“Excuse me; aren’t you all fuckin’ hired killers?” (Bill Hicks)

Like everyone, I tend to overhear parts of other people's conversations in a number of different places during the course of my daily life. Occasionally I hear something that makes me smile ("Don't give me that Star Wars bollocks - it's totally over-rated. No way is it the greatest film ever made. Not even top ten.") Some of it makes me incandescent with bottled-up rage ("I stopped watching Eastenders ages ago - too many fucking foreigners. They should call it Wogstenders.") And sometimes I fail to understand it at all.

I recently heard someone talking, and talking, and talking about the army - someone in their family is in the armed forces. In the Middle East somewhere I think. They hear first hand about how bad it is out there - the death, the underfunding, the crippling tension, the pressure. And yet they appear to believe unthinkingly that whatever our army is doing out there, there is no question about its validity, its inherent rightness. Surely there's a need to question the obvious point of contention regarding the doubt about the reasons and the need to invade and occupy land out there? I guess if someone you love is involved in it, you would want to be convinced the conditions and the risk of death was a necessary evil to help the oppressed, and not an attempt to control resources and make money.

I don't question this person's obvious love for their family, and I accept that everyone should be permitted an opinion and the freedom to express it. What I do question, a little, is the wider issue of this blanket acceptance that every single member of the armed forces is a hero and the pressure to fall in with this propaganda-like generalisation. To express the kind of sentiment shown by the great Mr. Hicks is to be guilty of betraying your country and to become outcast. Just because I don't donate to Help for Heroes, read The Sun or hang the St. Georges Cross out my bedroom window with a patriotic tear in my eye (I wonder sometimes if some of the people doing this are simply so stupid they need reminding every morning what country they live in), and just because I don't consider killing other people necessarily heroic, it doesn't mean I side with the poppy-burning uber-fucks who like to scream loudly that the husbands and sons of grieving family members are burning in hell. Clearly the poppy-burners missed the point of Remembrance Day, which is to honour the sacrifice of an entire generation to keep us free of fascism, and not to support a misguided war effort in an attempt to lead the country down a route that will likely lead to ... fascism. So the poppy-burners are wrong, but so are the people that use Remembrance Day to support our current war effort (which couldn't be more different than WW2, and less essential).

Bill? Bill was, as ever, spot on.

Congratulations (a message for The Daily Mail).

Well done. You're winning. Slowly but surely, you seem to be wearing away our resistance. You are turning ordinarily decent people into turds with shitty attitudes. Your continuous pro white, hetero, christian / anti everything else agenda appears to be influencing more people than ever before. I've been witness to too many conversations between average and decent (usually) people in the last month where there has been real anger directed at the poorer end of our society (those existing on benefits and such) that the only conclusion I can draw is that you are all powerful and will eventually force us to think as you do. Your relentless highlighting of the '12-kids-never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives-living-in-a-free-mansion-and-given-£17,000-or-more-a-year-in-benefits' stories (which, even if true, are extreme exceptions to the vast majority of people existing on barely enough benefit payments to eat while desperate for a job to try to keep themselves off the street) is starting a wave of hatred towards the unfortunates in our society. You've been helped a great deal of course by our current coalition Government who, eager to protect their millions (remember more than half of the cabinet is made up of male millionaires who are in no way in this shitty existence together with the rest of us , regardless of the party line) have been frantically pointing towards the £1billion lost annually to benefit fraud to desperately turn our attention away from the fact that they are cheating us out of tax and letting banks and corporations off their tax bills at the same time to the tune of more than £6billion while hacking the state to bits to save £7billion. Thanks to the two of you working in harmony, we really do seem to be blinkered and more of us are getting angry at those less well off, believing them to be workshy injury-faking fraudsters out to steal our hard-earned money. I've said it before, but it's shocking to me that so many people think that the most anyone can achieve for themselves is to do the same job of work pointlessly day in day out for the whole of their lives, that this is somehow the fulfilment of our evolutionary destiny. To work. To type. To talk on phones. To acquire wealth. To buy useless shit. Maybe those who don't buy into this retarded backwards idea of the proper way to live are smarter than we think. Just a thought. Those obscenely rich useless fucks in charge continue to reinforce this cage we've collectively trapped ourselves in. Even the usually decent Channel 4 is in on the act with Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. The scenes of female oppression highlighted on that show are appalling, but the channel makes no attempt to point out the unlikely-hood of this being the norm for gypsies everywhere, instead allowing the show to fuel the aggression of the public and providing more ways for them to express their anger with the workshy. It's worth remembering that 'workshy' is a term that the Nazi party propaganda machine coined to describe Jewish and disabled people to fuel the German public's dislike of them. Not that it's quite as bad as that here. Yet. At least I hope not. One recent conversation had one of the (like I said, usually decent) people calmly and seriously suggesting that they should all be "lined up against a wall and shot", with not one of the others raising even the smallest of objections. So maybe we're not as far from the Nazi example as we like to think. Think about it. The people they are talking about (they made it clear that it's not the people who genuinely need help back into work or with a real disability, but how do they or anyone else make that kind of determination?) are the people choosing to live off the state instead of working. So basically lazy people. People who they think they shouldn't have to spend money on via taxes and such. People who receive barely a crumb compared to the tax-dodging millionaire politicians or corporations or banks. Not rapists, murderers or child molesters. Lazy people. Calmly and seriously advocating the murder of lazy people. I'd like to think that if there was a man standing against the wall of his free mansion while his 12 kids watch, the people in question would think twice before ending his life. That they would think hang on, maybe this is a bit much when it's only about money, only a tiny proportion of the tax I pay. Maybe this murder isn't justifiable. That they would put the gun down. I'd like to think that, but I wouldn't bet on it. It has, after all, happened before. The worst thing would be that you would be utterly horrified if this happened - if someone took it upon themselves to rid the streets of the out-of-work lazy scum, or gay people because they think they're spreading some kind of gay agenda in schools to poison the minds and hearts of children (hey there, Melanie Phillips, how would you like that?) or all the young Asian men, believing they're all part of a child prostitution ring. You would be horrified on the surface, wouldn't you Daily Mail? But underneath, I doubt you would care much, because you've been laying the framework for this kind of attitude for years now. What other possible result do you think you might have achieved? There would be one surefire way to deflect any blame, though. The loony with the gun obviously listened to too much heavy metal. It's devil's music don'tcha know. Or they must have watched Taxi Driver too many times. Nothing to do with us and our constant hate-spewing lies. No sir. Anyway, I just wanted to say well done. Whatever it is you're intending to accomplish, you're making definite progress. Cunts.

