Clarke My Words

James Bond is arguably one of the worst spies in the world. Owing to his habit of introducing himself as “Bond, James Bond” to pretty much anyone he meets, every megalomaniac seems to know who he is. Nonetheless, the release of 2012’s ‘Skyfall’ on DVD and Blu-ray got me thinking about a more serious bone I had to pick with the Bond franchise and this film in particular.

It wasn’t a thought that struck me immediately. I remember, upon leaving the cinema, sharing a muted, but generally positive appraisal of the film with my male friend while my girlfriend muttered darkly about backsliding.

(Spoilers ahead) The return of a male and thunderingly English M in Ralph Fiennes, in his low-tech, leather-lined office, with Moneypenny guarding the padded leather door are huge steps back for a series that had, in the previous two instalments, been forced to improve by the welcome success of the ‘Bourne’ series. However, when you look more closely at the story arcs for the three main female characters through the film, an attitude towards women starts to emerge that’s more in keeping with Bond’s first outing in 1962.

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[WARNING: some mild spoilers ahead]

Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy has finally come to a grandstanding finish. Picking up threads from the previous two movies, Nolan ties this package snugly together, while leaving a few dangling plot points to tantalise our imaginations until it becomes clear whether or not Nolan’s vision of The Batman will continue in its current incarnation.

Fans contemplating a Bat-marathon once the Blu-ray is released might want to pack a pillow. With “Batman Begins”, the most concise episode of the series, coming in at an arse-numbing 141 minute running time, and each subsequent episode taking about 12 mins longer than its immediate predecessor to reach a conclusion, the full trilogy would require more than seven and a half hours of watching to see them through (and that’s before bathroom breaks, snack bowl recharges and inter-movie beer runs).

Nolan tells a classy Batman story, there’s no two ways about it, especially when you contrast it against the Adam West and George Clooney Batman films. In fairness to the West effort, I’ve only actually seen about five minutes of that movie, but within those few minutes a certain-death situation at sea is averted, off-screen, when a dolphin is said to have thrown itself in front of the torpedo that would have killed Batman and Robin. I thought it best to stop watching the movie at this point as the multi-layered stupidity of that scenario far exceeded my ironic faculties.

I have no anecdote about “Batman and Robin”. I’m sure I’ve seen it all the way through but blessedly appear to have no memory of it. Bat nipples, maybe? “Ice to meet you”? It’s probably for the best.

To return to Nolan’s trilogy though, the main weakness of this whole series, in my opinion, has been the amount of time that Nolan takes to tell his story. “Batman Begins” bears the necessity of rehashing the origin story to justify its length. “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises”, both longer films, do not have this excuse.

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For those of you who have heard of Cabin In The Woods, who are intrigued by the concept and who reckon you’ll probably pay the requisite tenner and have yourself a nice horror-fest at your local cinema, stop reading this, head for the door and watch it straight away.

Speaking as a man who generally loves to watch trailers, read all the available reviews and ramp up excitement in my own mind with any peripheral content I can get my hands on, I wish I had been able to come across Cabin In The Woods with no preconceptions.

With that in mind I strongly urge all who have yet to see it to try and avoid SPOILERS (like the SPOILERS that will litter this post from here on) and have a great time at the cinema. That said, SPOILERS won’t ruin your enjoyment of this film in the way they would that of someone watching The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense, but the film’s just more fun without. You should probably avoid the SPOILERS that the trailer offers up as well to be honest (incidentally, there’s a decent article on the trend towards revealing trailers here - SPOILER alert)

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It probably won’t make a difference at this point as it appears to have been the fastest served petition in the history of the Government’s online epetitions website (I’m not providing a link, Google it yourself), but I will not be among the angry one-click activists looking to stick the boot in to looters in the aftermath of the England riots. And not simply because of the questionable spelling.

The petition suggests that all those convicted of taking part in the heinous events throughout London and England (including Gloucester bizarrely, who saw that coming?) from Saturday 6th to Wednesday 10th August, 2011, should “loose” any benefits they may have been receiving from the government as a consequence.

Obviously there is a vast surfeit of frustrated anger washing around at the moment; from those directly and tragically affected by this senseless spate of lawlessness, to horrified media consumers. In particular my heart goes out to the families of those who were killed, like the three lads in Birmingham, and to those who lost their homes as well as the police officers injured in the line of duty.

The whole country is shocked and appalled by this unbelievable turn of events and even those not directly affected want to register their antipathy to this destructive and antisocial behaviour. And now here’s a way to do it. To hit back at the aggressors.

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First off, let me say that spoilers suck. I had a slight delay before I could watch the final two episodes of the fantastic series ‘Game of Thrones’ and in that relatively short time I could barely cast a glance in the direction of Teh Interwebs without spoilers leaping out at me from the most unexpected of places.

