83. Rrrrrrrrated rrrrrrrridiculously
... Speaking of Kubrick, something that annoys me about Doctor Who: ‘Red’. Or rather, the fact that a lot of the criticism (or, to put it more accurately, bitchy petty whining that only Doctor Who fans seem capable of in terms of doing that to their own favourite thing) revolves around the fact that Sylvester McCoy says “rrrrrrred.” Because, you know, he rolled his “r”s on TV, and that was embarrassing. But what they need to realise is that it wasn’t inherently embarrassing, it was just misjudged at times, in the same way that David Tennant’s winky-winky flashy-grin acting can sometimes be wonderfully charming and sometimes make you want to punch his (and Rose’s) arrogant faces to a pulp**.

‘Sides, it’s not the only “curing rage and violence” themed story where characters talk in funny ways. A Clockwork Orange, anyone (that’s the Kubrick bit, if you were wondering)? True, for that analogy to work entirely, ‘Red’ would have to be a comedy (except, with McCoy sometimes in Season 24 mode, it sometimes is; it brings to mind ‘Paradise Towers’, which is as bleakly and darkly comic as A Clockwork Orange. Though obviously not as brilliant, but that pretty much goes without saying), and it would have to more fully adopt a strange way of speech for its characters, and, most of all, it’d have to be called A Clockwork Red. Or, A Clockworrrrrrrrk Rrrrrrrrred! Which would be very fun, I reckon. Sylvester McCoy could rape a woman whilst eating Choc Ice or getting pies in the faces whilst raping Buster Keaton. “Somewhere there’s a prison waiting, and gang wars starting, and milk left undrank... come on, Ace. We’ve got to do a bit of the old ultra violence.” “Ace!”

Indeed, regarding the whole “strange way of speech for its characters”, Ace would have been perfect in that story, due to the way she talked. On a more serious level, that’s indeed what ‘Paradise Towers’ does; “wallscrawl”, “rezzies”, “kangs”, “how you do”. The script for that one is just marvellous, I reckon. Indeed, that continuity point mentioned in ‘The Gallifrey Chronicles’ – “What does it matter if Ace remembers her visit to Paradise Towers?” – raises an interesting point; would Ace have been a far, far better companion in that story? Another character with a strange way of talking, a character as socially inept... oh, to hell with it. Instead of that “I come from Perivale” story, I’ll bet Fenric just whisked one of the Kangs from the dustbin and chucked them on Iceworld.

**I’m exaggerating there. Otherwise, you know, I’d be a nasty, petty Doctor Who fan. Which I am, but I’m an objective and more verbose one, which is, er, somehow a lot better.

84. Imagine Dee and Dum
... Actually, I have more to say about ‘The Nightmare of Black Island’; it deals with that old plotline, that one of kids’ imagination being harnessed by outside forces (my Windows Media Player is singing “Harniiiiia Forces!” at me, so maybe that’s the answer**). At least, that’s a plotline that feels old, but now that I think of it, I’ve no idea where it first sprung up, because I don’t remember the first, or even second for that matter, time that I ever encountered such a plot. It seems to be just something that we all seem to believe, and that actually worries me. It worries me, for instance, that Ben Rice submitted a story idea for DW13 Series Two about a girl having her imagination conjure up things in real life, and I didn’t bat an eyelid and ask, “Why not someone older?” because it made sense to me.

But why? Let’s debunk this right now; children are no more imaginative than adults. No, no, hear me out. We all know that children will, for instance, draw their house and give their parents six fingers or something similar. We ascribe that as being “imagination”. But for god’s sake, it’s not, and it disturbs me that I didn’t realise it until reading this damn Doctor Who book. You won’t see adults immediately drawing people with six fingers; someone deciding to go more abstract is genuinely trying to be so. The child will do so without thinking, but the adult will have to think about it. But that doesn’t mean the child has more imagination. Think about it; both are therefore capable of it. The difference isn’t imagination, the difference is experience and second nature. In the same way that babies will make a variety of unstructured noises that will come down to specific meanings, whereas adults will use a variety of structured noises that will come down to various meanings... well, a child can draw their house with a dragon and just get away with it as being a representation of their house, whereas an adult drawing their house with a dragon is no doubt trying to make a point about something. It’s not more or less imaginative, it’s just a different way of thinking.

I’ll extend this to myself personally. One of the things I realised, when I thought about the differences between the imaginative kid me and the imaginative adult me, is that the kid me used to more easily lose himself in a world that really wasn’t in the slightest bit connected to this one (something that makes me referring to him in third person feel really appropriate). The kind of kid who would construct endless stories with endless characters with just a sandbox and a bunch of toys. Now, that may sound impressive, and indeed it’s imaginative. But whereas it seemed like a world to me as a kid, it’s blatantly shit to me as an adult. Not to take away childish innocence or anything like that, but I wasn’t constructing a “world” on any level; I was at a stage where I genuinely thought that a brief shot of Stonehenge in Beast Wars suddenly made the whole thing feel like it was the real world rather than just a bunch of randomly assorted geography there to facilitate a bunch of pointless fighting. And I talk about having many stories, but they weren’t stories, they were just scattered scenes, lines, fights, crap like that. No plot, nothing. That’s perfectly acceptable for a kid, and it’s perfectly imaginative, but it’s not acceptable for an adult (not even for one writing for kids).

Now, on the other hand, well, take Free Quay st. There’s rules and boundaries there, but what makes that okay is that there has been (or there will be) genuine thought put into how it functions as a society (Peicey has more of this at the moment, but FQs is a good example too, for reasons I’ll come to later). Far be it from me to sound boring – and at any rate, please remember that I’m a business-hating bloke – but even putting thought into how money works in a society is incredibly imaginative. Creating a world, or even a city, at its best, involves all the little details; money, politics, careers, musical trends, shit like that... even if none of them impact on the story itself. That’s imagination, too. It’s bloody hard as well, but never mind that.

As I said, a good example is FQs, because it operates on a level of boundaries that work quite well; whereas, say, Mungo doesn’t (SPOILERS FOLLOW). I love Mungo, honestly I do – not just out of nostalgia, either – but it’s so obviously at its heart the creation of two demented children with a wandering imagination rather than a set one. Indeed, the way Mungo has developed is, I’m starting to realise as I write this, a very good indicator of how we grew up; it was a collection of randomisms (without being deliberately so, I might add; we didn’t ever think “let’s insert something random”, it was just “let’s insert something we find funny”), that I eventually sculpted a plot around. Even going from Mungo I to Mungo III shows, in itself, a progression, because by the time I really started on the plots of Mungo II and III in detail... well, I was older than when I did so with I. Therefore II and III are not only more structured, but they go out of their way to explain themselves. They’ve lost a lot of the genuine weirdness that only a kid can provide, but I can’t help wondering if that’s necessarily a bad thing or not.

Consider the two societies, for instance, that the kid mind came up with in Mungo and the teenage mind came up with in Mungo III. Someware City barely makes any sense at all as a society, and whilst developments I’ve started to write in later books – the pig in government chapter, for instance – start to sort of balance that out, albeit in a silly way, it still doesn’t entirely make sense, ever. I mean, to test how durable your car is, you drive it off the tops of buildings. Whereas the Republick are a galactic force to be reckoned with, that I’ve actually figured out – even though it was mostly for comedy reasons – the way that their tax system works (silly, but it’s there), and other things that show up the ludicruous absurd paradoxes of their society. I mean, they have intergalactic cruisers and love film, but Mungo is able to stop their battle fleet by picking up the phone, purely because they run on 56k modems. Now, the latter’s more overtly clever, but I’m not sure which is funnier. If we’re to pick and point, the latter made Liam laugh for a very long time, whilst the former has never even really amused either of us. Maybe they’re unfair representative examples, I don’t know. But it seems to me that imagination in a “but how does it work?” way, in a way that explains how thinks work, is the adult form of imagination.

