Massage Parlour Murders (1973)

I have a real affection for films whose titles tell you pretty much all you need to know about them. Like Massage Parlour Murders (1973) - girls are being murdered by a client as they work in massage parlours.  That's it, that's what the film is about.  Two police detectives, one of whom frequents said parlours to get away from his wife, investigate.  His partner proceeds to have an affair with another girl from a massage parlour, (the room mate of the first victim).  Their investigation seems pretty perfunctory, mainly involving them intimidating various weirdo clients of New York's massage parlours, who include 'Mr Creepy', a private client of the first victim, played by George Dzunda in his screen debut, (he also has an assistant director credit) and an astrologer played by Brother Theodore.  In the meantime, more murders occur, the cop bonking the room mate gets involved in a car chase when, as he attends some kind of naked love in with his girl friend at a swimming pool, he spots a peeping Tom.  Rushing into the street clad only in a towel, he commandeers a cab to pursue the peeper.  The car chase which ensues is actually pretty well done, with plenty of crashes and squealing tyres.  But it is ultimately meaningless, as the peeping Tom isn't their man.  Which pretty much sums up the film: much of its running length is nothing more than padding between murders.  

But much of this padding is actually what makes the film so fascinating to watch from a contemporary perspective.  Whilst the car chase is peripherally related to the plot, much of the movie's footage seems to be made up of lingering shots of New York's less salubrious districts in all their grimy glory.  And 'grimy' is the word - these streets are filthy and litter strewn. It's a perfect time capsule of the early seventies, which, to my recollection were incredibly grimy.  The big cities at least.  I'm assuming that it was a legacy of decades, centuries even, of fossil fuel use laying down strata of soot on them, combined with cuts in public spending that reduced the number of people employed to clean the streets.  Coming from a provincial town, I always remember the shock of visiting London when a young child - it was all so filthy.  Nowadays, of course, most big cities have been extensively cleaned up and restrictions of fossil fuel use and traffic management ensure that it stays that way.  But thanks to artefacts like Massage Parlour Murders, you can still marvel at our filthy, dirty urban past.  Getting back to the film itself, its gritty, grimy and downright sleazy feel, along with some quite brutal murders, is probably its strongest aspect.  It features a primarily no-name cast who give adequate performances, a spartan script and direction, rough and ready production values and plenty of sex and nudity.  After vast amounts of padding, it rushes to a conclusion, with the lead detective finally figuring out the killer's theme, (it comes to him in church) - he's murdering girls at massage parlours whose names relate to the seven deadly sins - but failing to save the other detective's girlfriend.  The killer turns out to be some random guy, who ends up having hot oil thrown over him by his last prospective victim, then set on fire.  The two cops arrive just in time to fill his blazing body full of lead, (if they hadn't stopped for a beer on the way, they might have taken him alive).  And that's it - eighty two minutes or so of low budget sleaze which, nonetheless, has a few scenes, notably that car chase, which linger in the memory.

Euro Ingratitude

I was going to concoct a satirical piece on how, if they aren't going to let us win it, the UK should pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest.  Much in the manner of Trump's rant about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, so why should he be concerned with peace any more?  But yesterday I came across a piece in the Express which said much the same thing, then went further.  Now, ordinarily, I'd assume that something like that was written ironically, but the Express doesn't do irony, (it's writers can't spell it, let alone understand what it means), so I have to take it at face value.  Anyway, the gist of the piece was that those Europeans are so bloody ungrateful for everything we've done for them - most notably funding Eurovision - that they only give us one bloody point.  The fact that this single point came from Ukraine drove the author to further apoplexy - apparently, after all that aid we've given them, not to mention the fact that we've let so many of them come to live here, without requiring the usual visa requirements, plus the fact that they can claim benefits more easily than British layabouts, you'd think that they'd be more bloody grateful and at least give us ten points.  So, in retaliation we should cut off support to them, not to mention all the other foreign aid we give to people who don't vote for us at Eurovision.  In fact, can't vote for us at Eurovision.  Because we could better spend that money at home helping good British people.

