If Maslow were alive today, he’d have stolen his Dad’s car and shot himself

As you meander through this self-populating digital zoo we call the web,
from time to time there will be people you meet who seem surprised that you don't believe in either government or money.

This is normal.  You are not likely to be in any danger.  Although, you should remember that this person is still driven by an artificial scarcity that makes them predatory, just in order to survive.  Do not make any sudden movements, and do not 'reach' inside your jacket or handbag without first explaining why you are about to do so. 

Then ask them what they think government is there to do.  Many will say something along the lines of government being there to collect taxes in order to pay for roads and schools and hospitals and defence and stuff like that. 

But why?  Well, so that people can have education, and healthcare, and jobs, and food for the needy if people don't have any of their own.  Something like that?

Well, that's not good news for the government or money-lover.  Sure, there have been brief times in human history when both these inventions were useful.  They may, briefly, have served the needs of all the people in certain communities here and there.  However, the long-term record of neither invention comes close to even achieving those few things I mentioned above.  Sadly, this no truer than today.

So, whether we're using money, or government, or both to try to provide things like schools and hospitals and fire departments and construction, what should they be providing?  What exactly do we want for our money?  And what do we all want regardless of religion, colour, gender, sexual preference, age, whatever?  What should every government endeavour to provide first?

In 1943 this guy called Maslow figured that out.  It's a really simple yet accurate explanation of exactly what we would say to the prime minister or whoever when we were telling them what we need.  Oh, and it works in every country on Earth whether there is a government there or not.

All humans' most basic needs are exactly the same: air, food, drink, shelter, warmth/shade, sex, sleep.  So, given that the latest YOLO trend for teenagers seems to be to steal Dad's car, shoot a bunch of strangers, and then themselves because they're “sexstarved”, how do you think our governments and money are faring at providing for our need for sex?  Strangely, not well it would seem.  This despite years of getting sex, nudity, sexual innuendo, and sometimes just pink shrink-wrapped porn in the form of Miley Cyrus, thrust in their faces via mainstream media.  But maybe that’s the problem.  Unfortunately it doesn’t get any better the older you get either.  Internet dating is suddenly a million-dollar industry, and it’s not just the inflation.

Neither government nor the monetary system seems to fare very well when it comes to food and shelter either.  It’s not that we don’t have enough food, it’s that people don’t have ‘money’ to ‘pay’ for it.  They deserve it just as much as all other humans, and sometimes need it more.  But that doesn’t count.  They just can’t have it.  So a child dies every 15 seconds or so.  It’s not looking too good even for those who do get food.  The human food chain is in the process of being patented by biotech giants to prevent people from being able to grow food without them.  Patents being, of course, a direct result of the monetary system.

And shelter, like food, is also substituted by money in that your degree of shelter depends on how much money you have.  Currently in the USA there are six empty homes for every homeless man, woman, and child.  The 85 richest people on the planet are worth nearly as much as the poorest 50 per cent of the world's population, according to Oxfam.  But it’s not that these people don’t deserve to be able to come indoors when it rains, it’s just that they can’t have it.  Because, via banks and governments, we say so. 

No shelter = no permanent access to shade in the summer, or warmth in the winter.  No point even discussing that. 

How about air?  All humans need air, not to mention a few other species who were here long before we were.  Surely governments and money can’t fuck air up, can they?  Well, a big chunk of Antarctica just broke off, there’s chemtrails in every country, and we rely almost exclusively on an energy source that (a) will be gone by 2100, and (b) pollutes the entire planet however we use it.  So let’s just say the air isn’t great here.  And whatever the corporations are doing to the air for money or control, the governments are enabling.

Given that we haven’t yet managed to meet any of the first six of the seven needs all humans have, how well do you think we’ll be sleeping?  Yup, that’s seven out of seven human needs never once provided to all humans at the same time.  I forget when the first ‘government’ or ‘money’ was, but it’s safe to say both are more than 2,000 years old.  So in two millennia, neither government nor money have been able to provide what all humans need above everything else.

The next level up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is that of human safety needs - protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, freedom from fear.  This is where it starts to get really funny.  Freedom from fear?  Seriously?  The business of governments is fear.  Selling it, peddling it, making wads of cash off the back of it.  When was the last time you heard any of Earth’s governments say, “Oh, by the way, we eradicated poverty and homelessness today, so there’s no need to worry about those anymore”?  Doesn’t ring any bells, does it.  The laws are written by corporations via lobbyists and rubber-stamped by politicians without even being read.  This means the ultimate aim of law is profit. 

