Few terms have become so debased within the lexicon of political discourse than political correctness. Like the term “liberal” in the United States, the term has become almost an insult. Peter Hitchens describes it as “stern, fierce movement which is completely sane and sets out deliberately to stop us from saying – and thinking – various things. It is not a joke.” Newspapers like Hitchens’ own Mail and the Daily Telegraph routinely blame political correctness for everything under the sun. Some even liken it to the tyrannies of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR.
What are these bold claims based upon? Basically, it comes down to this: Fifty years ago it was acceptable to make sexist, racist and homophobic remarks and jokes in public. Now it isn’t. Most people recognise this as a good thing. The Right have never come to terms with it. So the next time you read any…
c) I anticipated your question and have already answered it in question 1.
3.
Imagine the following scenario. You are completing an online survey when
the following question arises. Is this…?:
a)
True.
b)
False.
4.
Which of these fictional characters best characterises your leadership style?
a)
Animal from The Muppet Show.
b)
Flipper the dolphin.
c)
Skeletor from He-Man.
d)
Donald Trump.
5.
Have you ever suffered from déjà vu?
a)
Yes.
b)
No.
c)
For God’s sake…
6.
You have survived a plane crash in the mountains. Everyone else on board has
been killed. In addition to the human cargo, the plane had been transporting a
large consignment of hazelnuts. Unfortunately, you are allergic to hazelnuts.
You are starting to starve. What do you?
a)
Take a chance and eat the nuts. You have an epipen anyway.
b)
Start eating one of your dead colleagues. Hopefully, they won’t have been
eating any nuts recently. If they have, it doesn’t really matter.
c)
Reject the whole question as being in rather poor taste. Although if I found
out the person framing the question had a nut allergy himself, that would make
it okay. Even if he hasn’t been in a plane crash.
7.
Have you ever suffered from déjà vu?
a)
Yes.
b)
No.
c)
For God’s sake…
8. You think
you’re pretty clever don’t you? With your degree and everything. Well, I don’t
think you are. In fact, I reckon I could have you. Do you want to have a fight?
a) Don’t be
absurd man. We can resolve this like adults.
b). Yeah,
alright. Do you want some? Come on then? Outside now.
9. Why do birds
suddenly appear, every time that you’re near?
a) To be
honest, I do always keep lots of bird seed in my pockets. That might be it.
b) I am Tippi
Hedren.
10. Why?
a) Why not?
b) Why what?
c) Because.
d) Because
because because because because because of the wonderful things he does.
11. You have
arranged your perfect dream dinner party featuring a range of guests both
living and dead, real and fictional. However, Trotsky has totally let you down
by forgetting to bring the salad he promised to make for starters. Churchill
seems to have been drinking before he even arrived and is in heated discussion
with Napoleon, even though neither understand can each other as they both speak
different languages. Alexander the Great is chatting to Stephen Fry but looks
bored. Brian Cox the actor is proving much better company than the TV
astronomer who you meant to invite would have been but Penelope Cruz and Uncle
Bulgaria have already left together. Do you like Pepsi more than coke?
a) No.
b) Only if I am
blindfolded first.
c) Aren’t they
both coke anyway?
12. When will I
be famous?
a)
I can’t answer. I can’t answer that.
b)
How old do you think I am? First, Tippi Hedren and now this. What’s the next
question going to be about? Juliet sodding Bravo?
c) I was actually still thinking about Uncle Bulgaria and Penelope Cruz from the last question.
13. You walk down a narrow corridor and come to a cavernous poorly lit room. As you advance forward you see hear a loud snoring sound. As your eyes adjust the sleeping body of a huge malevolent green OGRE homes into view. As you attempt to run away, the ogre’s eyes flick open. It is clearly angry and wants to fight. Do you…?
a) Roll a dice.
Get a 6 and you successfully kill it and thrust a sword into its evil still
beating heart. You get to carry on with the survey.