Apart from sounding like the Reform UK manifesto, there is just so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to start.   Bearing in mind that Ukraine is engaged in an existential conflict with Russia (and that those Ukrainians we've so 'generously' allowed to come here are war refugees), the idea that we should abandon them because they wouldn't give is more points at Eurovision is utterly perverse.  Then there's the hoary old chestnut of foreign aid - quite apart from the moral aspects of giving less well off countries assistance, in terms of national self-interest, it represents 'soft power', a way of influencing and winning around the sympathies of potential allies.  You'd think that the US's plummeting standing in the world and inability to get anyone to support them in their foreign adventures, would stand as a dire warning as to the perils of cutting off foreign aid - particularly when the likes of china are standing ready to fill the aid vacuum.  As Trump has shown, flexing your military muscles in trying to intimidate smaller nations is no substitute for the influence that the soft power of aid gives you, (at a far lower price, also).  As for the idea that any money saved might be used to help the 'deserving poor' of Britain, well, we all know that, in reality, it would simply finance tax breaks for the wealthy, or be paid out to private companies via dodgy 'outsourcing' contracts for public services.

Now, I could say that I think that the sort of people who write this drivel should be sent to re-education camps in an attempt to drill some kind of basic education into them, accompanied by being forced to work on community projects in deprived areas, (wearing day glo orange jackets with 'Moron' or 'Ignorant Bastard' printed on the back).  But if I were to do that I'd have all those right-wing bastards, (the very same people who think that working class 'young offenders' should be put in the army, that asylum seekers should be confined in concentration camps, or that people should be made to 'work' for their benefits by being put into slave-like indentures to filthy rich companies who could easily pay them proper wages), screaming about how I'm a typical lefty git who just wants to suppress free speech and who is showing their true colours as a supporter of Soviet-style brainwashing and gulags for dissidents etc. So, instead, I'll just confine myself to observing that maybe, just maybe, the reason why nobody votes for us at Eurovision is because we keep entering unrelentingly shit acts.  Just a thought.

Human Slop

So, first of all it was to pay for his security, now it is a 'reward' for campaigning for Brexit.  Come on Nige, just tell us, once and for all, what was it really for?  I refer, of course, to that five million quid that was surreptitiously slipped to Nigel Farage in used fivers inside a crumpled brown envelope, in a deserted multi-storey car park at midnight, by some shady non-dom tech billionaire.  But at least we've established that it didn't pay for that house he bought in 2024 - that was apparently paid for with his fee from appearing in that reality TV show.  Mind you, we still haven't had any explanation as to how his girlfriend - that French fascist bird - was able to pay for that other house in Clacton-on-Sea, despite apparently not having any funds.  Obviously, the fact that she is being investigated by the EU over fraud allegations has nothing to do with it.  Just sayin'.  (As the fascist kiddies like to say on social media every time they post yet more defamatory misinformation).  But hey, Nigel Farage and his dodgy financial dealings aren't what I want to talk about today.  I actually want to talk about 'slop'.  Because, you know, I hear a lot of whining about 'AI slop', particularly on social media, amongst the would-be artistic types who use the alleged prevalence of AI generated content for their own lack of success, but the reality is that, particularly on You Tube, I encounter a lot of non-AI, human generated slop.  Some of it actually quite sinister.  You know the sort of stuff I mean: those videos, framed as nostalgia, going on about how much better Britain was way-back-when and how we need to get back to those good old fashioned conservative values.  The right-wing propaganda undertones should be obvious to a blind, deaf and dumb person it is so blatant.

Because this 'golden age' they all hark back to is inevitably portrayed as some soft-focus vision of a middle England predominantly populated by nice, middle class, people.  It's a world where the working classes know their place and immigrants are rightfully grateful for the opportunities afforded them by being generously allowed to tread foot on our hallowed shores.  It's all utter bollocks, of course.  But it's a pretty standard right-wing tactic - the creation of a fake past that has supposedly been corrupted by socialism, the welfare state, immigrants, single mothers or whatever, despite the fact that it never existed.  They juxtapose it with an equally distorted version of current reality - that civilisation is on the brink of collapse and that we're all going to be murdered in our beds by foreign criminal, out-of-control juvenile delinquents, militant drag queens or mad Islamic fundamentalist bastards.  Again, all utter bollocks.  I've heard all before over the past few decades - the tune remains the same, only the musicians and the medium of delivery change.  Anyway, what set me off on this particular journey of ranting was one of these videos which popped up my You Tube homepage, promising to tell me why people were so much happier in the 1970s.  Now, I lived through the seventies, it was the decade I grew up in  and I can assure you that people were no happier then than they are now.  In fact, I recall much of the seventies being utterly miserable, characterised by lengthy industrial disputes which resulted in power cuts, refuse not being collected, transport grinding to a halt and so on.  On top of that, OPEC ensured that oil prices soared, resulting in fuel rationing.  Inflation was rampant, unemployment rising.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, some things never change, do they?