And that doesn’t even need to mean, “okay, this may be weird, but now explain it in real life’s terms.” Bugger that. The best imagination goes further than that; something’s weird, but it gets explained, and yet... the explanation would make no sense in the real world, and certainly wouldn’t happen. And yet... it’s also satisfying as an explanation because, in this kooky, off-kilter world, it works.

Incidentally – though I’ve no idea what this says about me – another difference is in my dreams. I have distinct memories of two dreams I had as a kid that frightened the living shit out of me and genuinely felt real. The first was me running from someone on a tundra, and getting to the peak before falling off the edge... until I found myself impaled on the steeple of a church in a city that was underneath the overlooking icy cliff’s point. The second is even more vivid (that’s the word I was looking for!); I was swimming in a dark lake, when a massive squid attacked me. I shoved a spear in its sides, and it died... but the blood that came out of it was streams of yellow and green that snaked up to me and ran up my arms. It turned out that there were ants running all through them. And when I woke up, I was terrified and my arms still felt like things were crawling on them.

Oh, and then there was the dream I had where I woke up in tears, feeling sad because something had happened to Dad. Unfortunately I’ve no idea what that was, because I don’t at all remember the dream.

But my dreams now? Well, I’m only really dreaming more often here in Singleton – probably because I tended to dream in real life far more often last year – but I never have that sense of vividness. And yet... the dreams are more imaginative. Not more vivid, but, if anything, stranger. I don’t feel anything, half of the time, but weird plots do happen that almost make sense but don’t under any close scrutiny, and I end up changing POV all the time, and yet knowing I’m doing so, which is postmodern beyond belief and means my dreams are almost like an ongoing exercise in David-Lynch-inetics.

Thing is, that doesn’t affect my writing ability in any way; and worse, the childish ones are hard to pinpoint. Those images still conjure up something very vivid (it’s such an appropriate word, now that I’ve found it, that I’m obviously not going to stop using it) for me now, but I doubt they would for anyone reading this. Whereas it’s probably easier to connect with, say, the one about The Simpsons I wrote about earlier – or even that one ages ago about the guy with the sandwich – because there’s it’s not just about imagery. Books never are, really. They’re about words.

85. You Drive Me Wild (Things)
... Yes, I’ve watched Wild Things. And it certainly gave me a “spike” jonze. Ahahaa... god. Anyway, bad jokes aside – including the bad jokes of the movie in question – it wasn’t too bad. Like Scream, it was a tad too up itself (well, Neve Campbell’s in both, so I suspect that’s the reason). Like anything-else-she’s-ever-done, Denise Richards could portray emotion perfectly convincing, but like Natalie Portman, I just find it impossible to take her seriously on any level. Same goes for Matt Dillon, actually. But it wasn’t too bad a flick.

I was amused that Billy Murray was in it, though. It sort of made me think of a strange theory concerning the Wild Things franchise. See, apparently Wild Things 2 and 3 are the exact same film remade with different actor and actresses. At first I thought that this must be a poor marketing ploy, but obviously the presence of Bill Murray has ensured that the characters are stuck on the same day and are repeating their actions over and over and bloody over.

(Disclaimer; I do like Groundhog Day. Honestly)

86. I am INVINCIBLE!
Regarding my “children aren’t more imaginative!” rant from before, another one struck me. I hate to stick up for Dragonball Z for once (which only ever approached “worth watching” in its second arc – the Android/Cell arc – despite what anime top tens will tell you. And yes, I used to watch it, and think the card game is awesome. Doesn’t mean the show’s really that good, though), but one thing I did like about it was that Garlic Jr wishes for immortality, he gets it... and yet the other characters can still bash the shit out of him, and make him bleed, things like that. This is incredibly relieving to me – particularly seeing this in a children’s show (well, the edited, not-so-raunchy-Roshi version of it, anyway) – because all too often I find shows/films that don’t make a distinction between “immortal” and “invincible”, which really gets my goat.

87. Pleasantly Aggravating
My computer, for some reason, refuses to read the DVD of Pleasantville that I bought. This annoys the crap out of me, because just-before and now-after buying it, I’m becoming more and more intrigued about it. The first thing that made me decide I should buy it was that posters for it were hanging in English rooms at school; whilst it’s true that they caught my eye, it’s also true that I was often bored enough in class to look at every poster fifty million times anyway. But if it’s in English, it’s worth experiencing – particularly for me, because I love to rubbish things that English teaches you are brilliant. I don’t expect that with Pleasantville, mind.

Anyway, the second thing is that I’ve finally seen Spiderman 3, and I was rather impressed with Tobey Maguire’s emo-cum-hard-arse-cum-shazam! acting, which managed to be both cool and deliberately crap at the same time. Kudos. I’ve read comments by people who hated the film, citing this as their problem with it – “Spiderman becomes emo” – but it’s notable that, of course, the film is hardly portraying this as a good thing. It’s like criticising Psycho because Norman Bates becomes a killer; it’s just a strange criticism for me. Anyway, he blatantly doesn’t become emo; whilst emos indeed have side-fringes, wear black, and tend to “emote”, they generally don’t say “shazam”, start acting like everyone’s a social lackey of theirs (they tend to shun social stuff altogether, I find), and certainly don’t actually pick up attractive girls.

But anyway, to get back to the point – I then went and revisited the first film, and it surprised me that, well, first of all the film was actually not very smooth at all and quite stilted in places... but what really surprised me was Maguire, as I’d forgotten just how different he was in the role back then. The fact that he’s able to chart quite a big character leap and yet still feel like Spiderman (even when he’s blatantly being the opposite) says to me that he’s got far more variety than I ever thought he would have, and so slowly he’s becoming one of those actors recently that I’m starting to have a sneaking interest in. Like DiCaprio, for instance (after watching The Beach, mind)... or Benicio del Toro (though I must say this guy’s a fair bit ahead of DiCaprio and Maguire at the moment). So really, to see how good Maguire can be, Pleasantville is the obvious choice.

Thirdly, well, I’d already figured that it was to an extent a film about the black and white era of film, but I didn’t particularly know what exactly it was targeting within that framework. But the back cover, where it says “Everybody knows things were better in the 1950s... look at those classic TV sitcoms like I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best!” says a hell of a lot to me. After all, from all I’ve seen of each (a fair bit of the first, a teensy bit of the second, and none of the third), these shows are in fact shockingly poor. I’m not sure if the blurb is being affectionate, or smart-arsed, or both; either way, I’m interested.

But my computer won’t read it. So in typical my-computer’s-fucking-up-again fashion, I started swearing and thumping it. So much for “pleasant”.

88. Series Four Better or Worse
Something very incredible has happened to me. Basically, I was reviewing Series Three of Doctor Who (I did ‘Max Warp’ as well; first reviews I’ve done in yonks), and something struck me, and now, impossibly, unbelievably, gloriously... I’m looking forward to Series Four.

To explain why I’m now a lunatic (to be fair, it’s 12:07. Sorry, 12:08 now. You get giddy at that time of night), I’ll just quote from my review:

“Oh; I said in my review of this story [‘Last of the Time Lords’] that the president’s death was a truly bizarre, glossed over thing. Thinking about it since, I’ve come to realise that it could actually be a brilliant bit of what’s coming in Series Four – Russell said there was a line of dialogue that the Master said in ‘Last of the Time Lords’ that’s applicable for Series Four. Let’s forgo all the obvious options (such as “Oh, the Axons will return!” and stuff like that); maybe it’s the “Uncle Sam” line, or maybe it’s the “diplomatic relations with a new species”. After all, the aliens-on-Earth thing has been more integrated into the New Series as it’s gone on, and considering the military bent shown in the trailer – and the constantly more apparent UNIT references, including the fact that Martha now works for UNIT! – I suspect this’ll be a big thing in Series Four. And actually, with that in mind, Series Four – particularly with its now appropriate new theme (which I liked, but I was wondering how it worked conceptually with the show) – actually feels very exciting to me.
Yeah, I know!