Get anything less and the ogre bites your head off and you die. Redo the survey endlessly
from question 1 until you can advance beyond this question. Good luck!
b) Pretend to
roll a dice and get a 6. Way hey. You win. That’s what everyone else does. I
bet you don’t know where your dice is anyway. Or die. Whatever.
14. Look at these words. Do they look better…like this? Or like…this?
a) The first
one.
b) The second
one.
c) They are
both about the same.
d) Er…not
sure…could you do it again please?
15. Have you ever attempted to conduct a citizen’s arrest on a serving police officer?
a) Yes.
b) No.
16. Which is scarier?
a) The Laughing
Cow
b) The Jolly
Green Giant.
c) Being sued for copyright infringement
17. You accidentally phone your old telephone number by mistake and inadvertently get through to a ten-year-old version of yourself from the past. What advice do you give to your young self?
a) Don’t bother watching Lost.
b) Buy some shares in mobile phone technology.
c) Don’t believe what people tell you. Father Christmas is real. Your parents are the ones who don’t really exist.
Starring: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, James Corden, Catherine Keener Directed By: John Carney. Running Time: 104 minutes. UK Release Date: November 10, 2014 . Certificate: 15. Your Rating: 4 out of 5
Gretta (Knightley) is young, English and has some talent as a musician. She also has a good comedy sidekick/friend in Steve (James Corden). But her dreams of musical success in New York lie in tatters. After her recent break-up with boyfriend and collaborator Dave (Levine), she is bound for the next flight home.
Dan (Ruffalo), meanwhile, is middle-aged and seems to be on the way down after both a successful producing career and his marriage come to an end. He happens to see Gretta performing at an open mic session on her last night in town. Could this meeting be exactly what these two lost souls need?
Admittedly, this film from Once director John Carney sounds predictable as hell on paper and to some extent, this is true. But Ruffalo is great, making a potentially sleazy character likeable. Knightly can sing and has some nice scenes bonding with Dan’s teenage daughter. There are no real villains here – even Gretta’s ex has redeeming qualities and yes, this is relentlessly feelgood. But it’s not stupid either. So what’s wrong with that?
There is a “making of” featurette and some music videos on the DVD/Blu-ray. Haters of James Corden or Keira Knightley (and, yes, such people do exist) will want to steer clear and the music might repel some. But everyone else should find this an uplifting and rewarding musical treat.
Overall Verdict: The Hulk and Anna Karenina: together at last and unleashed on New York.
Special Features: The Making of Begin Again Featurette, Music Videos
Starring: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aiden Gillen, Dylan Moran, Domhnall Gleeson
Directed By: John Michael McDonagh. Running Time: 100 minutes. UK DVD Release Date: August 11, 2014. Certificate: 15
Your Rating: 5 out of 5
Review: Father James (Gleeson) is a priest. Once driven to alcoholism by the death of his wife, he appears to have found solace in his vocation, living a peaceful existence with his dog in an apparently serene Irish coastal village.
Or at least that would be the case if the villagers ever left him alone. Chris O’Dowd’s local butcher Jack, for example, has serious marital problems, his wife “sharing” him with another man. Then there’s the local millionaire Michael, played by Dylan Moran. Prone to alcoholism and urinating on priceless Holbein portraits, he is just one of the village’s many eccentrics whose grievances range from sexual frustration to an elderly American man (M. Emmett Walsh) who wants Father James to shoot him to death
Things get more personal, however, when the priest’s daughter (Reilly) turns up after a suicide attempt and Father James soon finds himself and his church subject to a series of threats and outright attacks from foes known and unknown.