But let's humour these bozos and pretend that people were happier then - why might that have been?  Well, maybe it was down to the fact that, despite all the problems and industrial disputes, we still had extensive and functioning public services.  Perhaps it was because, back then, if you had the misfortune to have to claim benefits, you weren't treated like a criminal.  Then again, maybe it was because we still had the prospect of full employment, although Thatcher, when she arrived in 1979, put paid to that. Our utilities and key industries hadn't been sold off to offshore investors who took their profits away from the UK - something else Thatcher put paid to.  But I can guarantee that the video in question didn't say any of those things, (I can't say for sure, because I didn't bother watching it, but I'm pretty damned confident based upon past experience), instead it no doubt harped on about some mythical golden age of 'community values' and low crime, ('you could go out and leave your doors unlocked' - I never knew anyone do this, if they did, it was only because they were so poor they had nothing worth stealing).  Doubtless, this all ended because of immigration, too much liberalism, the end of corporal punishment in schools, etc.  Ignoring the reality that any 'community values' were based around the post-war settlement and the creation of the welfare state - something that the sort of politicians those who make these videos destroyed.  If people are nostalgic for the seventies it was because, thanks to Keynsian economics and the welfare state, living standards had improved and people across society were, in general, better off than they had ever been before.  So, yeah, to get back to the point - human, or rather quasi-fascist, generated slop.

Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973)

A monster movie from Frederic Hobbs, the eccentric and enigmatic artist and sometime film director, Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) is as unorthodox as one might expect from the man who also brought us Alabama's Ghost (1973).  The film ostensibly follows the pattern of a typical fifties or sixties low-budget monster B-movie, with a local farmer discovering a mutated sheep embryo, which his scientist friend takes back to his lab, believing that it might have been caused by the phosphorous vapours given off by a local mine, which itself is associated with stories of a legendary monster.  Of course, after incubation in the lab, the embryo grows into a ten foot tall bipedal sheep monster, which eventually goes on a rampage.  But all of this is really secondary to the wider story it is embedded in, which involves the local town, which is effectively owned by its mayor, who wants to develop into an 'Old West' tourist attraction, which in turn involves barring the 'wrong types', (ie non-whites) from the town's facilities.  In the midst of the town's western-themed festival, a black, East Coast representative of a wealthy financier, approaches the mayor with a view to buying local land for a mining development.  The mayor's opposition to this schemes seems to have as much to do with the representative's race as it does his desire to historically preserve the town.  In order to foil the financier's scheme, the mayor, whilst inviting the representative to stay for the festival, sets his henchmen to work harassing him, eventually framing him for killing a dog (!), which nearly leads to him being lynched by an angry mob.  He is subsequently framed for wounding the chief henchman and held in jail, but escapes and is hunted down by an armed posse, seeking sanctuary at the scientist's lab.  The mob descends on the lab, resulting in the monster getting free.

