Wednesday 28 September 2011

'The Ring' (here and now)


(above: 'ohmygawd! can you like believe like this is the only spot in like my room where I like get decent like WiFi signal? I feel like I'm dying... like socially speaking. LMAO')


Last Friday I went to the pictures to see 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' on the silver screen. I don't care what the reviews and those cynical pricks called critics have said, written or dribbled about this film, but I found this to be one of the most confusing and most subtle of films I've ever seen in my miserable life. I tell you what - if it hadn't been a blatantly mainstream British multimillion production film but a b&w subtitled independent Iranian film, I would have walked out the room shaking my hand in the air in an onanistic manner. Because, ladies and gentlemen, when you enter a busy cinema room with a breathtakingly overpriced toffee popcorn packet in your hands and you have swallowed 40 minutes of adverts and trailers, the thing one least desires is have to think deeply throughout a film.

As you should probably know, I'm a pragmatic person and I do not only identify problems like a smug academic but I also provide solutions to such problems. Today's solution, even though it damages my principles and burns down my heart, has to be imported from the country founded by British expats across the Atlantic Ocean. In case you don't know which country I'm talking about, most likely because you schooled in America, it's precisely America. Who best to teach us how to think less or not to at all than the Americans?

Anyway, the process of dumbing down British cinema consists in copying American films and setting the plot in God's country. Everyone knows that copying is a very healthy activity for any culture - look at the Romans, for instance, they copied out 'Gladiator' and they didn't do that bad... For this reason, I want you to present you with the British adaptation of the American adaptation of the Japanese film 'The Ring'. In case you are not familiar with this feature picture, 'The Ring' is, in a nutshell, a horror film where the main character (Naomi Watts) gets to see a VHS tape at the end of which she receives a phone call where she is informed she is going to die in 7 days and left with the face of a blow-up doll.

A British adaptation would of course be sympathetic with the time and place shared by contemporary Britons, albeit it must be an exportable film. Out of interest, an 'exportable film' is a film that Americans may buy into and understand. Therefore, action should be set either in an aristocratic classist Britain (posh and all the rest) or in the East End of London (Cockneys, apples and pears and various other fruits as well). I'm going to choose a bit of both. I want this film to be directed by Guy Ritchie, so we can have a bit of his 'oi-oi-lads-Guy-woz-ere' trademark - I'm not implying all his films are the same, but they are... nor I am that he is not a Cockney, but he is trying so hard to be one. In terms of the cast, I was thinking of Stephen Fry. I acknowledge he is nowhere near to be a middle-aged blonde woman, but he is Stephen Fry, come on, it'll be funny at the very least.

As in Britain we don't want even hear about Stephen Fry being dead - indeed, not even in fiction, have a look at 'V for Vendetta' for instance - I was planning on slightly modifying the plot. Instead of killer VHS tape, I thought of a face-swapping and then killing VHS tape. I shall explain myself - Stephen Fry receives a call that in 7 days his face will be swapped by Jeremy Kyle's and then, and only then, he shall perish. The reason I'm doing this is because I want the film to be entertaining and enjoyable.

That's it for today. I know there are many other aspects in a film, but I'm a just bloody university student - so I need my daily booze/class B drugs dose to keep on this neurone-killing pace and thinking or writing aren't a full-on substitute to that.

THE WELSH PATIENT says: 'When I proposed to my wife, I gave her a vibrating ring instead of an actual ring. She left me, but she never gave me that ring back'



Monday 19 September 2011

FRANCE rhymes with prance... in a bad way


(above: 'aaargh, merde! ma wife made me anozer baby sandwich for lunch aujourd'hui! it's already ze zird one zis week...')

Dear people who suffer from the terrible illness that is purchasing a 1,000-pound photographic camera and only using the autofocus setting to take pictures of oneself in sepia,
I know it's been long since I last published something in this magnificent piece of online hatred, but as you all may know I was captured by the aliens and I was put a test tube up my rectum, so I've been rather busy trying to expel it off my body - eventually. No, seriously, I will not have internet up until the 30th, so I must go to the library and beg for some online fun as if I was some sort of 3rd world child from Cornwall or something. If you ask me, I'd rather admit what I said first.

As you may have guessed from the title, today I'm going to address my hatred towards the French. Actually, even I myself reckon it's taken too long to cover such topic in this blog. So, bing-bong tink-a-ting let's the xenophobia begin. Though, a little warning before we start - I shall not use the excuse 'I've got plenty of French friends' to make my argument look more legitimate as if I was a far-right commentator talking about homosexuality, because I have as many French friends as this man homosexual friends, nil. Don't get  me wrong, I know some frogs, but they're just not my friends.

The reason today to talk about the French is simply because yesterday I read 'The Sunday Times' quite thoroughly and I'm full of anger towards foreigners taking our jobs and our women. One may say, 'oooh, don't pick up on the French, they invented the cheese... have a go at another foreigners such as the Scots if you have the guts, what have they ever done to us?' Don't worry, I surely will have a go at the Scots soon, but let us focus on the Frogs today, please.

Yes, they invented the cheese and, more recently, the brie baby - so they don't eat actual babies anymore -, but people often forget about other stuff they have done to humankind, viz, smelling of garlic 24/7, having a terrible accent when speaking English or not being introduced to the concept of cublicles in public toilets. It is fair to admit that in the past I have been accused of not having been in France at all. I beg to differ. I once spent an afternoon at an Irish pub in Calais. To be honest, I was quite lost that day, but still counts. I didn't like that very much - it smelt of stale cod and warm beer and the Scouser who was supposed to be the landlord wasn't very friendly at all.

I hear one say, 'but Crispin, will you stop playing on the stereotype? not all French are pure evil'. Firstly, who told you my real name? and secondly, of course them all aren't just pure evil - only the ones who come from Paris are. Nevertheless, something very similar to this will happen every time you ask a non-Parisian French where he or she is from:

- So François, tell me, where are you from?
- I emme fgrom Pagi!
- Oh, where about in Paris?
- Well-eh, fgom a village in a island in the middle of the Pacific ocean which used to be a  Fggrench colony in the 19th Century.

I don't want to judge anybody, but they surrendered in WW2 and they smell of garlic.

THE WELSH PATIENT says: 'It was a rainy day in Montpellier. I was hungry and I spotted a restaurant. I ate a handful of snails. Then, I didn't need to go to the restaurant and pay for food because I wasn't hungry anymore'.