‘Course, I’m deliberately ignoring the implications of Tate being on board, and I’m pretending I’ve never heard of “Rose Tyler”, “Captain Jack” and “Sarah Jane” (though I suppose Jack and Torchwood would make sense, if used with the whole aliens-on-Earth thing). But I’m concentrating on something here that’ll make me excited about Series Four. And now, finally, I’m managing it. Just. Please don’t push me away from it, it’s such a nice feeling.”

Alright, so this excitement is based on a probably-not-gonna-happen assumption I have about where the series is going. And I’m ignoring things that I know will rile me. And yet – I have a feeling that I’m right. Suddenly, it makes the Sontarans seem interesting; the ultimate military jocks, in the military season. It just... I don’t know, it suddenly works as a series for me. I’ll probably hate a lot of it, but suddenly it’s interesting. And as I said, and god I hope this is true... I have a feeling I’m right. Please Russell please Russell pleeeeease.

89. Last of the Master’s Lines
In fact, sad fanboy that I am, I’m now going to watch ‘Last of the Time Lords’ and all of its Master scenes and try and work out what the line of dialogue could be. And yes, I know it’s 12:11 (though you wouldn’t, unless you somehow knew some sort of mathematical formula that could calculate how many words I manage to type relative to the passage of time). Don’t look at me like that. As I said, I’m a sad fanboy.

“This country has been sick. This country needs healing. This country needs medicine. In fact I’d go so far as to say what this country needs... right now... is a Doctor.”

Well, apart from tying into the military/UNIT theme, I can’t see how this ties in.

“Bless.”

A sneezing monster?

“Oh yes, what was it...?”

Uh, a vague line?

“Tish. Well, then, Tish... you just stand there being gorgeous.”

Ah, I get it; that mysterious face that’s burnt off horribly in the Series Four trailer is actually Tish, no longer gorgeous. Poor girl.

“A glorious day. Downing Street rebuilt. The cabinet in session. Let the work of government begin.”

Well, that’s linked in to what I was saying.

“Oh, go on, crack a smile. It’s funny, isn’t it? Albert. Funny? No? Little bit?”

Sounds a bit like Catherine Tate, then.

“No, no, no... no. Before we start all that, I just want to say... thank you. Thank you one and all. You ugly, fat-faced bunch of wet, snivelling traitors.”

The next alien race... an ugly, fat-faced bunch of wet, snivelling traitors?

“No, no, that wasn’t funny. You see, I’m not making myself very clear... funny is like this...” *pulls expression* “...not funny is like this...” *pulls expression* “And right now, I’m not like...” *pulls expression* “... I’m like...” *pulls expression* “Because you are traitors. Yes, you are! As soon as you saw your vote swinging my way, you abandoned your parties and you jumped on the Saxon bandwagon. So this is your reward.”

Catherine Tate eloquently explains what comedy is.

“A gas mask.” “It’s a gas mask.” “Oh, because of the gas.” “Because of the gas.” “This gas.”

The empty child?

“My faithful companion.”

Uh... Rose?

“Oh, but you’re absolutely right. Harold Saxon doesn’t exist.”

Well, we know that.

“I am the Master. And these are my friends.”

This one’s great, actually; it’s a bit like “I am the Master and you will obey me”, but more as if he’s actually in the world of the Teletubbies. “Good morning, children. I am the Master, and these are my friends. We’re a happy family!”

“Can’t you hear it, Mrs Rook?”

I don’t know; but can Mr Pawn hear it? And how about the mysterious Master (King)?

“The drumbeat, the drums coming closer and closer.”

Yeah, I sort of doubt they’ll continue this.

“Um. Ninety nine. Ninety eight?”

Adric returns in all his mathematical glory?

“Tomorrow morning, I promise. That’s when everything ends.”

Everything ends the day after Doctor Who is broadcast?

“Britain, Britain, Britain. What extraordinary times we’ve had. Just a few years ago this world was so small. And then they came. Out of the unknown, falling from the skies. You’ve seen it happen. Big Ben destroyed. A spaceship over London. All those ghosts and metal men, the Christmas Star that came to kill. Time and time again and the government told you nothing. Well, not me. Not Harold Saxon. Because my purpose here today is to tell you this. Citizens of Great Britain... I have been contacted. A message for humanity from beyond the stars.”

Here we go. More government stuff.

“Oh, sweet. And this species has identified itself. They’re called the Toclafane.”

Though not this bit. Unless “oh sweet” is a clever reference to the Kandyman’s imminent return (repackaged!).

“And tomorrow morning they will appear, not in secret, but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species will begin. Tomorrow, we take our place in the universe. Every man, woman and child. Every teacher and chemist and lorry driver and farmer and, oh, I don’t know, every... medical student?”

As I said, the “diplomatic relations with a new species” is the line that got me. Though perhaps I’m looking at the wrong bit, and it’s the lorry driver that’s the most important.

“Ooh, nice little game of hide and seek, I love that. But I’ll find you, Martha Jones. Been a long time since we saw each other. Must be, what, a hundred trillion years?”

As well as playing chess, the Doctor also branches out and plays hide and go seek. So maybe this is how he’ll remeet Fenric?

Never understood why that story isn’t called ‘The Chess of Fenric’, incidentally. Quite clearly, after all, it’s all determined by his own set of rules. The pawns band together? Yeesh. And people complain about “Free Parking” in Monopoly.

12:53am, and I can’t be bothered continuing this.

90. From the back of the Torchwood boxset:

“The 21st Century is when it all changes, and you’ve got to be ready...” – Captain Jack Harkness

For fuck’s sake. THIS ISN’T WHAT TORCHWOOD IS ABOUT.

“Separate from the government, outside the police, beyond the United Nations; Torchwood sets its own rules.”

It does, but all of that portentous stuff is to the detriment of the show. I don’t mind the characters looking all portentous, so long as it’s grounded and shown to be silly – as happens in ‘They Keep Killing Suzie’, or the number of times we see that the Doctor’s adventures actually do look “ridiculous” (quote: Steven Moffat) in Doctor Who (see ‘Love & Monsters’, ‘Blink’, and more).

“Everyone who works for Torchwood is young, under 35. Some say that’s because it’s a new science. Some say it’s because they die young.”

Huh? Since when was this an integral theme of the series? The only reason I can see that everyone is so young is that if we were to watch about octogenarians screwing each other and fighting octogenarian sex monsters, then Torchwood would be deemed, um, even more unsuitable than it is.

‘Sides, Captain Jack is hardly under 35.

91. We are Living in Amerika... Amerika... it’s Blackadder...
Incidentally, I was listening to Rammstein today, and came to the conclusion that I like them. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not brilliant or anything, they’re not one of my favourites, I don’t love them... all that stuff. But god, they’re enjoyable. Particularly because, for some reason that I still can’t fathom (as in, I’ve no idea where the association started), when I picture them playing and a shaggy haired guy singing the lead vocals, I always picture Captain Darling from Blackadder Goes Forth as the second guitarist. No, honestly.