In a final twist, the monster is captured by the mayor, who plans to exploit it as 'The Eighth Wonder of the World', in part to distract the townsfolk that he has done his own deal to sell their land claims.  A riot ensues, culminating in the monster in its cage being pushed over a cliff and perishing when the truck carrying the cage explodes.  The financier's representative flees under cover of the mayhem, while it seems that more mutated sheep are being born.  As to be expected from a film by Frederic Hobbs, Godmonster of Indian Flats is full of bizarre touches and scenes, the whole business with the dog for instance, which hasn't really been shot, it is just very good at playing dead, is spirited away after a funeral, to live with the mayor's nephew.  The monster itself is a truly shambolic creation, staggering around the countryside and looking decidedly non-menacing, with most of the destruction inadvertently caused by frightened would-be victims.  But, as indicated earlier, the whole monster business is really a sub-plot, with Hobbs seemingly more interested in exploring the issue of small town racism, which itself is the result of a community attempting to recreate and preserve a past that never really existed.  In this case, that past is the traditional 'Old West' derived from the imagery of films and dime novels, which all conveniently ignored the diversity of the historical west.  Whereas in the real west, black and Mexican cowboys were relatively commonplace, here they are perceived as representing a threat to the carefully constructed 'Old West' facade created by the mayor.  (The film opens with the farmer, who is of Hispanic heritage, being harassed by the police and thrown out of town).  

Like Alabama's Ghost, Godmonster of Indian Flats was clearly made on a very restricted budget, with a cast composed largely of unknowns, yet still looks surprisingly good, with some decent performances from the cast.  The Nevada locations are deployed to great effect, juxtaposing the 'Old West' theme of the town and the landscape which is largely unchanged since those times, with the encroachment of modernity, in the form of the laboratory, a scrap yard and dump that dominates the outskirts of the town.  The set-pieces are all surprisingly well staged and photographed by Hobbs, in spite of obviously limited resources.  The black business representative is played by Hobbs favourite Christopher Brooks - Alabama himself from Alabama's Ghost - whilst Russ Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster plays the mayor.  Perhaps the most recognisable face in the cast is Robert Hirschfield as the slovenly sheriff, who would later become a regular in Hill Street Blues, playing Leo, the admin officer.  Like Hobbs' other work, Godmonster of Indian Flats is agreeably off beat and eccentric in its approach, deploying familiar genre tropes to explore more complex social issues.  Not really a monster movie in the traditional sense, but still hugely entertaining.

Triang Converter Wagon

 Meanwhile, back on the model railway - a recent acquisition: a Triang-Hornby converter wagon.

These were introduced when Lines Brothers, owners of Triang Railways, bought out Meccano and its Hornby Dublo system, (thereby creating Triang-Hornby), in order to allow the rolling stock of both systems to be run together, despite their incompatible couplings.  In the above photo, the green CCT on the left, fitted with Triang couplings, is coupled to the Triang coupler end of the converter wagon, while the cattle wagon on the left, fitted with Dublo couplings (despite, perversely, being a Triang-Hornby wagon), is coupled to the Dublo coupler end.

A view of the converter wagon from above shows its coupling arrangement more clearly:

 

Anyway, I purchased the converter wagon so as to allow the locos I have with Dublo anf Trix couplings, (Trix used a version of the Dublo coupling, slightly smaller and more compact), to haul the majority of my goods stock, which have the Triang style of couplings.  It is much easier than changing the couplings on the locos, which are riveted on and would have to be drilled out.  I already have several rakes of Trix coaches, some with Triang, others with Trix couplers at one end, so now my Trix and Dublo locos can operate both goods and passenger traffic.  

Here's a brief (and not very good) video of my Trix Standard Class 5 hauling a freight train consisting of wagons with both types of coupling.  The first wagon has Trix couplings, the second has Dublo couplings, with the converter wagon running third to connect to the rest of the stock, which all have Triang couplings.  (As ever, as soon as the video started recording, everything went wrong, with derailments and stallings galore, so the video had to be pieced together from multiple takes). 

I'm now looking at creating a couple more converter wagons from some cheap old Trix wagons I've picked up the local toy and train fair.  One has been fitted with very wonky Triang couplings, one of which will be replaced with a spare Trix coupling I have, while the other wagon is missing a coupler at one end, so will receive the Triang coupler removed from the first one.

Today's tribulations while filming the video have convinced me that when I finally expand the layout, I'm going to have to rip up and re-lay the existing trackwork on the parts that I'd hoped I could retain.  There's always something, isn't there? 

It's the Narrative...

