t secretly feel like an idiot when I dance away to myself in my room. I hear good music and I just want to dance, but I don’t, because I feel stupid, because I know that’s how I must look, because I don’t know how to do it. It sucks.

/end rant.

As you will know, I have been away for a month. More on that later. I returned on the 31st, moved into the new flat on the 1st and spent the rest of the Friday in the cinema. Here’s the story: I wanted to see “Batman — The Dark Knight”.

The X-files — I Want To Believe

I happily walked down to Vue, arrived at five to nine and realise that Batman starts at 8.30, so I look for something else to see, choose “X-files — I Want To Believe” at random because I used to like the TV series. Now, X-files isn’t precisely action per se, but close enough, and there was a bit of shooting and running about, so I will include it in “4 x action” for now. Sadly, the film was pretty much ruined by Scully and Mulder kissing. We don’t want them to kiss, that’s to ruin all the fun of their dysfunctional not-quite-’just-professional’ relationship. Otherwise “I Want To Believe” was good enough, but no hit, due to an excess of relationship talk and too little thriller volume for the money.

I looked at my watch on the way out. 11.03. I seemed to remember that “The Dark Knight” played at 11, so I walked straight up to the ticket desk and bought a ticket (to strange looks from the staff who, I am sure, thought that I ought to have had enough of cinema for today).

Batman — The Dark Knight

“The Dark Knight”: No disappointment. I’ve heard people say it’s overrated, not half as good as its trailer and so on — it is of course more politically correct to speak ill of action flicks than to speak well of them. I have to admit that I never read Batman as a girl, nor any other comics whatsoever, except for Donald Duck and Asterix. After being dragged along by a previous boyfriend to see “The Hulk” (the one that came a few years ago, where he’s still rather vividly green) and the first “X-Men” movie, however, I was hooked to Marvel type comic book-turned-film action. Then again I’m not that fussy, DC is just as fine, as long as the special effects are expensive, the cars fast (and preferrably shiny), the guns big, the fistfights spectacular and the script ripe with one-liners. We shan’t forget that after acquiring “Fantastic Four”, I kept watching it over and over again until I got “The Silver Surfer”. That’s me and comic book movies.

Anyway, back to “The Dark Knight”. The special effects are expensive (at least they look it), the cars are very fast, the guns are big, the fights are way cool (didn’t they invent a new martial art for “Batman Begins” so that Batman’s fighting style would be entirely original?) and as for one-liners, Alfred delivers. I remember laughing out loud at “In the meantime, sir, may I suggest you try to avoid landing on your head” in “Begins”. “The Dark Knight” is, as mentioned, no disappointment either. (“The Lamborghini then … much more subtle.”)

The new Batman movie suffers only from trying to cram too much into three hours. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s always something going on, no dozy moments (not too much lovey-dovey mush either; one short kiss is all we get, and that is as it should be; this is action and not romance), but I did catch myself a few times wondering whether they had figured out how to end this thing yet. I would also have preferred if they could have kept Dent alive for a sequel, but then again they would have had to find a replacement for Heath Ledger, and perhaps it was in a gesture of politeness to his memory that they let his character stay good for most of its lifetime. (“You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”) All in all: Lots of stars (I don’t know how many I give, let’s say five out of five) to “The Dark Knight”.

… And repeat!

Saturday: After watching the pipers at the Tartan Day parade, having hot chocolate and watching an RSCDS dem, I decide that the cinema has earned a re-visit. Only this time I head to the beach and Cineworld. In the queue to the ticket desk I couldn’t make up my mind between “Mamma Mia!” and “The Love Guru”. Once at the desk, I hear myself say “One student for The Dark Knight at 8.20, please”. Well, there we go again. It was no less splendid the second time around.

Hancock

I checked my cinema programmes (as I now had one from each cinema) and noticed that “The Love Guru” played at Vue at 11.40. I headed over there, but realised on the way how much I felt like more action and how much I wanted to steer clear of Mike Myers today (don’t get me wrong, I secretly worship Austin Powers), so I bought a ticket to “Hancock” instead, ignoring the fact that I didn’t really have a clue what it was about. Having missed out on a month and a half of cinema premieres, it was after all catching up time, and Hancock seemed to be a big one since I had seen posters for it all over from Denmark to Austria.

Now Hancock isn’t the material for a long term love-affair in the same way as Batman, not at all. (I’m obviously talking about the films here, even though admittedly, Christian Bale in full body armour and cloak does look better than Will Smith in dirty sweater and shorts.) The idea is good, and there were some pleasantly violent (if that makes any sane sense at all …? *manic giggle*) surprises and a reasonably well thought-through back story, but I don’t think I’ll ever find myself “accidentally” buying another ticket for it. Only the very very good action films (and Lord of the Rings) deserve that kind of behaviour. (I saw “The Fellowship” five times, I think, before it came out on DVD.) “Hancock” did however give me the idea of the year for patching up some holes in my current story project.

I shall be back soon to write about my Eurotrip. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, have a look over at my Picasa gallery for some (= far too many) photos from the trip.

Edit/Correction: Obviously Heath Ledger didn’t play Harvey Dent but the Joker … then again I would still have preferred it if Dent wouldn’t have died, but you know, I’m sure they can come up with something. Anyway, apologies for the error.