92. Musical Avatar
Obviously, I’ve never seen a picture of Rammstein. Unlike most people, I sometimes feel that seeing what a musician looks like will actually render them a tad... well, anti-climactic. A lot of musicians I listen to get away with me having seen them. Aphex Twin masks that by... uh... using masks and CGI-ing his face to disgusting lengths; Bjork wears utterly bizarre costumes; Thom Yorke is simply bizarre enough anyway. But I was always sort of disappointed with Matt Bellamy when I first saw him – although I loved the Hullabaloo look, and then grew more disappointed as he “became himself” – and it’s lucky that Beck and Sonic Youth’s music call out for normal looking people behind them (because they, especially with Sonic Youth, frequently feel more like brilliant jams than pre-determined albums. And no, that’s not a criticism; both are equally valid as long as they’re equally brilliant), because otherwise I’d be very disappointed. But I really don’t want to see the Insects, the guys that make the Wire in the Blood soundtrack, nor do I particularly wish to remember what Godspeed You! Black Emperor look like, or Mogwai. And funnily enough, all of them communicate their music to the audience through a medium, rather deliberately. Okay, so Mogwai and Godspeed do live concerts, and I’m sure the Insects do as well. But for once, throwing Mogwai and Godspeed under that crap title “post-rock” makes the slightest bit of sense, in the sense that we’re past a stage, I feel, where you can just rock out and that’s your image. There’s no image attached to Mogwai and Godspeed for me, only the imagery that they conjure up in their albums; and even though you hear Godspeed members in Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada, for instance, you have no idea what they’re really like because they’re being deliberately non-committal. I’m not saying that you have to be boring in your musical identity nowadays – far from it – but... well, it actually has to be more of a construct. The days of saying, “Yeah, this is me, just a rocking out guy with my rocking out band” don’t exactly fit anymore.

Or rather, it doesn’t for albums. For instance, Radiohead’s In Rainbows is the most stripped back and in your face they’ve ever been. And by “in your face” I don’t mean loud and obnoxious and revolution-wagering... I mean, it sounds like they really could just be recording in the room next door. The whole internet access element of it made it feel incredibly live anyway, or perhaps like an extended jam. Indeed, even though this isn’t probably something they’d think of doing, I really think both Beck and Sonic Youth should start releasing their music – particularly Sonic Youth – through the internet, because it feels very appropriate now. I’m not saying the era of the stage is dead – far from it – but I’m saying that a new era is beginning, and I have a suspicion that, twenty years or so down the line, bands are going to be remembered more for their custom built presence than their physical presence on stage. This is, after all, now; a time when (and I’m starting to sound portentous, but never mind) people count their friends on MSN lists and construct their own “identities” through Myspace. It wouldn’t surprise me if bands went on to have their own avatars depicting their chosen self-image, then; it’s no longer the “pop idol”, but the “pop avatar”. It’s not that dissimilar, just a jump to the net. Even Frequency – a PS2 game – had the option to create your own little avatar, though there wasn’t anywhere near the implications of what I’m getting at.

And video clips will probably extend to this too, with avatars clunking their way through CGI-laced clips with glorious and sometimes shit imagination. As it is with normal video clips, in fact.

93. Various stuff about Vaudewraith and Music in General
... I did indeed start writing The Wrong Obituaries (third Vaudewraith album; keep in mind that none of the others have been released yet, though. I just like to keep ahead of the game. Er, that game being musical chairs) last night, and I wrote out the lyrics to the first song (well, second, but the first song with lyrics). They’re alright, the song’s alright. I finally managed to use a riff that I’ve had for ages and never applied to anything. Probably because it’s really simple. But hey, the music of Vaudewraith often is simple. It’s the drive behind it that’s not. That synchronicity between creativity and entertainment.

This is by my own standards, of course. Many will no doubt think we’re pretentious, and up our own arses, and wankers... and some will think we’re not clever enough with our music, that we resort to simplistic guitar riffs and stuff far too often. I’d like to say that both are missing the point, but I won’t; I’ll just say that I don’t mind. Someone will get it. And even they don’t, who cares? It’ll make us this weird in limbo band on a unique spectrum.

I mean, that was one of the problems I had doing music at school, even in years 11 and 12 – other people were better than me in the field which we were supposed to be fielded into, like sheep. I don’t mind if people are better musicians than me, because that’s inevitable. But that’s because, with Vaudewraith, I’ve chosen the home grounds and any competing bands have to come to us as the Away team, rather than the other way around.

Why have I made metaphors about sport and sheep-driving?

Point is, I’m not fussed if I’m not a brilliant guitarist – because I’m not, and anyway Adam is being brought in (though Liam still hasn’t said anything about this to him, I don’t think) to bring up the quality of the guitar playing – or even one of the best pianists (which I’m hardly close to either). I said that, in my Music course at Uni, one of the big problems was that I simply wasn’t cut out for that style. I probably excel in other areas – I loved Film Music, for instance, though I’m ironically far more knowledgeable about that now than I was when actually in the course (and that’s not because of the course. Not to say it wasn’t educational... it was more a kick-start, in the same way that Australian Popular Culture was a kick-start into my whole “Australian identity” thing) – but sitting down and just playing a classical piece, just learning it and playing it in a classical environment? I adore it with other people, but it’s hardly me. I’d rather... well, I don’t break the rules as such, but I’d rather find a set of rules that I agree with and follow them.

The same sort of goes with Creative Writing at Uni; the teacher, for instance, wasn’t a huge fan of the rules I had set for myself when writing those pieces (for example, the whole “line leads onto another line as a pun” thing in ‘These Storeys’ [no, not the novella], and the many elements of black comedy). But thankfully there’s a key difference; it’s still me. I’m still the creative head of what’s going on, even when I take in criticism and build things around it (indeed – and no, that wasn’t a pun on the Building – but anyway, thing is, my teacher’s criticism of ‘These Storeys’ as a short story was that the narrator was rather confused, switching as it did to 2nd person at one point. I realised he was right, and therefore ‘These Storeys’ as a novella now has a definite main character). It’s still my own field, rather than me playing in someone else’s.

94. Ja-Breaking-Ja-Rules
But that thing about taking a set of rules and following them... it’s basically true. Despite my constant hesitation about saying a genre that Vaudewraith fits into when asked in real life (being asked these things in real life, rather than in my Journal, is always more troublesome and embarrassing, I find), well, that’s not to say we don’t fit into a genre. In fact, we probably fit into many. There’s none of that “we defy genres” or even “transcend genres” crap, even though, if we’re talking literally, Vaudewraith does transcend genres in the sense that it dips its feet into many of them, taking what it pleases. But of course, “transcending genres” doesn’t actually mean that when used by people; it’s more a pretentious statement that amounts to “defying genres”, basically. But honestly, there’s definite trends and genres that we follow. Sensiship – “Hey, let’s do some hip-hop!” Gatecrash – “Let’s rock!” The Wrong Obituaries – “Let’s go all electronic!” In the Name of the Fuhrer – “Let’s make a rock opera!”

What makes it Vaudewraith is what we do with those rules. For instance, In the Name of the Fuhrer might be called a rock opera – we call it that, at least – but it doesn’t follow the rules of rock opera, it just draws upon the style and drive of it and we throw in rules from other places to fit it for ourselves (not that I know where those other rules come from, but it’d be completely idiotic to pretend that I somehow “made my own rules”. No-one bloody does that, and anyone who says they “made their own rules” is a ponce). This was something of a fascination for Liam way back when I first pitched the album to him (god, that was ages ago. Curiously enough, it was in Sydney too, and this was way before the whole Newcastle/Sydney thing cropped up in Vaudewraith stuff*), and he said, “But it’s not really how rock operas work.” And I said, “Fine with me.” He replied, “So are we going to call it a rock opera?” I answered, “Oh yeah, I don’t see why not.” Even though it was more because of laziness then that I answered that, rather than having definite views as I do now, it was a good move. Because no-one transcends genres, dammit.

95. “Gotcha! All done! Yeeeeeaaahhh!”
Also, you know how I was talking about avatars for bands? I’d forgotten one band that already defines themselves with this – the Gorillaz. I’ve even seen them do a live act where they used the CGI images of the anime figures rather than playing themselves. Now, uh, I don’t know if they do that always, but that’s pretty creepy, and it also shows the way forward. What’s creepy about it is that they’re “Gorillaz”, and Vaudewraith is a gorilla in Sensiship. Purely unintentional, but I have to make a reference to that in The Wrong Obituaries, as if it was planned all along. Mwahaha.