It feels like it is becoming increasingly difficult to disentangle what's really happening in the world from the narratives being propelled by the media.  Take this whole circus surrounding the Labour leadership.  I make no claims of having any inside knowledge or insight into the situation, but what is clear is that the media has decided upon a narrative which has only one conclusion: that Keir Starmer either steps down or is forced out.  It is built upon all those opinion polls showing support the government being eclipsed by other parties and the recent unfavourable local election results.  Added to this edifice is the right-wing press's current obsession with the state of the UK's armed forces, (which conveniently ignores the fact that the present situation is the result of fourteen years of swingeing cuts in defence spending by a series of Tory governments that these self same newspapers supported, endorsed and helped sustain in power), the usual nonsense about immigration and the ever present cost of living crisis (also a product of the economic mismanagement of those same previous governments).   The problem with this narrative is that it doesn't necessarily conform to reality - those local election results weren't great, but sitting governments often receive such setbacks mid-term. Plus, they have to be taken with the usual provisos that local results are not necessarily directly translatable into national politics - people frequently vote on different issues locally than they do at national level - and that they actually have no bearing upon how the national government operates.  

In reality, Reform UK's momentum at national level is stalling and the government are beginning to regain some ground.  Moreover, the government has sufficient majority that it doesn't have to go the polls until 2028/29, when the situation could be very different.  Furthermore, it remains to be seen how many Labour MPs actually will be willing to translate their dissatisfaction with Starmer's leadership into concrete action to try and force a leadership contest, bearing in mind how difficult it is to remove a sitting Labour Prime Minister under party rules.  (Notably, all the figures given by various media outlets as to how many Labour MPs who have supposedly called for his resignation is caveated by the fact that these figures are merely based upon MP's having made some sort of public utterance that could be taken as dissatisfaction with the leadership, rather than reflecting actual actions to trigger a leadership challenge).  So it isn't as clear cut as the media would have us believe.  But the media loves a story.  In fact, it demands that real world events neatly arrange themselves into some kind of narrative with a predictable outcome.  But as we all know, real life simply refuses to conform to such artificial forms.  Just look at the way in which the Iran-Us war refuses to adhere to the constructed narrative that the US has tried to impose upon it, with Iran stubbornly refusing to capitulate and give Trump the victory he so craves.  Much the same can be said of the war in Ukraine, which has likewise refused to follow the Russian narrative which culminates in their swift victory.  Of course, these are state driven narratives, not necessarily supported by the media, but all too often, as in the case of the current Labour leadership problems, political narratives are driven by the press, who persist in trying to impose them upon the public, regardless of the actual facts, buoyed up by their feverish speculation.  You don't just see it in politics.  Here in the UK, the press like nothing better than trying to construct narratives concerning outcomes in the premier league and don't like it when clubs refuse to conform to them, by winning matches they aren't 'supposed' to.  

Ultimately, I'm not trying to deny Starmer's problems, or the fact that the local election results are, to say the least, challenging, for the government.  In truth, this government has done itself no favours, missing opportunity after opportunity to actually do something radical to galvanise its electoral base.  Because that's their biggest problem: a failure to deliver on their manifesto promises.  It's no good Starmer announcing yet more policies today in an attempt to shore up his position - he has to start delivering on the policies the government promised in its election pitch.  Just pick a handful of policies which would be popular and are achievable and use that parliamentary majority to push then through, regardless of whether the right-wing press like them or not.  Because that's what will attract voters - the idea of a government that might actually make decisions and do something beneficial to them.  It doesn't matter who the Labour leader is, it matters whether or not they can actually deliver on their promises, regardless of the media's narratives. Which, in spite of what they would have you believe, are not set in stone.

The Displaced Dump

I can't deny that when I saw those tabloid headlines today about the former Prince Andrew being chased around his home by a masked man, I simply assumed that this was another revelation from the Epstein files.  I mean, there seems to be no limit to the sort of kinkiness the Epstein crowd got up to, so male rape fantasies would be no surprise at all.  But no, it turns out that it happened only recently and that the guy in the balaclava has been arrested.  Then we have this business about FBI director Kash Patel forcing staff to take lie detector tests in order to ascertain who it is that keeps leaving those huge floaters in his private toilet.  Apparently, it has been going on for weeks, but Patel finally snapped when the perpetrator left a huge turd in the wash basin.  Of course, staff at FBI headquarters know that it is actually Patel himself who is doing the shitting - but he's too drunk to remember his own unsanitary exploits.  He's allegedly drinking a whole case of his own brand vodka - the one which carries the FBI badge on its labels - every day.  So, he's wandering around the FBI building pointing at random people and bellowing 'It was you, wasn't it?  You keep shitting in my bathroom and not flushing!'  But he becomes ever more frustrated as, every time someone is wired up to the polygraph and asked if they did it, they reply 'I did not shit in the director's bathroom' and pass the test.  The continued denials simply reinforce his obsession with pinning his own toilet crimes on someone else.