There are another three more levels above this before a human being gets to self-actualisation, the comfort of doing what we were here to do.  Doing something you’d do for free because you love it, but get paid anyway.  It’s not surprising most people never get anywhere near it really.  It’s because governments and money make it so difficult to meet just the basic needs.  People rarely get the chance to even think about the rest unless it’s when they’re buying a lottery ticket.

However unlikely, it may actually be possible that even a rich, spoiled brat with zero responsibilities couldn’t get his needs fulfilled.  So ask yourself: what hope is there for you?

And then ask them if they still believe in money and government.

The Life and Times of the Shirtless Back

Human existence these days is more about paying than about anything else.

You drift back into consciousness one morning in a bed that you paid for, in a home that you pay for.  Your alarm clock-radio iPod docking station multimedia centre stirs into life, slowly but surely filling the bedroom with music and chatter, while all the while consuming electricity that you pay for.

Scratching your nuts or your left boob as you trudge into the kitchen, you pay homage to your Neanderthal roots.  Maslow's hierarchy of needs kicks in at stage one as you acknowledge, "I'm hungry".  When you open the fridge, the light that switches on automatically illuminates either a proverbial Santa's grotto of fruit, vegetables, plastic-sealed leftovers, milk, fruit juices, meat and hopefully a beer or two, or if you're like me, a stark clinically-white gaping expanse not unlike a toy store warehouse on Boxing Day.  But regardless of what's in there, you paid for it.  In short, if we had no money then we would already be without two of the most basic tenets of human existence - food, and shelter.

People often visit the bathroom around this time of day.  You sit on a toilet you paid for, wipe your arse with paper you paid for, and flush away whatever delights you've deposited into a sewer system you pay for.  When you shower, unless you're masochistic or catholic, then the water is hot because you pay for it to be heated.  Little water on this planet arrives hot, unless your bathroom happens to be on the side of Mount Etna.  If it is then please stop reading, pack up your stuff, and get the hell out of there.

Of course you need money so you have to go to work.  You pay for the bus, the car, the train, or even the bike that gets you there.  And even when you're there, you have to pay to be there before you've even picked up a pen or touched a post-it note.  What's that you say?  You don't have to pay to work?  Really?  Who feeds you your lunch whilst at work - your employer?  No.  Your employer, instead, enforces an outdated, counter-evolutionary dress code policy that requires you to go out and pay for clothes that you wouldn't ordinarily buy just so that you can feel as though you share a connection with  the other people you work with.  And when you want to go home at the end of the day, you have to pay to do so or get stuck at the office.

But it doesn't end there.

I still write cheques for things from time to time.  And every time I do I have to pay for it.  OK, so it's somewhere under $3 per cheque, but how many cheques does the average person write in a lifetime?  Now multiply that number by the quantity of people on the planet who have a bank account.  Is that thousands of dollars?  Millions?  Billions?  In short, I have to pay to pay.  I have to pay for the privilege of paying someone else for something.

But the truth is even worse than that.

How do I know if I even have enough money to pay someone?  Well, I tend to use online banking.  Amazingly, neither the TD bank nor the CIBC charges me to access my own bank account details via the internet, but just when you think you've managed to escape it you realise you have to pay for that internet access.  When environmentalism started to get trendy just before the end of the 20th century every insidious corporate entity on the planet got on the bandwagon in an attempt to falsely demonstrate that they were environmentally conscious.  Paper bank statements (which you pay for via taxes that pay the postal service) began to be replaced by e-mails with PDF attachments.  But, in an ironic twist, once that service became available, banks began charging those customers who wished to continue to receive a paper bank statement.  So now you have to pay constantly for everything around you, even the most basic needs of a human being.  And then you have to pay for the ability to pay for those things.  And finally, just in order to establish whether or not you have the money to pay for the ability to pay for those things, you have to pay first.

If you go back now and read what I've written from the start, you will realise that you haven't really achieved very much yet but you've been paying for everything already.  And yet society seems surprised that we as a species don't do better.  Sadly, it's not even the case that very few people ever achieve their true potential before the day they die.  The problem is not only that the majority of people have to pay to do a job they hate, while all the time suffering from an unrealised dream of what they would do if money were not holding them back.

Alas, the whole truth is actually a whole lot worse.

Not only do few people ever reach their potential, but many fall in the opposite direction.  The world's streets are littered with grubby, starving, drunk, injured, ill people who started their lives in such a state of poverty that they never really stood a chance no matter what their work ethic or abilities might be.  I wonder how many geniuses are currently shaking a cup full of copper coins with pleading eyes when they should, instead, be curing diseases, harnessing sustainable energies, or pushing the boundaries of art, of space exploration, or of consciousness?  How many people buy lottery tickets because, despite the ridiculous odds stacked against them, they know that it is their only chance to ever push beyond the point of scratching around for a living instead of fulfilling their potential and making the greatest contribution to society that they could?