Initially, it appears we might be in for a tale of whimsy and humour with the populace resembling the eccentric Craggy Islanders of Father Ted. But McDonagh (director of the lighter although similarly excellent The Guard, also starring Gleeson) makes it clear we’re in for a much darker adventure from the very first scene. There is humour here, yes. But all the characters seem deeply troubled, often by unspecified problems in their past. Moran’s Michael clearly has serious problems while some such as the doctor played by Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen seem to be positively evil. Although a genuinely good man himself, Father James soon faces the wrath of a very angry community reflecting an Ireland still scarred by the after-effects of the numerous real-life scandals concerning paedophile priests.
This is a superb film which benefits from all the cast truly giving their all even to the tiniest role.
Overall Verdict:
Another darkly humorous instant classic from the hugely talented John Michael McDonagh.
The Cold War: From the Iron Curtain to the Collapse of Communism. Published by: Carlton Books.
Nothing about the Cold War is simple. When, for example, did it start? Most people would say after the Second World War but a case could be made for saying it started as soon as Russia turned towards Bolshevism (that is, Communism) in 1917. Certainly the West was hostile to the new state from the outset, numerous powers attempting to crush it with a series of military interventions during the post-revolutionary Russian Civil War. But as the USSR was on the Allied side during the war with Hitler, most people view the Cold War as starting in the late 1940s, particularly after the USSR obtained nuclear weapons in 1949. This book does the same.
When did it end then? With the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? (it was in…
Starring: Al Pacino, Annette Bening, Jennifer Garner, Bobby Cannavale, Christopher Plummer
Directed By: Dan Fogelman
Al Pacino plays Danny Collins, a fictional music star whose career seems to have peaked at some point in the Seventies. Although not officially a has-been – he still appears to be very wealthy and is widely recognised by young and old everywhere he goes, Collins is unsatisfied. He hasn’t written a song in thirty years and seems less than enthused about his much younger fiancée (Katarina Cas).
While, as his agent (the ever excellent Christopher Plummer) points out, his problems are extremely minor compared to some people’s, the revelation that Collins was once sent an admiring letter by John Lennon which never got to him, triggers what can only be described as a very late midlife crisis. He begins to reassess his priorities attempting to…
Cast: Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy, Anne-Marie Duff, Paul Giamatti, Kerry Condon, John Sessions
Running time: 107 minutes
Russia: 1910. With the First World War and the Russian Revolution still a few years off, ageing War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy (Plummer) might be expected to be enjoying a peaceful retirement. In fact, torn between the conflicting demands of his strong willed wife Countess Sofya (Mirren) and those of his increasingly zealous Tolstoyan followers, the author’s life is barely less turbulent than the events of one of his great novels.
The Last Station is less about Tolstoy himself than the plethora of characters surrounding him. The most sympathetic is perhaps young Valentin Bulgarov (McAvoy), a brainy but self conscious acolyte of the author. Arriving at the Tolstoy Estate as the author’s new private secretary, Valentin soon finds…
Starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Robert Patrick. Directed By: Grant Heslov
Fox Mulder was right. The truth really was out there, all along. But, as Jon Ronson’s excellent 2004 non-fiction book demonstrated, the reality of what certain elements of the US military and government were up to in the 70s and 80s, was far stranger than anything in The X-Files.
There’s the army general, for example, who became so convinced that he could will his body to pass through solid objects that he actually physically ran into his office wall. He failed to go through it. He just crashed into it.
Then, there are the military operatives who, taking their cue from an earlier science fiction franchise, named themselves “Jedi warriors”. And then there are the men who stare at goats themselves: a crack division who become convinced…
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, John Doman, Mike Vogel, Jen Jones Directed By: Derek Cianfrance Running Time:112 minutes UK Release Date: May 8. 2011 Certificate: 15
Rating: 5 out of 5
Happy families are all alike, Tolstoy famously wrote, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. If this is true, then perhaps unhappy marriages follow a similar pattern. What isn’t in doubt and what becomes apparent very quickly in this is that the young couple, Dean and Cindy, portrayed here by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, are a very unhappy couple indeed.