It's all reminiscent of when Boris Johnson was PM and kept trying to blame his chronic farting on other cabinet members - usually Michael Gove, who, everyone agrees, looks like the sort who would fart furtively in public.  Johnson even kept up the pretence when he broke wind so violently in a cabinet meeting that he blew a hole in his trousers and followed through - he rushed from the room, stained trousers in tatters, before returning trouserless, with a towel wrapped around his waist, pointing at Rishi Sunak and shouting 'You filthy bastard!  I've told you before to go outside before you do that!'  Much to relief of Gove, who had himself just released a sneaky one cheek lift fart under cover of Johnson's ear-splitting postern blast.  Johnson, though, was knowingly practicing a deception, attempting, as ever, to deflect blame for his own uncivilised behaviour, whereas Kash Patel is seemingly oblivious to his own disgusting misconduct.  But just why is Patel shitting in his own bathroom, not flushing or even sometimes not even using the correct receptacle for his bowel movements?  And why is he apparently oblivious of his own unacceptable behaviour?  Could it be that is a sign of his subconscious self-loathing?  That at some level he is aware of the fact that he is completely unqualified for the office he holds and is seen by others as a drunken incompetent?  So, he literally shits on one of the symbols of his conscious self's success - the private FBI director's bathroom, with its gold fittings?  Just what, one wonders, would his predecessor and founding director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover make of it all?  Hoover, after all, merely dressed in women's clothes and pursued homosexual affair with his assistant while publicly persecuting homosexuals and other alleged 'deviants'.  He never took a shit in his own sink.

Eyes on the Prize

I was reading about that French academic who awarded himself a non-existent international prize for philology.  The truly amazing thing about it was that it took years for anyone to call him out, so accomplished was his deception - he created a whole fake institute, (which, in reality, was nothing more than a website), to nominate himself (and other candidates), then award him the prize.  He even had a fake physical trophy created to award to himself.  It was amazingly elaborate and amazingly successful.  For a few years, at least.  Anyway, as I was reading about this guy, I couldn't help but think to myself that this was the sort of thing that I might do.  In fact, I sort of have done it in the past.  Way back when, there all manner of utterly spurious online 'awards' for websites going around, including some for satire sites.  Now, I have utter contempt for awards of any kind, (not just because I never win any, but on a matter of principle - they are setting up false competition between entirely unalike entities on the basis of highly dubious criteria), so I never entered The Sleaze for any of them.  The fact that many of them required a fee just for entry was a big clue as to their spurious nature, (plus, I'm a notorious skinflint).  Yet others seemed to be setting great store in these awards and were happily trumpeting how their site had 'won' one or other of them.  Which pissed me off no end.  So, I invented my own 'Sleaze Satire Awards', which, naturally, went to The Sleaze.  Now, there was never any physical trophy, (as already note, I'm a notorious skinflint, so spending money on this venture was out of the question), and nobody ever really noticed that I had won my own award (I really couldn't be arsed to publicise it in any way), but it amused me.