But the reality is even worse than that!

Our society is so sinister that even people such as I, brought up with a conscience that hangs around my neck like a millstone for my every waking minute, have to think twice before giving money to these people who need it the most.  I feel regret after I've tossed a few coins in that cup because the thought that goes through my mind is, "Am I really the person who should be donating?  Do I really have sufficient to be able to just give some away?  Am I really that far from being the person on their knees in the street, begging for enough just to keep me alive?"  The answer is no, and the quote I am constantly reminded of is, "There but for the grace of god go I".

The fact is that the system we live in makes it very, very difficult for humans to be equitable.  We have to fight, and pay, to be able to leave the nest.  We have to fight to make the rent.  And then if we ever manage to pool enough capital out of the economy to put a deposit down on a house, by the time we've finished paying for that house we're so old that we can't even eat or go to the toilet without someone helping us to do so.

In order just to consider this issue we have to fight to quiet our mind for a few minutes, desperately trying to avoid a society of bright colours, flashing lights, and babbling over-stimulation that occupies, distracts, and entrances us like the front of a Las Vegas fruit machine.  Yet we are told, and we tell our children, that this is "normal" and then get angry when they struggle to understand.  And if they disagree, we tell them that they are immature.  We tell them, "You'll understand one day," infer that they are stupid, undermine their self-esteem, and beat them down like a nail in a coffin until they are as indoctrinated into this system of blind stupidity as we are.

Yet we don't realise it.  We don't even acknowledge that what we are doing, and what we are doing to our children, is wrong.  And then every birthday and every xmas we bombard our children with materialistic goods as if to say, "Well, if you stop disagreeing with Mummy and Daddy then one day you'll be able to buy all this stuff yourself."  And then we act surprised when people riot and loot in London because they believe that they are owed these things but will never have the means to obtain them legitimately.  We get angry.  We say, "Well I paid for MY stuff so they should have to pay too."  We dismiss them as stupid or criminal.  We insist that the government not only puts a stop to it, but does so in the most inhumane way possible, with riot batons and water cannons, and all the while further angering and aggravating those people who already know that they have been deceived, duped, and royally fucked over by the system.

But the truth is much worse than that.

Why?  Because there is no need for anything to be paid for.  We, as a species, already have enough food, concrete, teachers, lab equipment, books, tools, tarmac, iPads for everyone to have one.  There are sufficient resources on the planet for everyone to have that home, that alarm clock, that bed, that education, that food and that love.  Yet we still continue to stick rigidly with money - an invention that dates back before the internet, before X-factor, before space travel, before Einstein, before Leonardo da Vinci, even before the wheel and almost as far back as the invention of fire.

Why?!  Why do we do this to ourselves and - much worse - why do we force all our seceding generations to make exactly the same mistake that we have, over and over?  I can't speak for you, dear reader, but I have come to the conclusion that we can do better.  I want to live in a world where everyone has more than they do now and, the really sad thing is that we could.  Let me say that to you again: we already have so much that everyone could have plenty.  There is already an idea that has been researched over 75 years and turned into a concept.  And that concept has been turned into a plan.  And that plan has now become a working project.  And that project has a name, "The Venus Project".

And yet the best reason we can think of for not dropping whatever we are doing right now, and starting it immediately, is because we're late for a meeting, or because our favourite show is on HBO and we might miss it.  Or because we selfishly, inconsiderately, naively tell ourselves that it is someone else's job to worry about that and - ironically - we need to get home and look after our kids.

Because we still keep telling ourselves that's the only way we can make sure our children don't lose the shirts off their backs too.

Delightful house built on bedrock of positivity

Do not trust the man whose pay-check depends on you taking his advice. Al Gore said similar during “An Inconvenient Truth” and the same thought occurred to me as I leafed through a discarded ‘dream’ houses and condos supplement on the 506 streetcar towards the East end. Doom and gloom sells newspapers, but here was realtor after realtor, lining up to enthuse about the property market in Toronto. I guess whether you’re a glass half-empty or glass half-full kinda person dictates who you believe – realtor, or politician?

Not much of a choice between them though – a clash of the ‘liar’ titans one might even be tempted to say.

And so a similar clash of the titans between full and empty began. The cynical, jaded writer versus the self-made entrepreneur 10 years his junior. To be honest, I didn’t expect to hear such good news for house music lovers when I interviewed Lindi Delight Masunda. After all, regardless of how hedonistic you might be, are you really going to go out and party if you can’t make the mortgage payment?

However, not content with creating – to my knowledge at least – one of the first deep house-specific nights in downtown Toronto, the entrepreneur described predominantly as “positive” on Facebook hopes to be promoting Canadian DJ talent internationally, to add philanthropy to her already successful “TenaciouSoul” venture, and to launch a website that enables anyone else to do what she’s doing…all before the end of 2009.