It also becomes clear very early on is that the narrative sequence of the film has been deliberately jumbled up. Yes, it’s one of those films a bit like Memento or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. We might first witness (for example), a scene of a…
The following review was first published in DVD Monthly magazine in 2005.
Sub-heading suggestions: Reese almighty/High spirits/Spirited away/While she was sleeping.
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jon Heder, Donal Logue, Dina Spybey, Ben Shenkman
Director: Mark Waters
Distributor: DreamWorks Pictures Original Release: 2005
The Lowdown: When ER doctor Elizabeth’s overworked, socially undernourished existence is brought to an abrupt halt by a wayward truck, she soon finds her spiritual form sharing her flat with lonely semi-alcoholic, widower architect David. But is Elizabeth really dead? Why can only David see her? And can stoner bookshop employee Darryl help?
Review: While few men would balk at the prospect of suddenly discovering Reese Witherspoon was their room-mate, Just Like Heaven is a rom-com with a supernatural twist. For as with Brad Pitt at the start of Meet Joe Black, here we’ve barely had a chance to get familiar with the overworked singleton lifestyle of Witherspoon’s medic (a sort of cross between Bridget Jones and the one of the cast of ‘ER’) before she has a close encounter with a runaway lorry and is killed.
However, as with the unfortunate couple in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, the next thing she knows she’s back in her apartment and railing against the intrusion of new resident David.
We’ve been here before, of course. In addition to the films already mentioned, Just Like Heaven draws on everything from (most obviously) Ghost, to the 1930s Topper movies and even has shades of While You Were Sleeping. But happily Just Like Heaven is (just) cute enough to get away with it’s somewhat less than groundbreaking premise.
Partly this is down to Reese Witherspoon. While (as with Sweet Home Alabama) she’s clearly working with less incisive material than in her best work (Election, Pleasantville) she is never less than her usual luminous and quirky onscreen self. As David, Ruffalo is less good, never really proving that he has the aptitude either for physical comedy or for the dour ‘sad Tom Hanks in Sleepless In Seattle’ type romantic lead role the screenplay demands of him, though this isn’t a serious problem.
Indeed, comedic honours probably go to Jon Heder who as semi-psychic alternative bookshop assistant Darryl is good in his first significant if small post-Napoleon Dynamite role, a sort of stoner answer to Whoopi Goldberg’s character in Ghost.
The film has its problems. For one thing, it’s rarely that funny. The early scenes detailing Elizabeth and David’s fractious first encounters wherein both argue vigorously over who is intruding upon whose flat are fine. Elizabeth (who like the ‘dead people’ in The Sixth Sense doesn’t know she’s a ghost) reasons that the drunken David is a vagrant who has wondered in off the streets. But the film gets funnier once David recognises Elizabeth is more than a product of his lonely alcoholic mind and enlists a range of solutions to vanquish her from the flat: namely a New Age guru, some amateurish ‘Ghostbusters’ and a priest who repeatedly intones “The power of Christ compels you!” to no discernible effect.
Some too, might lament that Waters, who did, after all, direct the dark edged Mean Girls in addition to cheerier fare such as Freaky Friday hasn’t produced a blacker film. But darkness and romantic comedy can be uneasy bedfellows and it’s probably to its benefit that Just Like Heaven is good-natured to its core.
Sadly, the extras never really rise above the average. The ‘Making Of’ featurette is the usual promotional fare and is supplemented by a similar and fairly unnecessary ‘Meet the Cast’ featurette (high court judges aside, even before Walk The Line was there anyone out there unfamiliar with Reese Witherspoon?). And despite the slightly surprising revelation that the film is based on a French novel (Marc Levy’s ‘If Only It Were True’), you’ll soon find your attention wandering during the filmmaker’s commentary.
Although in fairness this isn’t really the sort of film that readily lends itself to hours of dissection and analysis. For make no mistake: while this won’t linger long in the memory, Just Like Heaven is against all odds, one of the better romantic comedies of the past year. It’s just that as with ‘Great Films Starring Hilary Duff’ and ‘Intelligent Statements Made By President Bush’ this isn’t exactly an overcrowded field.