Getting back to the French dude, one might argue that he was actually some sort of trendsetter, as fake awards have, nowadays, become fashionable.  After all, what is that FIFA 'peace prize' they awarded to Donald Trump other than an elaborate piece of fakery designed to flatter and assuage a notoriously temperamental head of state whose country is jointly hosting your main international competition?  Will this 'peace prize' ever be awarded again by FIFA?  I somehow doubt it.  Were there other possible candidates to win it?  Again, I somehow doubt it.  Was there a clear set of criteria for candidates to be eligible?  I refer you to my earlier comments.  Who actually decides on who will win it, a panel of worthies, an academy of some sort?  Who knows.  It has absolutely no legitimacy.  Less legitimacy, in fact, than that French academic's fake award - at least he only gave it to himself and claimed that his motivation was merely to bring more attention to his academic discipline.  But it isn't just entirely fake awards that are the problem - nowadays the entire concept of having to earn an award is being undermined.  I mean, Trump seems to think that he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize simply because he feels that, as Obama once won it, it must be his turn.  Sadly, there seem to be plenty of spineless politicians prepared to pander to him on the issue by nominating him.  In the meantime, of course, he's been happy to try and purloin the prize awarded to that Venezuelan opposition leader - who has had a hard lesson in Trump's fickleness, with him effectively abandoning her in the wake of the US's illegal kidnapping of Maduro, favouring his deputy as new Venezuelan leader instead.  So now she has given away her prize and is still no closer to toppling the current regime in her own country.  Which all goes to reinforce my belief that all these awards are utterly pointless and of questionable value.

Local Election Madness

I can see that it's going to be one of 'those' weeks.  Much as I enjoy bank holidays. (although, as noted elsewhere, they are technically meaningless to me, as I'm no longer part of the regular workforce, so can take off any day I damn well please), they are disruptive to my normal schedules.  As, per most bank holidays, I spent Monday mainly on the sofa watching old films and eating peanuts, my normal Monday activities had to be deferred until today, making today feel like a Monday.  It won't get any better as the week goes on - with local elections on Thursday, my routines will be disrupted again, as I'll have to find time to vote.  But the elections will cause wider disruption - the BBC, along with most of the rest of the media, have decided that, this year, the local elections will be VERY IMPORTANT.  Which means that on Friday, most of BBC1's viewing time is to be given over to various so called 'experts' poring over the results as they trickle in and telling us how, if these voting patterns were repeated in a general election, would lead to Nigel Farage being PM.  The problem with all such analyses being that voting patterns at local level aren't necessarily indicative of voting intentions nationally.  Particularly when it is highly unlikely that there will be a general election before 2028/29.  Moreover, turnout at local elections is, traditionally, far lower than at general elections.  Not to forget, also, that not the entire country votes in local elections, meaning that results can't be perfectly be mapped to possible national trends.  

Of course, having said all that, we might actually have a high turnout this year, just to prove me (partially) wrong.  While, obviously, I hope that the expectations for these elections of the media are frustrated, not just because I'd like to see their attempts to propel Farage into Number Ten suffer a setback, but also because I'd like to see their overblown coverage fall flat on its face.  But even if this doesn't happen, I still expect the reaction of the viewing public to be 'where the fuck is today's edition of 'Bridge of Lies'?', or 'why the fuck was 'Pointless' on BBC2?  I bloody missed it because its BBC1 slot was full of boring bastards talking shit about politics!'.  The BBC even seem deluded enough to believe that primetime audiences will share their local election obsession, scheduling an edition of 'Question Time' - ignorant berks asking ignorant questions of a bunch of third string politicians - in the evening.  Even 'Have I got News For You' gets shunted to BBC2 - although not because of the local elections, but instead because the Beeb think that a Friday evening, after hour upon hour of local election bollocks which will have driven off most of the audience - is the right time to schedule a celebration of David Attenborough's hundredth birthday.  Madness, sheer madness!  Not to mention a severe disruption to my regular routines, (although, to be honest, I don't actually watch much of BBC1's Friday evening schedule on a regular Friday - but it's the principle that counts).  

The Avengers (1998)

Sometimes - and usually against my better judgement - I revisit a movie that, when I first saw it, I thought was an irredeemable mess.  So, I recently sat down and rewatched, for probably the first time in twenty-plus years, The Avengers (1998), the largely forgotten and largely unlamented attempt to reboot the classic sixties TV series for the big screen. One of the reasons that the film has been largely forgotten is that, for decades, with Warner Brothers not releasing it in any form for home viewing for years and only a brief TV screening (on UK TV, at least), it simply vanished from sight.  Recently, however, The Avengers resurfaced for a couple of showings on ITV4.  Well, it hasn't improved with age.  Although, to highlight the positives, a second viewing did allow me the better appreciate the film's production design and cinematography, both of which are excellent.  The production design does its best to replicate something of the feel of the original, with its exterior shots of largely empty streets rendering the London background almost abstract and lots of sixties British motor cars, giving it all a timeless feeling.  Even the high tech hardware used by the villains to control the weather has a somewhat anachronistic, sixties, feel about it.  Arguably, though, this attempt to recreate the visuals of the TV series is also one of the film's problems, effectively denying it an identity of its own, instead giving it the feel of an embalmed relic.  