In addition to TenaciouSoul, managing Canadian DJs to get them on the global map and out of the Great White North, and teaming up with a selection of womens’ charities, her website is planned to be a proverbial online directory of bartenders, DJs, security staff, sound and lighting technicians, plus whatever else you can think of to throw a mini-rave of your own. Oh – and she’s going to learn to DJ herself too. Well, it is only January I guess, but then this is a 27 year-old who gets fidgety if she’s not doing umpteen things at once. “I need variety,” she grins from the other side of a pint.

I suppose it’s not surprising for someone who graduated in electronics & telecommunications on the West coast, and then turned up as the brains behind TenaciouSoul – which isn’t even her day job – on the East coast some years later. “I believe in fate,” says Masunda. “My last night in Toronto before flying back to Vancouver for good, I walked into a bar and asked the manager there if I could help out. He asked me whether I had bartending experience, I said yes, and that was that. I was working in there the next evening as my empty seat on the plane headed West.”

We’re now six-and-a-half years down the road.

Perhaps that puts Masunda’s ambitions into perspective, although she hasn’t been at the single-handed event management and promotions game for all that time. “I decided in about March 2006 that I wanted to throw parties,” she explains. “I was doing it all myself, which made it hard work but also meant that there was no-one around to tell me I shouldn’t do it, or that I was doing it wrong!” And that’s how it went for a year or two. No qualifications, no training, no sponsorship, no grants, no loans, no counsel, no helpline, nothing: “I’ve learned the hard way over the last two-and-a-half years, but I’ve learned fast too. Now I feel more like I’m coming into my own as a promoter, improving my focus, and – at the same time - getting to know myself better as a woman.”

Masunda steals off to the bathroom mid-interview, giving me time to reflect. She’s confident, yes, but not arrogantly so. She’s decidedly cheerful, and the persistent “positive” description from Facebook is being slowly but surely being put into context. She’s going to be one of those people who makes you feel good after you’ve spoken to them. Maybe that’s why Joel Smye, the owner of ‘Footwork’ on Adelaide West, agreed to let her single-handedly promote a Robsoul Recordings night there. Masunda achieved this with good old-fashioned person-to-person networking, via the DJ Phil Weekes, and proceeded to complete the flyers, promotion, and even the guest list for that evening. Needless to say it was a tremendous success, so successful in fact that Robsoul Recordings retained Masunda’s services for the rest of that month, and their other planned gigs.

She’s back, and a simple question I missed occurs to me: “Why deep house in particular, and why ‘TenaciouSoul’?”

“I have to promote something I’m passionate about,” she smiles. “I live and breathe house music. It’s what I wake up to in the morning, and what I go to bed at night to.”

“I didn’t know what to do about a company name. So, I just made two columns of different words that I wanted the music to feel like. I came up with various combinations before TenaciouSoul, but couldn’t believe my luck when I Google’d it and found the company name wasn’t already registered somewhere.”

What does TenaciouSoul the brand actually mean though? For once, Masunda has trouble articulating: “It’s sexy, sensual, classily-dressed women in afros…” But, there’s more to it than that, as the emphatic feedback on Facebook demonstrates. Were TenaciouSoul the end of a battery then it’d obviously be positive. If a car, then imagine a Volkswagen Beetle with a subtle, stylish paint job, and understated but cool chrome rims. Why? Because – like the DJs and music choices that go into each of the gigs – they’re known globally, vehemently reliable, and potentially iconic. However, whilst the bug would definitely be souped-up, it would still be approachable somehow, most likely packed with 20 and 30-somethings, picking up willing hitch-hikers to take them to a festival somewhere. Most of all, there would be no tinted windows. There’s nothing aloof about Masunda or the gigs she crafts, so the only hidden aspect of this particular Volkswagen would be the punching-above-its-weight, hand-tooled power station lurking under the hood.

After all, Masunda has already managed to secure a couple of all-time DJ debuts for Toronto clubbers, most notably perhaps John “Jellybean” Benitez – a name old enough for even me to recognise from a high school disco. Jellybean has had his hands on everything from Madonna’s debut album in 1982, through the Pointer Sisters, the soundtrack to “Flashdance”, Fleetwood Mac, to Sting, and even Whitney Houston in 2000 (remember her before she met Bobby Brown?). It also took her less than two years of promotions to persuade Groove Assassins to come to town for the first time.

I bet that was a good night.