Our image? Thinking about it, I’ve decided it should just be a singular wraith, almost undefinable. In that sense, it means that the audience can decide for themselves what we look like and that (maybe we can have an online “create your own Vaudewraith” tool on our website?).

96. Horror-bly Good
MANY SPOILERS FOLLOW.

As is probably fairly evident, I’ve been watching many celebrated horror films recently. And I’ve come to the conclusion that horror is one of the more potentially brilliant and promising genres. We all know the standards of a horror film; gore, violence, tension-building-up-before-someone-dies-brutally. The great thing about it is that since those standards are so well-defined and obvious, every great horror director will go out of their way to deliberately structure their film on different angles to that. Indeed, horror is a genre that demands brilliant direction in a way that, say, rom-coms and such don’t. That’s not to say the script isn’t important – because it bloody well is – but the direction is key to success, thus making horror films intrinsically a very filmic experience. Look at Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (easily one of my favourite films ever), or Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, or William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, or Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Even within those four exceptional films, there’s massive differences (in a way that Western, as a genre, rarely differs in its “best of” film collection). In Psycho and The Shining, the killers are both disturbingly human; in 28 Days Later and The Exorcist, they’re almost parodies of the human form (though you could argue that all four films, on some level, involve the killers being “possessed” on some level; Norman Bates by his mum, Jack-Nicholson’s-character by inner demons and the past, and of course the devil and animalistic rage for The Exorcist and 28 Days Later respectively). And even though the notion of “being stuck in a claustrophobic environment, unable to escape, from someone who wants to kill you” (what Doctor Who fans would call “base under siege”) is a factor of all four films, they are in entirely different ways. In The Exorcist, despite the opening section set on the other side of the world, the entire level of evil is reduced to one room and that’s it (which is why it’s brilliant). On the other end of the spectrum we have 28 Days Later, which is far more epic and takes on the whole of London. Regan’s bedroom is as important to The Exorcist as those “Cillian Murphy wandering around London with Godspeed You! Black Emperor playing” scenes are to 28 Days Later. In the case of both The Shining and Psycho, the building itself is both the captor and the breaking point for the villains, as it screws with their minds; yet, purely because of the weather and vastness of the house (which is intrinsically boring and therefore maddening and insane), The Shining is (probably rightly) called “the first epic horror film”, whereas Psycho, whilst technically operating on a larger canvas of locations, relies on a very secluded and small place for its horror (and that’s not a criticism of the film, either, or saying that The Shining is better, just that they’re different. And besides, I actually prefer Psycho).

And again, in all of the films, the scares (for me at least) come in different ways. The scares in The Shining tend to come not just from the main character, but the creepy and disturbing images that are thrown around the film; blood from the elevator, the creepy twins, the old woman in the bath, things like that. And, of course, how bloody boring the place is is a big creepiness factor too, which starts out in the tennis ball throwing and becomes obviously maddening in the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” scene. In Psycho... well, the funny thing about Psycho is that its most famous scene is completely thrown in peoples’ faces for the wrong reason. Out of context, it’s just an effective death scene. But what makes it brilliant is the lack of tension beforehand – it just comes out of nowhere – and even more brilliant, the practically-five minutes after of Norman Bates clearing up the crime, wordlessly, with an expression of pure shock and horror on his face turning into resolve and determination to clean up after his mother. In that sense, although both The Shining and Psycho are about the destructive insanity in a man’s mind, The Shining is often scarier for the images it throws up at us, whilst Psycho is scarier because of the way it sneakily delves into the killer’s mind. In one, we get to see the degradation and decaying of a man’s mind, in the other, it’s decayed and degraded from the start.

In The Exorcist, there’s not really any scares as such; the creepiness purely comes from the startlingly disturbing things that the devil is making Regan do. The thing is, it’s often frequently hilarious; the image of a young girl flashing her genitals and yelling “fuck me!” in a gravelly voice is so unexpected and absurd that it’s funny. But step back and think about it for a second, and suddenly it’s obvious how disturbing that is as well. So The Exorcist operates on a level of its subject matter being both absurd and horribly real, which makes it both hilarious and utterly horrible and creepy. And finally, 28 Days Later has two entirely different levels of scares that operate on the same theme – rage in mankind. The most obvious is the Infected, the very-fast zombies that attack people with vigour and savagery. And yet, the most disturbing thing in the film isn’t the Infected, it’s the soldiers who are brought in to fight them, and the moment when Christopher Eccleston’s character says “I promised them women” immediately throws the film on a completely different angle and demands an ending that’s nothing like what we were expecting; something more, dare I say it, adult and nasty.

With all that in mind, then, horror, as a genre, is capable of utmost brilliance and insane, euphoric artistry. And I haven’t even seen Rosemary’s Baby yet. And I firmly believe this.

97. ...and then I go and spoil it all by watching something stupid like...
And then I watched Friday the 13th, and realised why people think horror’s shit.

This is one of the seminal horror films? This? It’s crap! Utterly, shockingly, boringly crap!

My experience with this movie began when I read the blurb. Expecting just some praise and things like that, I was shocked to read what must surely be the worst blurb ever written. I’ll quote it here:

‘Camp Crystal Lake is reopening. Eager young counsellors, eyes shining with idealism and hormones racing through their veins, are ready to lead guests in summer Kumbayas and games. But there’s one game you won’t find in the camp’s guidebook. Someone likes to play Kill the Counselor.

Every movie fan knows that the monster always returns, and no film series (9 sequels – and perhaps more to come) proves that better than the one that debuted with this shocker. He lives, they die. The he is Jason (who gets a big assist in his first movie from dear old Mom). And they are the young hotties (including Kevin Bacon) doomed to discover Friday the 13th is the unluckiest day of all. But not for horror fans.’

That’s a shockingly insane blurb to have. It takes pride in the fact that it’s an ongoing series and doesn’t just discuss this film on its terms, but on that of its sequels. It spoils who the killer is! What the hell?!

It also kicks off, with some of the things it says, some of the issues I had with this film. The first is the title. What does Friday the 13th actually have to do with it? It’s Jason’s birthday. So? There’s no thematic depth to it; it’s just a coincidence that he was born on that day. So basically, the director is drawing on a powerful old superstition that has its roots in Paganism and the Last Supper and a multitude of religious imagery, and has made it... the dead boy’s birthday. Uh, yeah. Happy birthday, and all that, but... what?! Besides which, wouldn’t the camp owner actually realise that it was the drowned kid’s birthday and, uh, not open on his camp on that precise day? Talk about coincidences. It’s ridiculous.

The second is the “they are the young hotties” bit. The film revels in that, its sexuality, and yet... there’s no need for it. I’m not saying that sex in films bothers me, but I do feel that something more interesting could have been done. Grace Kelly may have been good-looking in Psycho, but that was an integral part of why she died; Mrs Bates hated the notion of Norman finding an attractive woman that he could abandon her for (or at least, he thought so). In The Exorcist, the devil’s host being a young, sweet, but spoilt, American girl is integral to the disturbing element of it. In 28 Days Later, two characters are female because it links into the plot. In The Shining, they’re a deliberately normal and not-even-that-attractive family (no offence meant, mind you). But in Friday the 13th they’re just attractive... for the hell of it. There’s no need. Even in Scream, the main characters are attractive because that’s what the genre dictates. It’s postmodern, it’s smug, it’s annoying... yet at least it has a purpose. Friday the 13th has none.