The film's real problems, though, lies elsewhere, namely with the script and the casting.  The former never seems sure of what it is trying to serve the audience - an episode of the TV series or something entirely new - let alone who that audience might be - fans of the original or new viewers to whom the TV show and its characters mean little or nothing.  Hence, it gives us a half-hearted 'origin' story for Steed and Mrs Peel, with the film purporting to chronicle their first meeting (something the TV show skipped over, with one series ending with Cathy Gale as his sidekick, the next opening with Mrs Peel, with no explanation offered as to the change).  Now, as I have ranted on about at length, I find Hollywood's burning need to provide 'origin stories' for well established TV show characters and scenarios the bane of my life - most fundamentally because they represent bad writing.  Audiences should be thrown in at the deep end and background details filtered through things like dialogue as necessary.  So it is with The Avengers, regardless of whether the viewers are established fans or new to the story, this 'origin story' is completely superfluous, slowing down the story and altering the dynamic of the Steed/Emma Peel relationship, which was central to a large part of the series' run.  The script also feels very shaky on what tone it should be aiming for, seemingly unsure as to whether it should play it for laughs, as some kind of parody, or present a more straightforward action orientated adventure.  The lightness of touch that the TV series had evolved by the time that Diana Rig joined the cast as Mrs Peel is entirely absent.

But, when all is said and done, the script could have been brilliant, but the final film, as presented for distribution, wouldn't have reflected it.  The Avengers suffered savage pre-release editing from the studio, cutting it down to just under ninety minutes from a reported director's cut of one hundred and fifteen minutes.  (Some reports also claim an initial hundred and forty minute cut, making the release version effectively an evisceration).   Consequently, the film, as available, feels completely disjointed, jumping between scenes and characters in a way that is often barely coherent.  Combined with an already confused script renders the film barely watchable as a narrative.  It looks as if most of the movie's middle section is missing, with a lengthy introduction crashing into a frenzied climax, skipping most of the plot and character development that you'd ordinarily expect.  On top of all of this is the problem of the casting.  Ralph Fiennes seems perpetually uncomfortable as John Steed, far too stiff and formal, entirely lacking Patrick MacNee's relaxed charisma.  (To be fair, though, Fiennes is still better casting that Mel Gibson, who previously had long been associated with the role).  Uma Thurman brings her icy beauty to the role of Emma Peel, but little else, again failing to deliver the sort of charismatic and seemingly effortless performance provided by Diana Rigg on TV.  Jim Broadbent fares better as 'Mother', capturing Patrick Newell's performance from the series,  Sean Connery seems to be having fun as the main villain, relishing his various Roger Moore-style double entendres and bringing some much needed flamboyance to proceedings although, overall, he feels underused.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with The Avengers is that it all too often feels like it is somebody who isn't that familiar with the original idea of what series was about.  It takes various ideas, characters and tropes from the TV show and rather randomly tries to mix and match them in the hope of creating some kind of rough facsimile.  In which respect it reminded rather of that equally unsuccessful recent movie version of Fantasy Island, which similarly plucked ideas and characters from the entire run of the TV series and tried to assemble them into an entirely unnecessary 'origin story'.  So, while a second viewing of The Avengers didn't make me re-evaluate the film and change my initial impressions of it, it did leave me feeling frustrated at what a missed opportunity it was.  With a better script and casting, it might have been a halfway decent re-imagining of the TV series for the late nineties, (not to mention becoming the start of a franchise, which was the producers' original plan, but the film's failure at the box office led to the cancellation of these plans).  Still, if you want to know what those fifteen minutes of missing footage contained, the film's novelisation was apparently based on the script used for the hundred and fifteen minuute version.  So, if you can find a copy, reading it might well make for a more satisfying experience than watching the film, as released by Warner Brothers.