Then there’s Masunda’s ability to persuade DJs to play outside of their typical genre (imagine lifting the hood of said Volkswagen to find a Kawasaki or Sherman tank engine inside). DJ Sneak is best known for a raw, minimal, percussive-almost-dub style house, championed by the likes of Trade in London, UK. DJ Aleksandra doesn’t often stray far from techno. However, both were persuaded to play an out-of-character deep house set for the TenaciouSoul regulars, and both were enormously successful nights. This, combined with Masunda’s method of briefing DJs for their sets is what makes describing the TenaciouSoul vibe so tricky. OK, so we’ve got afros, but then imagine DJs whose only guidance is to, “…play from the heart,” as Masunda puts it. “I wouldn’t expect to have to brief a DJ anyway,” she insists. “It’s their job to figure out whether the crowd is feeling a particular tune, and change it up a bit if it’s not working.” Maybe if TenaciouSoul were a proverb, it’d be, “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know whatcha gonna git.”

I digress.

Picking a company name was the easy part. What followed was the administrative hard graft: getting business cards organised; striking deals; balancing everything with the needs of the day job; painting more than 300 front door keys and attaching a label with the gig details instead of using paper flyers; and networking. Lots of networking. It paid off though, with Masunda running into Eddy K of YYZ Entertainment in early 2006. This gave her the necessary backing to be able to host a night of her own, but she still needed DJs.

“I spent ages familiarising myself with the local DJ talent, scouring online, collecting cards, and asking people for recommendations,” she recalls. “From these I chose DJ Dirty Dale, most of all for his sound, which I felt fitted the TenaciouSoul ideal. It didn’t go smoothly though! The first time I met him he just told me to call him back in the morning if I was still serious!” Through Masunda’s persistence, things worked out though. Jason Ulrich was later secured for the warm-up set at TenaciouSoul’s maiden musical voyage, a humble but packed-to-the-rafters loft at Queen and Spadina in May 2006.

This strikes me as one of those times when you review your resume and think, “Sheesh, did I really do all that?” But there’s still more to come. Each new gig requires another reinvention of the humble flyer and fresh DJ talent for the growing Toronto house scene. Thankfully some things stay the same though. “One thing I’ve learned is that you have to work with people you trust,” states Masunda, possibly in her most serious tone of voice all day. “I have a core list of experienced and reliable suppliers that I go back to time and time again – sound, talent, logistics, work permits, bartenders, security – everything you can think of.”

I suppose if one has trust, then one can relax. And, although Masunda admits to, “…feeling tense until the room is full,” each time she promotes a night, by that point the necessary hard work has already been done. Thus the punters can also relax, which is probably why TenaciouSoul has already become something typically Toronto – relaxed, multicultural, but with a sense of pride that demands attention over the noisy neighbour to the South. In her words, “The music is key. TenaciouSoul is all about having somewhere to go where people can experience a musical journey and forget their worries for a night.”

I guess some houses may vary in price, but well-chosen house is always priceless. Put a value on it yourself at Footwork on 7th March 2009 when TenaciouSoul will be hosting DJ Heather and Colette.

Five cent fine on wastrels the first step in a social change marathon

Wannabe environmentalists such as I, who are tempted to celebrate Loblaw’s announcement this week that it will charge shoppers five cents per plastic bag, may have to put the bubbly back in the fridge.

I know that corporations in general are worse polluters than consumers, but there’s a difference between landfill litter and other weapons in the polluter’s armoury. The City of Toronto told me on Wednesday that shopping bags akin to Loblaws’ make up only a proportion of one type of litter collected from the streets of Toronto, which in turn accounts for only 27 per cent of annual Toronto litter.

I shouldn’t disparage the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee though. With 44,000 cubic metres of landfill-bound rubbish yearly, it has – literally – a mountain to climb, albeit an underground one. Unfortunately the real culprits, all 3,000,000+ of them, are much closer to home. Actually, they’re in the home – mine and everyone else’s in the GTA. The majority of that 27 per cent is from a grubby smorgasbord of retail and non-retail items that, when put together, spell fast food packaging. What annoys me even more is that a significant proportion of them are plastic bottles and jars that could have been recycled, if the previous owner had managed to carry them that marathon distance to the nearest garbage bin, and mustered the staggering concentration required to pick the correct hole of the three. As I discovered, once whatever-it-is hits the street, then the city has to regard it as “contaminated,” and it goes the way of the bubblegum and everything else.

Thus I don’t make myself very popular giving people the ‘hairy eyeball’ when they grumble that there’s no school close enough to them for their first-born, that the ambulance should have arrived one minute sooner, or that there’s a massive power outage on the West side of Toronto. I just quietly wonder how many schools, hospitals, or power stations could be bought with the $20,000,000 that the city wastes every year clearing up after Torontonians.