When is a holocaust film not a holocaust film?

When it is Life is Beautiful. It was recently Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). Firstly, it's staggering to me that such a day is even required, that such a blot on our collective memory would ever be in danger of being forgotten. Unfortunately, people and groups of all nations, races and colours prove that it most certainly is required, and they prove it every day - from Dick Griffin (copyright for that joke: that lad on Question Time that once) denying it even happened, to jihad-launching fucktards who would quite happily wipe out an entire group of people for one lame-ass reason or another.

A friend of mine (@kevupnorth, for those on Twitter) is a staunch supporter and spreader-of-the-word regarding HMD, and his talk of it this year reminded me of a conversation on a Facebook thread about HMD last year, where I revealed my dislike for Roberto Benigni's crock of whimsical shite. @kevupnorth wondered if I disliked holocaust films. Well, no, although perhaps 'like' is the wrong word. Life is Beautiful isn't a holocaust film I replied, but before I could explain myself fully, someone else on the thread appeared to be quite offended by my apparent lack of respect for holocaust victims, as seemingly evidenced by my criticism of the film. I came close to both apologising and arguing on the thread, but in the end I stopped commenting and complained about her on Twitter. Not the most mature reaction, but then I'm not the most mature person (see use of the not real word 'fucktards' above). She may have had a point about the thread being about HMD and that perhaps it wasn't the place for this type of conversation, but I think she assumed a lack of respect for the dead on my part because I dared criticise a film supposedly beyond criticism. She wasn't alone in disagreeing - everyone else on the thread loved it, but she was the one who got offended by a simple opinion. I looked like a dick on that thread forever more, not being able to explain my 'not a holocaust film' comment. Well no more.

Life is Beautiful is average at best. The writing is average, the plot is whimsical wish-fulfilment hogwash and the cinematography and use of light and colour is uninspired. It is mistaken for a holocaust film because it is set during the holocaust, and for that reason it fooled the Academy (not a hard thing to do) and is held up as untouchable, because to criticise it, as I found, is to show disrespect. Bullshit. The holocaust is a setting that is completely interchangeable - it could have been set during any number of historical or imagined tragedies and just as easily told the same story. The holocaust was chosen as the setting because it is the most readily identifiable worst period of our recent history and is more likely to garner an emotional response from the viewer, which, I would argue, shows Benigni being slightly disrespectful as opposed to his critics.

There is an argument (and quite a strong one, granted) that Benigni's father being a prisoner of the Nazis qualified the director to set his story during this particular time of hardship. However, the film is not about the holocaust and I still think the setting was chosen to heighten the emotional impact of the story, rather than starting with the setting and then weaving the plot around it. I could be (hell, I probably am) all kinds of wrong, but hey, that's what blogs are for - for people who are wrong to continue to drone on as if they are right. Just ask James Delingpole.