Final Verdict It’s not going to change the world but if you do fancy a Friday night date movie, you could do a lot worse.
Many talented comic artists have turned their hand to the challenge of drawing the brutal 22nd century lawman, Judge Dredd. Few, however, have done it with such style and distinction or so often as Ron Smith, who has died at the age of 94.
Ron first took on Judge Dredd in 1979, two years after the strip started, finishing off the epic, The Day The Law Died! in which Mega City One is taken over by the arrogant and insane Chief Judge Cal. Although Ron didn’t create the character, his artwork certainly represented an important stage in the evolution of Judge Dredd, the character and the story. Observers noted approvingly that Ron tended to emphasise the lawman’s physical stature, rather than exaggerating the many features of his futuristic costume as other many artists did.
Ron had some tough acts to follow, producing art for the strip initially at the…
The Cold War: From the Iron Curtain to the Collapse of Communism. Published by: Carlton Books.
Nothing about the Cold War is simple. When, for example, did it start? Most people would say after the Second World War but a case could be made for saying it started as soon as Russia turned towards Bolshevism (that is, Communism) in 1917. Certainly the West was hostile to the new state from the outset, numerous powers attempting to crush it with a series of military interventions during the post-revolutionary Russian Civil War. But as the USSR was on the Allied side during the war with Hitler, most people view the Cold War as starting in the late 1940s, particularly after the USSR obtained nuclear weapons in 1949. This book does the same.
When did it end then? With the news of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? (it was in fact demolished later). With the collapse of the USSR in 1991? Were there, in fact, two Cold Wars, the first ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the second starting with the sharp decline in East-West relations following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979?
Indeed, with China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos still Communist, could a case even be made for saying the Cold War is still on? Certainly, plenty of spying and intrigue still goes on and the world is hardly free of international tension particularly since the succession of President Trump in 2017. US defence spending is now far higher than it ever was during the official Cold War. This is essentially madness.
This thorough nicely illustrated and accessible account wisely restricts itself the key period, however, chronicling events from the botched aftermath of the Second World War, through to the Berlin Airlift, Marshall Plan, Korean War, nuclear confrontation, the space race, Detente and ultimately a largely peaceful resolution, mostly attributable to Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. It is well worth reading.
Few events have provoked a more seismic hostile reaction within the western world than the recent election of Donald Trump. One imagines his presidency will provoke a wealth of satirical novels based around his presidency. Well done then, to Booker Prize winning author Howard Jacobson then, for getting his version in first, less than a hundred days into his presidency. Unfortunately, as with Trump’s own administration thus far, the book can only be viewed as a failure.
This is the story of Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duke of Origen, a spoilt, semi-literate, sex-obsessed, boorish, Twitter-obsessed fathead. Sound familiar?
Exactly. Indeed, this is part of the problem. Fracassus is so obviously meant to be Trump (something Chris Riddell’s excellent cartoons throughout confirm) that any satirical impact is largely blunted.
The “heir presumptive” stuff seems somewhat misplaced too. Trump’s father was a millionaire…
The Year of the Geek: 365 Adventures From The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Universe, by James Clarke. Published by: Aurum Press.
When did it become fashionable to become a geek? Geekiness is, after all, surely after all, by definition a shameful, untrendy preoccupation. Does this mean that anyone who claims to aspire to be a geek is necessarily a pretender to the nerd throne?
Well, no. Some people blame this trend on things like US sitcom Big Bang Theory and the excellent but now defunct British near equivalent The IT Crowd. But, in truth, this tendency which has resulted in websites like Den of Geek and books like this, has always been there. After all, you can’t get Spider-man without meeting Peter Parker first.
This book takes a chronological approach with a different geek anniversary highlighted for every day of the year. This, it must be said, is potentially of some…
Chris Hallam's World View 