RocknRolla will never die

Movie review of "RocknRolla".
Published on facebook.com, 10th November 2008.

Definitely a pleasant surprise, particularly when the choice to see this over 'whatserface gets married' (sic) was decided by a coin toss.

Like The Matrix and The Game, RocknRolla was one of those movies I knew nothing about before seeing it (thanks Terri). Snatch seemed a little like 'more of the same' when I saw it, and I won't mention the effort with Madonna in-between, but this movie feels as if Guy Ritchie went for the safe bet and then directed the s**t out of it.

The cast is a nice mixture of known actors, for example a much more charismatic character for Butler than his stiff (pun intended) mythological king in "300". Also Newton's character has a bit more zip about her than the doe-eyed and dappy Tom-Cruise-beard in Mission Impossible 2.

Of course, Wilkinson's gangland boss is also a far cry from the tormented and redundant pressganged stripper in "The Full Monty", although a pair of Ray-Bans, colourful language and a teaspoon of cockney rhyming slang isn't quite enough to make his character go down in the most delightful way as Mary Poppins would say.

I guess there's a lesson for straight men here in that Butler's charm, ultimate desire to get Newton into bed, and knack for luring her into underestimating his grit - if nothing else - demonstrates how Ritchie can make an armed robber seem like Casanova. This, chaps, could be what women mean when they say they can't help but like bad men.

It's really the newbies that shine though. We have a convincingly closeted gay, but that just has the women cooing all the more. There are various ensemble actors and henchmen, and Quid as both the elusive plot lynchpin and deus ex machina-cum-narrator nailing his various scenes. However, it would seem that Ritchie teases the most considered performances from his cast and this, along with the Beluga of irony and seminal East/West-end London sets, glues everything together nicely. All in all it's a gangster flick without the gore, sufficient swearing and pyrotechnics to keep things ticking over nicely, and while - yes - it does seem to sag a little in the middle, Ritchie manages to escalate each of the passing minutes enough to hold the attention.

In the end I think it's more than just brain candy and, dare I say it, not just a 'guy' movie, so I hope there will be a follow-up as the final scene alludes. Can Ritchie stay consistent though?

"Balls" is right, all else is just plain wrong

Movie review of "Balls of Fury".
Published on facebook.com, 20th June 2008.

I'm not going to spend much time reviewing this - it's not worth it. Spoof of one of the Bruce Lee movies (Game of Death?) where table tennis replaces Kung Fu. Even Christopher Walken couldn't save it, and I didn't laugh much despite being wasted when I watched it. Avoid.

Disadvantaged, alas

Movie review of "Vantage Point".
Published on facebook.com, 17th April 2008.

A good idea, poorly executed and hammily directed one must say. Chances of a chubby American tourist, clutching a digicam, keeping up with two secret service agents as they pursue an assassin through Madrid? Unlikely.

Likelihood of two secret service agents firing off handgun rounds in a busy Spanish street like it's the Wild West? Pretty low I'd say.

Likelihood of a secret service agent marching out to presidential protection duty without even a bulletprooof vest, particularly after being shot by a would-be assasin in the recent past? You be the judge.

All in all there are fair performances from the actors involved, though Whittaker's performance is a long way from his brilliant portrayal of Idi Amin, and poor Dennis Quaid has a permanent scowl that nothing seems to remove. It is the director, however, that should probably foot most of the blame though. 11.59 and 58 seconds...AGAIN?! "OH MY GOD" exclaimed one cinema-goer in the theatre where I saw the film, and he's probably right.

No fish out of water here, except the director

Movie review of "Lady In the Water".
Published on facebook.com, 11th April 2008.

Well, it's not BAD I suppose. Doesn't have the epic "Eureka" moment of The Sixth Sense, that's for sure. But, think along the lines of Pan's Labyrinth or even The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe in terms of kiddy-esque suspension of disbelief and you're on he right track.

Strong screenplay and good performances all round, though the director's cameo I found a little annoying, similar to Tarantino not only relentlessly popping up in the middle of the Grindhouse double bill, but also blatantly copying George Clooney's mannerisms expressed in "From Dusk 'Til Dawn".

Suspense is kept simmering away as the various tenants - and the viewer - try to figure out who has which 'other world' role and the lack of bad language or gore, though not necessarily adult themes, make it innocuous enough for family viewing. Giamatti is, as ever, a real pleasure to watch.

One way to make ironing fun

Movie review of "Iron Man".
Published on facebook.com, 2nd April 2008.

Wow. Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Isn't this just another Marvel/DC Comics cash-in?" Well, I have to say that this movie fills the void between the last Batman and the next (Dark Knight) one quite nicely.

Equal measures of action, plot, character and screenplay, this is a very smartly- formed package of a summer blockbuster.