Consider in contrast an actual holocaust film (the holocaust film), Schindler's List. This is a portrayal of the events (although there is certainly some artistic license taken) that took place during the period. It could not have been set during any other historical period. In this case the holocaust is the event that is shown using the story as the backdrop, rather than placing a fictional story within that setting. That is the crucial difference and that is why Life is Beautiful has no business parading itself as a holocaust film. It attempts to convince you of the true beauty of the human spirit, to give you a happy ending and to convince you that life really is beautiful; none of these things have a place in a holocaust film. Life during the holocaust was not beautiful. It could have and should have been set against an entirely imaginary time and place. Schindler's List is unrelenting in its purpose, which is to force you to witness the events as they were and, like HMD, to ensure you never forget by indelibly burning into your memory the horror of humanity at its ugliest. Never has a brief flash of colour (the red coat) been so utterly wrenching to see, and his ability to break your heart so completely with such a simple device is why Schindler's List will forever remain Spielberg's masterpiece and it's also why he's a better director than Scorsese, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Kubrick or any other director you care to name.

So, if you ever find yourself trying to convince someone of the scale of the atrocity perpetrated during the holocaust, don't show them Life is Beautiful, show them Schindler's List. One attempts to convince you it's all OK and to make you happy. The other is unflinchingly honest and will make sure you never forget, which is the whole point of HMD.

Read like nobody’s watching.

If fantasy books were music they would probably be jazz. Many of the people that like them often talk and act as if they know more about writing / playing that other mere mortals, and assume readers / listeners of other styles simply cannot grasp with their limited intellect what the converted know instinctively. At the same time they will not consider listening to / reading any other genre, knowing without doubt it won't be worth the effort. Everyone else knows it's mostly shit and a bit of an embarrassing genre, that maybe you have a fling with at one time in your life and hopefully move on from. Having said that, occasionally there is an example of the genre, a piece written / performed by a writer / player of such dazzling talent, that it deserves to transcend the genre and if those who write it off were to give it a chance the complexity, intricacy and scale of the piece would simply blow their minds.

My favourite book, even after all these years, is still probably To Kill a Mockingbird, even though I haven't read it in donkey's years, but beyond that it's more likely to be Lord of the Rings or Dune. I try to be as eclectic as possible, but like an old schoolfriend that never changes, I often find myself coming back to the genres of the geeks and social lepers. Why? Not sure. Maybe it's easier to get lost in a story if it's further removed from reality. Maybe the escapism is what's important. It's one thing to tackle themes, characterisation and organic plot developments within a real world that everybody knows intimately; it's quite another to conceive of, imagine, develop and design that world from scratch within the confines of your own head (or in the case of sci-fi sometimes many different worlds) and to describe events barely on the fringe of tangible understanding (hello, Peter F. Hamilton) while still being able to make the reader connect on an emotional level.

In this respect, I think writers of crime thrillers and romantic guff have it easier here. The world-building is already done. There's a fairly recently-arrived-in-the-UK writer, goes by the name Brandon Sanderson, who is open and honest about the difficulties involved in crafting a fully realised fantasy series like no other writer I know. He's the guy who's taken over finishing the Wheel of Time series following the death of creator Robert Jordan. It is Sanderson's own Mistborn trilogy, however, that really shows what's involved. It took something approaching nearly 30 drafts of the series before he considered it complete. Years of refining the plot, the characters, the magic system (something else the fantasy writer has to develop which is unique to the genre, and bastard hard to get right, if Sanderson's notes are anything to go by), the world, the politics and countless other elements. On his website there is a chapter by chapter commentary, and he'll share early drafts of the series with anyone who asks, as well as giving updates on current projects. The work paid off. While, admittedly, most efforts in the genre are, well, shite, Mistborn is remarkable, pulling together themes of religion and atheism, morality, redemption, corruption and a boatload of other stuff, with startling action, possible only with the help of a genius magic system. A series that deserves to be read even by people who have long since moved on from that fantasy bollocks.

Everyone’s a critic.

Films, eh? Don't you just love 'em? No? Well, I do. Not that I'm saying cinema is my life, or anything, but watching movies is one of my absolute favourite things to do. Always has been, since I was a little kid watching H. G. Wells' The Time Machine or The War of the Worlds over and over. Doesn't matter what kind, what genre (apart from possibly horror - too scary, you see), even whether I like it or not. It's an art form. It is. It's a strange one, because there's so much shite produced just to make money, but in its purest form it is storytelling, and there most definitely is an art to telling good stories, whether it's by firelight, by book, or by film. It's not considered art in the same way painting or writing music is, but that's because it's a much more recent form of expression - it's barely over 100 years old (film that is, not storytelling, obviously).