Then there’s the dialogue. One of the things I hated about the tension-building scenes in this film was the victims’ reaction to it, which was, “Alright, joke’s over, guys.” Everyone knows this cliche, and bugger me, it pisses me off. Oh, it probably seems fairly realistic... but on the other hand, would you really assume that someone was playing a practical joke on you in a situation like that? And is there any evidence that the other people at the camp enjoy playing practical jokes like that? Well, no, there’s isn’t. The scene where Ned pretends to drown just to get a snog is hardly the same as turning off all of the lights in a storm and creeping someone out; the former is based on pretending you’re dead, and the latter is based on a sadistic desire to scare the shit out of someone. That’s achingly different. No, the most we see them play is Strip Monopoly. Which, by the way, is supremely irritating and just throws around more staged sexiness for the hell of it.

Funny thing is, though, Scream actually managed to do the whole “joke’s over guys” thing without it feeling annoying, because we’d actually seen, many scenes earlier, that people at the school did make jokes out of it. Say what you want about Scream’s annoying postmodernism – and trust me, I do – but it actually managed to be worth the time and effort and wasn’t simply a parody of horror films as a whole. Because in those moments where Scream was genuinely interesting – the “no motive” scene – or genuinely surprising – the revelation of who’s the killer – or genuinely clever – the “behind you!” time delay scene – or genuinely scary – the entire opening scene – it managed a level of quality that Friday the 13th didn’t reach, for any of its hour-and-a-half length.

And the plot... gaaaahhh. It’s a “knock them off one by one” plot, and that manifests itself by having them all split up for various reasons on the one night and get picked off one by one. The irritating thing is, we know it’s going to happen, so all of the tension the film tries for is utterly pointless. I don’t mind an attempt at tension before a death scene even when you know the victim’s going to die – it’s akin to knowing the punchline to a gag and smiling when it comes. But that has to be a one-off, or at most two-off, occurrence. Not every single bloody death. I wasn’t surprised by any of the deaths. God, it was horrible. And the end? Basically, the killer starts being monumentally crap for no real reason, and the victim-who’s-left manages to evade her three times for no real reason before having to kill her. Oh, there’s a surprise. That’s at least ten utterly pointless run-around minutes there.

Many times in the film, I was unsure of how dumb it really was; by which I mean, I expected that it was going to do something clever or make a joke out of something, but it was never the case. For instance, in the opening scene, the fat guy who gives a new, attractive female counsellor a lift in his car asks her “are all the counsellors going to be as attractive as you?” and helps her into his car by pushing her up by the arse, and then continually looks at her in the car. I was expecting some sort of attempted rape, which would have made things interesting. Er... no. As it happens, he’s only there to warn her that the camp is dangerous and that she’s doomed. That’s it. I couldn’t believe how inept that is. But even that’s not as laughably inept as the actually prophesiser of doom, the local crazy. In his second (and final) scene, he says they’re doomed to die about six times (after they’ve already been told that they’ll die another six times) and then rides off on his bicycle, grinning like a loon. Now, that sounds funny, the way I’ve described it, and it’s certainly very funny on screen. The problem is, it’s not supposed to be funny. This isn’t a piss-take scene; he’s just mad. We’re supposed to take this bit seriously, as a certified “oh no, they’re doomed!” scene. I wondered whether it was supposed to be comedy, but the fact that all of the kids laugh at the policeman on the motorbike (for no reason that I can see) but don’t laugh at the crazy old man on a bicycle seems to point that it’s not a comedy. Come on, teens would laugh at that. And yet, by refusing to laugh at it, the movie makes itself even sillier than it is.

Oh, and the second scene of someone driving that young counsellor is directed from the killers’ viewpoint, and is very similar to a scene at the start of Lust for a Vampire. And considering that Lust for a Vampire is horribly inept and dodgy, that’s pretty bad. But ironically, Lust for a Vampire is also enjoyable, in spite of or perhaps because of its dodginess. Friday the 13th isn’t.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s some adequate stuff in here. Despite my aversion to their pointless hotness, the cast aren’t horribly bad or anything; any moments of inept acting come from the way that the scene’s directed (such as the girl in the shower who gets an axe in the head; her screaming expression is horrendously poor). And Kevin Bacon reminds me of Adam Burgess. And there’s two pretty good moments of direction in it; I liked the cutting between the mother talking to her son and the son drowning. But really, that’s a simple scene; that’s something that even a horribly inept Doctor Who director could do. The only scene that’s really worth seeing, then, is the victim-who’s-left on the boat being attacked by Jason. It’s my view that you should watch this scene alone, and then maybe move onto the second. You won’t miss anything continuity-wise, I’ll warrant, and you’ll have a better view of the first so that you can then say “oh, the sequels are pointless ‘get on the bandwagon’ drivel!”

But the problem with that is simple; the original isn’t any good anyway. It’s just so unbelievably crap. So unbelievably crap that I’m now eager to see Freddy vs. Jason. Why? Because that film’s supposed to be crap. And although it probably is, I’ll probably enjoy watching it for that reason and, knowing that it’s bad, actually find something of merit in there; just as I did with Doom (which is horrible, obviously, but my prior expectations of it made me realise that there was some okay stuff in there. Hang on – the lead character in Doom, wasn’t he the American soldier in 28 Weeks Later? I’ve only just clicked that! Geez!).

Basically, if you can watch a horror film and think, “You know, RL Stine could have easily done this, but way better”, then it’s not worth anything at all. And that’s what I thought with Friday the 13th.

98. Ham-ill Acting
Incidentally, I’ve been listening to Simpsons commentaries again, and on the ‘Mayored to the Mob’ episode, the commentary includes Mark Hamill himself. Listening to him talk, and him being so nice and lovely, and his willingness to lampoon himself and his ability to actually put on other voices (not brilliantly, but hardly shittily), has led to me to scratch under the surface of my “Mark Hamill’s a bad actor” view and try and work out why I think that.

Indeed, here’s an excerpt from a brief “Worst Actors Ever!” (to be said like Comic Book Guy’s “Worst Episode Ever!”) document I wrote many, many years ago:

‘Next in sci-fis we have Mark Hamill. This guy isn’t awful, but he’s pretty damn bad – witness his “NO! IMPOSSIBLE!” acting in The Empire Strikes Back – and while he’s watchable, he certainly could have been recast. Wonder why he never appears on screen anymore...?’

The thing I should clarify is that this is a view I formed many, many years ago, and therefore it’s one of those views that you sort of vaguely hold onto, as if it’s part of your personality, until you really sit down and think about them. And I’ve come to realise, very quickly, that this view was formed back in the days when I was a naive little twat who couldn’t distance “quality of actor” from “project they worked on”. Okay, that’s not entirely fair; I thought highly of Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford (that old misogynist!). Well, it was probably more that I couldn’t distance “quality of actor” from “character they’re working on”, or more importantly “quality of actor” from “this one performance of theirs”.

99. Uncertainty
So I should throw some of the blame around. Not necessarily at George Lucas, mind you. Okay, it was his fault for envisioning the character in those terms, but actually that’s just something that’s obviously – like my view on Mark Hamill – been integrated into his thinking without him really thinking about it. Because Luke Skywalker is the sort of character that’s based on your standard, wronged, very noble and very righteous and yet very conflicted and nervous hero. Star Wars has been linked very heavily to medieval tales of old, and they’re fair comparisons (in fact, they’re entirely true), but what they often fail to mention is the trappings of the legends that Star Wars builds upon. The reason why those sorts of heroes tend to work when you hear them in old legends is very simple; they’re passed on either through text, or language. Not through acting. And the thing is, it’s very difficult to actually get a handle on that sort of character as an actor – in much the same way as it’s difficult to get a handle on the victim-who’s-left character in bland horror films like Friday the 13th. In both cases, the actors portraying them will unfortunately end up looking far worse than they actually are. Actors often say they like to play evil characters, and that’s quite possibly because, delusions of grandeur aside, evil is in a lot of ways far more believable to play than good. For evil, you can be powerful, dominating, strong. For good, you have to be stumbling, learning, uncertain of yourself. And playing uncertainty is one of the most difficult things to do as an actor, because it can sometimes give off the impression that you yourself are uncertain rather than your character; as if the scene is showcasing not your character unsure of how to operate a lightsaber, but as if the scene is showcasing how you’re unsure of how to move around a set without tape on the floor telling you where to go.