Excellent casting too, by the way. Downey is superb as an authentic immoral playboy, and there are no highbrow, Batman or Fantastic Four-esque moral issues at play here. He's flawed, he's selfish, egotistical, and more of an anti-hero for the majority of the film. And, whilst all the high-tech requires suspension of disbelief, his character does not. The same can be said for Paltrow, who plays his long-suffering assistant. This is not your regular, fall-at-the-feet of the hero bimbo role, but a punchy portrayal of a modern, intelligent woman in full control of her emotions and urges. The fact that they DON'T get together is another credit to Favreau. It's also nice to see Bridges in a villain role rather than his typecast bla bla do-gooder variety.

The script too is above average, with a fair smattering of laughs and some real zinger lines. My own favourite is Paltrow's, "Sometimes, I even have to take out the trash". More witty dialogue comes about with Downey, who in the absence of any friends builds an almost human relationship with the various powerful IT devices around him.

All in all it's an excellent value package of entertainment, and the effects et al make the trip to the cinema well worth it - don't wait for DVD on this one.

Key To Life: "Find Our Way (Breakaway)" (The Elusive Peppermint Jam Remixes) 12" single

What starts as your basic deep house, 4/4 time, bla bla turns into something far more luscious. Well, I say basic but you're only a few bars in when you realise the snappy percussion has had your feet moving for several seconds. String stabs followed by the "Punch it out!" sample already have you grooving, when everything stops for the chord stabs.

Note you may have experienced goose pimples by now. You may be smiling and nodding your head in time. This is quite normal.

I won't dwell on the detail and spoil all the surprises but safe to say, this will be a tune I will keep for a very long time. The dub on A2 has all the above less the full lyric and some of the goosepimples. It does a good job of separating the mid-range from the top end and bass enough to accentuate both, rather than making it sound hollow. Think Boris Dlugosch meets Kathleen Murphy, they have a drink, one thing leads to another...

more images

Label: Sub-Urban Catalog#: SU-23 Format: Vinyl, 12" Country: US Released: 1996 Genre: Electronic Style: House Credits: Producer, Mixed By - Tommy Musto Remix, Producer [Additional] - Boris Dlugosch , Mousse T. Vocals - Kathleen Murphy Notes: Produced & mixed for Northcott Productions. Additional production & remix by Boris Dlugosch for Elusive Productions & Mousse T. for Peppermint Jam Productions, Germany. Rating: 4.6/5 (18 votes) Rate It Submitted by: moogman.de

Tracklisting:

A1		Find Our Way (Breakaway) (Club Path Remix) (6:35)
A2		Find Our Way (Breakaway) (Club Path Dub) (6:14)
B1		Find Our Way (Breakaway) (Jazz Path Remix) (7:02)
		Bass - Jürgen Attig
B2		Find Our Way (Breakaway) (Jazz Path Dub) (5:32)
		Bass - Jürgen Attig

More fleeting than Fleet Street

Movie review of "Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street".
Published on facebook.com, 28th January 2008.

Typical Burton in tone and gloom, though with all that pantomime it's surprising between them that Depp and Bonham-Carter couldn't seem to make it black comedy so much as, well, just black really. Good if you know and love the songs (and can live without the narration from the stage version), and worth a visit if you're a Burton fan.

Otherwise, one to wait for on DVD and see what the bonus extras are like.

Atone for Seeing a Chick Flick

Movie review of "Atonement".
Published on facebook.com, 26th January 2008.

They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Well, having seen the trailers and heard a little of the soundtrack I knew I was pretty much in for a tear-fest with this film. That said, I think enough of McEwan's writing translates into the movie version for this to be a sublimely heart-aching experience.

Pretty good performances from all actors concerned, with McAvoy and Blethlyn probably coming out on top. Knightley also does a good job but the problem with her is that I can't watch her on screen - despite her stunning looks - without wincing. The poor girl is practically skeletal and I'd mail her a cheeseburger or two if I only knew where she lived.

Anyway, the movie manages to extend and hang on a simple premise that stretches excruciatingly for nearly two hours having been set up close to the start of the film. It's not without humour either, though if you're like me and prefer a happy ending then find something else to watch.

Great screenplay and special effects used with restraint give an excellent backdrop of pan-European warfare principally in France and London to the romance, remorse, guilt and ostricisation in the foreground.

In the right compass direction, but the journey has barely begun

Movie review of "The Golden Compass".
Published on facebook.com, 8th December 2007.