If you've read enough of these blog entries, you'll know by now what kind of person I am - I like to give the impression that I'm knowledgeable, but in truth I know just enough to show off to people who know even less than me - true experts will and do see right through me. Well, the same goes for films; I talk like I know my stuff, but there's about a million and one films out there that I still need to see.

I thought it might be a good idea to chart my filmic journey and write down my thoughts and impressions of the films I watch. Rach and I have a bit of a tradition on Saturdays, where we settle down and stick a film on, partly because our kids prevent us from going out, and partly because we are really quite boring people. Anyway, I've started a blog about it (look at me, Mr. Big with my two blogs) here: http://experiment627movies.blogspot.com. Feel free to comment, discuss, disagree, shout abuse or laugh at me for my views.

I thought it would be cool to have both me and Rach do a review, but as much as she loves films, she doesn't quite get into them like me - she's more normal, so as she's contributing to this more as an indulgence to me, her writing will usually be brief in comparison to mine.

Be warned: the reviews are not recommendations, and the assumption is you have already seen the film being reviewed - there will ALWAYS be spoilers.

Goodbye old friend, you’ll not be missed.

It turns out that this year a certain entertainment retailer is planning to close several of its stores. For some reason, I can't quite find it within myself to be sad for that, and the reason for that is that generally, my local store is pants. And the online version is mega pants. Perhaps if it was less pants, I might have been able to summon up a little more care.

The last time I was in the store, I bought a music DVD. When I got it home, it turned out that Rach had already got it for me from Amazon. The special edition, no less. It's unopened, with receipt, so I assume they'll be no problem getting a refund on it. I used to work for said retailer, and I know that big releases like this one would be on 'sale or return', meaning they can return any they don't sell to the supplier for a full refund.

But no; the Saturday kid, who looks like she must be about 12, tells me uninterestedly that it's not their policy to offer refunds unless the item is damaged or faulty. I can exchange it or get vouchers, but that's it. But, it's perfectly re-sellable, I have the receipt, there's nothing wrong with it. In the words of The Dude, no-one's trying to scam anyone here, man. "Sorry, it's not our policy" repeats the dead-eyed bitch behind the counter over and over, like a robot with a damaged subroutine. It seems odd that disrespect and terrible customer service should be a policy, but maybe that's one reason they are closing stores this year. I turn down the vouchers and exchange it for a couple of things I don't really want, because I don't want to go back and buy anything else from the pricks ever again. Congratulations Amazon, you will now be selling me all of my DVDs, Blu-Rays and CDs from now on.

I don't know if my local store is on the death list, but apart from the sad fact that some people I still count as friends will lose their jobs (the annoying brat who 'served' me is strangely not included on that list), I wouldn't be sorry to see it go.

An automotive conspiracy.

A certain nameless car fixing place (can you tell from the jargon that I know less than nothing about fixing or maintaining cars?) has me doubting the honesty of their employees. A few months back, our car developed an annoying squeak which seemed to be coming from the front on the driver's side. We took the car to the fixing place, where after a little while, they admitted they didn't know what was wrong. They put some grease on a few bits to try to help, but didn't charge for it. We go on with the annoying squeak.

Not long after, the exhaust gets noisy and the acceleration has lost a little of its 'oomph'. Back we go to the car fixers. It turns out that two big chunks of the exhaust need replacing. It'll cost over £250. Now, a mind more cynical than mine might think that a little dodgy, to have a previously working car go kaput shortly following the first visit that happened to not cost anything. It's not outside the realms of possibility that the problem might have been set up during that first visit. Still, it was paid, it was fixed, and on we went.

Just before Christmas the car starts to make a noise more like a motorcycle. A little pissed off, we head back to the car fixers, thinking they might have messed up the job last time. Apparently, it's the other bit of the exhaust they didn't replace last time. That they in fact gave a green light to last time. That'll be another £200 plus, cheers. This seems decidedly off. But what do I know about fixing cars or what might go wrong with them? Cock all, that's what. They fix it, again. As a parting gift, they let us know that they haven't fixed the noise, but it can be sorted easily with a bit of duct tape. If we bring some in they'll do it, no charge. Considering what happened the last time they had a look at a noise for no charge (a noise which was never fixed), I don't think I'll bother.

So it may be my lack of knowledge here, but there seems to be a distinct possibility they're swindling cunts. Guess I'll never know.