Take a look at the following sci-fi/fantasy films: The Lord of the Rings, Eragon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman Forever. In all of these films, who seems like the worst actor? The growing-up one. Elijah Wood’s Frodo, some-annoying-kid’s Eragon, some-British-kid’s Charlie, Mark Hamill’s Luke, Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry, some-guy’s Robin. I don’t think it’s the actors’ faults at all (even if I dislike greatly the kid out of Eragon, and don’t think too much of the guy who plays Robin); it’s a scripting problem, or rather, a problem that’s inherent in playing a character like that. Adric in Doctor Who comes with the same problems; whilst Matthew Waterhouse can be quite bad in the part at times, his assertion that “the character was hard to play”, whilst being a bit of a convenient excuse, is actually very believable for me. Because as brilliant as his character arc is – coming to a close with ‘Earthshock’ – and as important as he is to the Fifth Doctor’s character arc, it’s far better thinking of Adric as a character than seeing him realised on screen.

And I doubt that any of the above are bad actors, really. Elijah Wood was adequate as Frodo, but the character’s a boring twat anyway; whilst he didn’t need to act as such in Sin City, he certainly showed that he had far more presence than was seen before. Unfortunately he’s since voiced Spyro in the newer Spyro games, thrusting himself into the sort of character that shot down his credibility in the first place. As for Daniel Radcliffe, whilst I do find him very amusing in a laugh-at-him way, that’s based on a variety of injokes and such, and he’s actually quite good. Indeed, it’s lucky for him that the Harry Potter films are a guaranteed series, because had there only been one, I don’t think he would ever have worked in a notable film ever again. As is the case with all three of the main kids (Rupert Grint excepted, but on the other hand he had an easier time because his character’s more intrinsically amusing and caricatured), the elements of realism and genuine humanity – and the darkness – added to their characters over time allowed them to play into that and deliver stronger performances. It’s not just that they’ve grown up, it’s not just that they’re now better actors; it’s that their characters have more drive. As I said, certainty’s far easier to play than uncertainty.

(And even then, even if a villain shows signs of uncertainty, often that’s seen as cracks in villainy; but cracks in heroism are, again, harder to portray)

As it stands, I don’t think I’ve really met anyone (save my cousin Jack) whose favourite character in Star Wars is Luke Skywalker, or Harry Potter (save Daniel Radcliffe-loving squee-girls), or Frodo (save dwarves). In all of these cases, the favourite characters tend to be everyone other than the uncertain hero. Intrinsically, we want good to win, but only because that’s what that sort of story dictates, and we want to see the last great battle between the hero and the villain, not because of the hero, but because of the villain. In fact, at heart, we want to see the villain fall, not the hero succeed. That’s the same outcome, but a different perspective.

So why do films still run with the whole uncertain-heroic hero idea? Really, it should be a big effort in films these days to distance your film from that, to deliberately make your hero as interesting – and, perhaps, as confident – as the villain. That doesn’t mean they have to be dark, just that they have to be resolutely good. Not even in a big-speech-“I do what is right!”-way, but in a calm, collected, casual way. Not arse-kicking, just heroic.

Like the Fifth Doctor in Doctor Who, actually.

So basically, no, I don’t blame Mark Hamill. And technically, I don’t blame George Lucas either. Except... he shouldn’t have made the same mistake twice. The reason why Hayden Christiansen rubs us up even more than Luke is because it’s the same character twice, and it’s the same uncertainty holding back the films. I’ve seen no evidence that Christiansen is any good in anything, mind you, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been rated far lower than he deserves to be.

100. Lucas at Moi! (er, George Lucas this time)
Hmm, I seem to be in a good will about everything (other than Friday the 13th, of course) today. Including, yes, Star Wars.

Right. As my love of Doctor Who probably points to – and I’ve probably made some disparaging comments about Star Wars many times too – I’m not a fan of Star Wars. I think Star Wars fans tend to be nerdy pricks (I mean the diehard ones, mind you), and I also obviously resent the attention thrust at Star Wars sometimes as being the only worthy sci-fi venture there is. The only one, curiously, that you don’t have to be nerdy to enjoy. This astounds me, because such is Star Wars nerd-ism that they even have their own religion, but for some reason Star Wars isn’t seen as intrinsically nerdy as, say, Star Trek, or Doctor Who, or – even more curiously – 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Oh, don’t get me wrong; Star Trek IS about the nerdiest thing on the planet. It’s the definition of what makes the stereotypical “nerd” so damn irritating; as irritating, if not more so, than the stereotypical “jock”. I’m sure Star Trek has its moments of brilliance, or more realistically, competence, but it’s so wound up in its pretensions and overall shoddiness – coupled with a strange desire to only ever be stuck on the one fucking spaceship, doing the same things over and over – that leads me to despise it with absolute passion. I can’t stand the stupid thing.

Doctor Who, nerdy? Yes, there are horrible nerds who are fans of Doctor Who, and yes, they’re often very vocal about their views on the series (which is why I find nerds more irritating than jocks, by the way; jocks never get a chance to irritatingly present their dumb views, presumably because they don’t have the brainpower to do so), but they’re actually a minority. I know that there are millions of people who simply enjoy Doctor Who as a show that they watch, not as something they’re obsessed with. And some Doctor Who fans I’ve found to be the most intelligent and brilliant people on the planet. And better yet, after all that, after all its ingenuity and mainstream appeal, Doctor Who also manages to be funny. Sometimes it’s Hitchhiker’s funny, sometimes it’s warmth funny, and in its worse moments it’s Catherine Tate territory (funny that...)... but the point is that it never takes itself too seriously. It’s fun. It’s a universe that’s by turns depressing, realistic, nasty and violent; and then affirming, caricatured, silly and hilarious.

I’ll get back to 2001 later.

But at heart, that’s the main reason why I’ve always had an aversion to Star Wars; Doctor Who. The very idea that someone could think Doctor Who a nerdy piece of shit and then go on to watch Star Wars and declare it “brilliant” just seems horribly unfair to me. Why can’t they throw their vitriol at something that deserves it, like Star Trek? I remember having a conversation with a girl on MSN (I won’t name her, mind you; and this isn’t a personal attack either, if you’re somehow reading this. Unlikely as that is) who basically made that assumption; I said something about Doctor Who, to which she said “it was shit”, and then I said, “oh, really? Why?” Her response; “I haven’t seen it, it just looks shit.” (Uh...huh...) My response; “No, it’s genuinely good. It’s better than Star Wars or something”, thinking that she wouldn’t like Star Wars. But no, her response was “I like Star Wars.”

Hmm, let me never try and label people ever again; it just leads to me being irritated with all of their staggeringly incompetent and ill-thought out and yet firm and determined views. I’d have nothing against someone saying, “Doctor Who? I don’t know what to think of that, I’ve not seen it.” That’s brilliant, that’s fine. But, “Doctor Who? It’s shit, even though I’ve never seen it”? That’s like me saying “I know for a fact that Jesus was gay”. As Terrance Keenan once said, “You can’t talk the talk if you don’t do the walk” (and yes, he was referring to people reviewing things they’d never seen).

101. Star Cons
So, the problems with Star Wars. There’s quite a few – a lot of them objective criticisms I have, and one purely subjective.

To try and coherently throw them out there, let’s turn to the one film that showcases all of them fairly strongly, the one Star Wars film that’s easily the worst of them. I refer, of course, to Attack of the Clones.

What, The Phantom Menace? That’s the worst? Come off it.