Interesting and attention-keeping for adults though at times seems a mish-mash of Lord of the Rings and the Narnia Chronicles. Great acting from DB Richards who succeeds in giving her character the right level of annoying brattishness. Kidman looks nauseatingly thin apart from her lips but does a good enough job of balancing the conflicting objectives of baddie and mummy. Little else to say except that this is a whimsical enough kids' movie, but with little time to explore any character in great depth. All more akin to placing chess pieces on the board before the game really starts, as the first film of a trilogy franchise sometimes is.

Current king of Scottish movies

Movie review of "The Last King of Scotland".
Published on facebook.com, 5th December 2007.

Thrilling all-the-more because you know it's based on actual events. Brilliant performances from the two leads, and the right balance of suspense that ensures you're both left to your own imagination as to the events happening in the background of the film without an unnecessary gore-fest from the beginning. Excellent movie.

Spiderflan

Movie review of "Spiderman III".
Published on facebook.com, 28th November 2007.

Yuk. What a farce, and what a shame after two pretty darn good movies in the franchise. Poor scripting, wooden acting by the Sandman, exaggerated characteristics of the Venom-ised Spiderman that make this almost a Christmas pantomime, and lots of unnecessary subplots e.g. the police chief and his daughter that detract from the overall plot and prevent any in-depth character study. Eminently missable!

Period drama for period drama's sake

Movie review of "Elizabeth".
Published on facebook.com, 14th November 2007.

Disappointing alas. Revel in the costume and human face of Elizabeth bestowed in the 'behind the scenes' scenes but expect all else to be a superficial, neither fish nor flesh mix of almost fairy tale, not quite romance nor action, and historical inaccuracy.

Knocked together

Movie review of "Knocked Up".
Published on facebook.com, 8th November 2007.

I was expecting great things from this following "40 Year-Old Virgin" but, I have to say, I was a little disappointed.

Certain parts were exceptionally funny, and this is definitely a brain candy rom-com rather than anything else. Even then though, it's difficult to suspend one's disbelief when the likes of Katherine Heigl pulls a munter like Seth Rogen. And, alas, without that then the premise for the whole film is gone. Without it, all's left is the enjoyable banter between Rogen and his stoner friends.

Matrices made interesting

Movie review of "The Matrix" trilogy.
Published on facebook.com, 21st October 2007.

The Matrix
One of the few good films I was lucky enough to know absolutely nothing about when I walked into the cinema, and got totally blown away.

Reeves slightly less bogus than usual, more guns and special effects than you can shake a big stick at, and an stunning woman in the form of Carrie Ann Moss, clad from head to foot in black PVC. Damn. All this wrapped into the sci-fi conspiracy theorists's wet dream. Marvellous.

Action, plot, decent character development and believable situations despite the implausibility of the plot...although is it really that implausible? After all, we are an arrogant species that rarely considers "should we" as much as "can we"?

The Matrix Reloaded
Bigger, louder, and kung-fuier than the original with the addition of a number of new characters who inhabit the matrix as rogue programs. The love story is slowly developed between Trinity and Neo, though the Matrix theory gets slightly muddier with the elusively ambiguous 'Architect' and the beginning of the sequence of events that demonstrate the connection between Neo and Agent Smith and the trilogy's ultimate crescendo one film later.

Hugo Weaving steals this one I think. "Me too."

The Matrix Revolutions
The last of the three. Hated it when I first saw it at the cinema right up to the point when I realised there was never going to be any way in which the sequel could replicate the "aha" moment of the first film.

That said, the Zion inhabitants do a good enough job of delivering a whopping body count in the final grand battle, and most captivating of all is the climax (so to speak) of Neo and Trinity's love story. Again, Weaving does a great job of erring to be almost human, a characteristic seen the first time during Morpheus' interrogation scene in the first film. And what a great scene that was by the way: "...this zoo, this prison...it's the smell!"

A satisfying end to the set of three although one wonders how they ever got the financing to make a film, "...about an unbalanced equation." The DVD has some excellent bonus features that have the effect of making one appreciate all the subtleties of casting, costume, sound, and the fact that the theory on which the movie is based is real, published, and even earned the writer a cameo role as one of the Zion counsel. I forget his name though.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide...oh bollocks, forget it

Movie review of "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Published on facebook.com, 9th October 2007.

What a shame. The 1970s/1980s BBC TV series, despite its appalling poor and now cringingly dated special effects, had better character actors, a funnier performance, and eminently more watchability. The best bit about the 2005 movie version is Stephen Fry's narration. Boo!

Super job

Movie review of "Superman Returns".
Published on facebook.com, 3rd October 2007.

Brandon Routh is superb in this remake of the 70s classic, right down Reeve's mannerisms. Spacey is as ever, extremely watchable and the role brings out a Nicholson/Shining-esque pantomime baddie performance that's steered gingerly over the line of eccentricity but just short of the likes of Alan Rickman's OTT rogue in Robin Hood.