A lot of the problems with Attack of the Clones, ironically enough, tie into its name. By which I mean, the film apes many of the things previous films had done, without any real reason for it. So, Anakin forcing himself on Padme (and yes, that’s basically what he’s doing)? That’s just Han Solo and Princess Leia (and yes, again, that’s basically what he’s doing). Lightsaber battles? Check! Unfortunately, there’s no need for them here. In the first (by which I mean the Original Trilogy) films, the lightsaber battles were deeply important to Luke’s growth and his need to destroy Darth Vader. In The Phantom Menace, it was a plot device that led to Qui-Gon Jinn being killed, and therefore served a purpose. In Revenge of the Sith, the climactic battle between Anakin and Obi Wan (which is curiously far more climactic than the one in A New Hope; evidently, by the latter film, they were just very, very old, and very, very tired) is a character turning point. But in Attack of the Clones, what’s the point of the fights with Count Dooku? None. He survives, for a start, but more importantly, there’s no progression from it, or even to it. It just happens. True, there’s similarly pointless fights in Revenge of the Sith (Dooku again, and also that four-lightsaber wielding guy, who was a tad irritating because of that), but they were hardly the selling point; Obi Wan and Anakin was. In Attack of the Clones, the selling point was Yoda. I don’t know about you, but to me, that just screams tacked on. It’s just there because, you know, that’s what Star Wars films do.

As I said, The Phantom Menace, the worst? Bull. For a start, Darth Maul – undeveloped as he may be – is a far more memorable foe than Count Dooku (who cares if he’s Christopher Lee or not? Darth Maul is still better). Secondly – and I gather this is what actually annoys a lot of fans – there’s the pod racing. For a lot of fans, it’s a pointless regression when all they want is battles. For me, it’s the selling point of the film. It’s showcasing another facet of the universe that George Lucas has created. Sport! In Star Wars! I mean, come on, isn’t that brilliant? Why have yet another big battle when we can have dangerous pod racing? Do people honestly prefer the former?

Then there’s Jar Jar Binks. Take it as read that I hate him too. But many fans think that Attack of the Clones was better purely because it didn’t have Jar Jar Binks in it. Which astounds me, because it’s a remarkably petty and stupid way to rate a film; it’d be like me saying that The Living Daylights is a better film than Casino Royale, purely because I prefer Timothy Dalton. The problem with Jar Jar Binks wasn’t that it was annoying, but that, again, George Lucas was moving with the times without realising the implications of it. Basically, Jar Jar Binks was just the more modern version of C3PO, and I feel you should blame the trends of the time more than Lucas himself (or the film itself) for that. Indeed, we still get films today with pointless characters with that sort of attitude, yet I don’t see them as lambasted as Jar Jar Binks.

My other problem with Attack of the Clones is the visuals, but only because there’s too many of them. I’m someone who views CGI as a necessity when, well, it’s necessary to use imagery to tell the story. But after a while, it gets too much, and there’s one specific example in Attack of the Clones that gets to me. No, it’s not the massively flashy Coruscant scenes (which are great). It’s not Yoda (which looks cool, even if I don’t like his inclusion in the first place). It’s not the armies of clones. It’s not the stormy planet, even. It’s the battle tanks (whatever AT-designation they are. AT-TE?) used in the battle scene at the end. They’re too bright. Too flashy. In The Empire Strikes Back, the models used may have wobbled, but they were convincing to me because they were dirty and grimy. In Attack of the Clones, they look as if they somehow have a protective cleanliness bubble around them all the time. I’m having an image of AT-TE’s obsessively compulsively washing their hands ten times in a row. That’s how clean they are. So, no, I didn’t like that.

So my problem with the Prelude Trilogy of films is that they were too close to the Originals; obviously, after the backlash The Phantom Menace received, George Lucas responded by placing his films more in line with what people remembered. So, bye, Jar Jar Binks! More C3PO and R2D2 instead! Want more lightsaber battles? Here’s plenty! In fact, here’s a guy that wields four! Liked the Han/Leia rape-relationship? Here’s another! Oh, that scene with Luke’s hand being sliced off was great? Well, the same will happen to Anakin then! Want to see Yoda fight? Well here you go!

So no, I’m not a fan. And yes, Star Wars has numerous problems. I haven’t even mentioned the often acting-destroying dialogue yet, including “I have a bad feeling about this”.

And yet...

102. Star Pros
And yet, Star Wars is brilliant.

What Star Wars does – and pale imitations and Star Trek don’t – is paint a universe. It’s a deliberately whacky and strangely alien one, almost at times too much of one, but it’s so vast, and so caricatured, and yet so detailed, that that doesn’t matter. Why does Star Wars have so many videogames based off it? Because there’s a whole universe to explore.

And that comes down to the visuals. Oh, I’m not someone who’s hypnotised by special effects, or CGI for that matter. Indeed, it riled me a bit that 1001 Films describes Star Wars as being great because of the effects: “Star Wars could have turned out silly, especially considering that most people in the mid-1970s expected ‘sci-fi’ to mean wobbly Star Trek sets...” (hang on, since when did Star Trek have wobbly sets anyway? I’ve never even heard that been said before, ever! Wasn’t the whole point that it was Doctor Who with good effects? Not even Doctor Who had wobbly bloody sets, anyway!). It does assert that there was well-chosen locations, mind you, but that’s not enough. It’s everything. It’s the locations, it’s the costumes, it’s the performances. Lucas shows us many different, distinctive planets – and even asteroids with worms in ‘em – and that goes a long way to making it feel like it really is shot in space.

2001, then. Visuals are as important in that as they are here. Indeed, it surprises me that film critics seem to view 2001 as the quintessential intelligent sci-fi film, and Star Wars as the quintessential unplug-your-brain sci-fi film/s. Both rely on visuals to tell their stories and evoke their settings, and the direction is as important in both. 2001 may be more – dare I use the word – artsy, and more thematically deep, but only because it’s ambiguous. Its actual plot, of HAL going insane, is actually – if you step back and look at it – more boring than the plot of Star Wars. It’s just different perspectives. 2001 is ignoring the details, and is instead taking in all of human evolution and time itself with icons and imagery to tell the story. Star Wars is taking on the details, telling a linear story that’s more complex in its own time frame, with icons and imagery to often tell the story. Because although it’s important, obviously, that there’s dialogue in both films, you could easily switch off the dialogue in both and enjoy them equally.

Not the sound, though; you wouldn’t want to miss the music of either. That’s another brilliant thing about Star Wars; its music.

I’ve said many times here that I’m not a fan, but I’ll say it again to emphasise it; and yet, I know a fair whack about the Star Wars universe. I know what an AT-TE is (just), and an AT-ST (an Ewok destroys one), and an AT-AT (just tie up their shoelaces!). I know that Tatooine is the sandy pod-racing place where both Anakin and Luke grew up, and that Hoth is the icy planet where nasty bears live, and that Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star, and that Coruscant is a bustling metropolis, and that Cloud City is, well, built on clouds, and has airborne fish. I know that because of the details of the films, not because I’ve obsessively sat down and studied them. Whereas, whilst 2001 may take in all of human evolution, what does it actually tell us about the periods of humanity? Er, well, nothing. Any theories and discussions that the film throws up are – very deliberately on Kubrick’s part – our own, not those imposed on us by him.

I’m not saying that one or the other is better, just that they’re the standouts of their kind. Indeed, I prefer 2001, easily. But I’m still sticking up for Star Wars here.

Christ, you even see an alien band in Return of the Jedi. That’s completely superfluous to the plot, but god, doesn’t it help construct the universe that the series is set in? And in the same film, that opening bit where many minions of Jabba the Hutt, including good old bounty hunter Boba Fett, fall into that big mouth in the sand... it could have just been that they fell to their death, but the mouth adds something. It’s a small thing, but it suddenly fills out the world more. It makes it more alive and more real.

That’s Star Wars’ legacy. And that’s what makes it a filmic experience like no other. Forget the crap fans, forget the crap dialogue, forget all of its flaws. Just enjoy the bits that really count.