I managed to avoid most but one aspect of the plot was ruined for me in an eye-catchingly short tweet (that obviously I won’t repeat here) from chip-tune funksters Anamanaguchi via their twitter feed (@anamanaguchi). Great band; terrible humans.

Rest assured my friends that I will not track any filthy spoilers into our circle of trust. I promise. Or, at the very least, I will clearly signpost them, if they turn out to be necessary - it’s not like I plan this stuff.

For those of you who may not know what I’m talking about, ‘Game of Thrones’ is a fantasy series produced by HBO, and is one of the shining pillars in Sky Atlantic’s programming pantheon alongside Martin Scorsese’s ‘Boardwalk Empire’. Basically Sky Atlantic won’t broadcast anything that hasn’t, at one point, had the phrase “critically acclaimed” attached to it in an unironic sense.

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Early adoption is a tricky business that I like to keep my hands clean of, for the most part. There are usually big wins associated with biding your time and playing the tech waiting game. For example, I purchased my PS3 at least three years after it’s European release, having been swept away by the hype surrounding the concept of ‘Heavy Rain’. That, and I could get a discount on it at work.

For my patience I was rewarded with a hard drive 100GB more capacious than the 20GB launch model and a far sexier design for significantly less money than the launch price. Some downsides that should be observed, in the interests of fairness, are that the 120GB Slim version lacks the original model’s ability to run PS2 games (for whatever reason) and, I believe, has fewer USB ports.

I have dabbled in early adoption however. A couple of years ago, I decided to get myself a Sony Pocket eBook reader. Not too much later, Amazon successfully annexed a huge portion of this market with their Kindle device. The Sony PRS-300’s lack of Wi-Fi, let alone 3G, is, in my opinion more than balanced by the fact that it is compatible with most eBook formats out there, allowing me to read files from a number of different sources. Plus, as it charges with a USB connection I don’t really need the reader to find its own books, when I can just dump them in from my PC via the USB.

So, early adoption; basically it’s tricky.

When I hopped on the Nintendo 3DS bandwagon at the first bell, I did so with the knowledge that with most modern gaming systems you generally need to wait for version1.1 in order to enjoy a fully optimised gaming experience (see Gameboy Advance SP, PSP Go, PS3 Slim and Xbox 360 Elite). And so it was with muted and patient disappointment that I discovered that the browser and dedicated online shop would not be ready for launch. No worries, I thought, I could just play Pilotwings Resort and forget about it.

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“Politics” is a world of grey areas and “yes, but”s that, for most of my life, I’ve gone out of my way to keep clear of. Not only is it murky and difficult to understand but it is also, for the most part, deeply tedious - no matter how glamorous West Wing may have made it look.

However, as I get older, it’s becoming more and more obvious that not everyone sees the world in the same way that I do and that rather than standing back and shouting about how crazy everything is, I need to get involved and try and do what little I can to affect things, to make things more fair.

It is a thankless task with very little gratification as what is fair is commonly hamstrung by what is most profitable.

Back in 2010, as the election drew close, British politics was a bleak landscape with very little hope left in it. Rocked by the global recession, led by a conservative Labour party fronted by Gordon Brown, a man solidly lacking in charisma (perhaps chosen as an antidote to the winning, grinning, war-mongering Tony Blair) things were bleak.

Then something strange happened. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, stood forth from the crowd and made the Lib Dems look like something close to a viable option. Suddenly, I dared to hope.

Having always harboured the feeling that I would ideally vote Lib Dem if they ever displayed anything close to a real ambition of challenging the Tory/New Tory dichotomy, I dared to dream. As The Cleggster strode through the reams of broken promise metaphors, his honest face beaming with hope and pride in his ideals, his manifesto held boldly before him, his attitude indomitable - I allowed myself to hope.

For once I could use my precious vote, my tiny democratic voice, to shout for what I believe rather than the usual shout for what I believe has the best chance of keeping the Tories and their relentless “Fuck you, poor people” beliefs and slyly elitist policies, out of power. How they continue to operate with any kind of popular mandate totally escapes my comprehension.

Unfortunately it was all in vain as Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems turned king-makers to the Tories in return for precious few scraps. The man himself got a front-row seat as Cameron’s Apology-Monkey (or Deputy Prime Minister) working hard to explain why complete U-Turns on strongly campaigned Lib Dem policies such as voting No to university tuition fee increases were totally the right thing for him and Cameron to do.

A lot of people are quite angry at Clegg for everything that has happened in the wake of the Election (the tuition fees snafu being an especially low point for Nick) but I think that this misses the point.

Firstly, the Tories won the majority of seats in the election. Clegg aligning the Liberal Democrats with the Tories was arguably the right thing to do, following the will of the people and putting the Lib Dems in a much stronger position to affect change and shape policies than in a weak Labour-Lib Dem coalition.

Secondly, hating Clegg is exactly what David Cameron wants. The more we hate Clegg, the less attention we’re paying to the people that are forcing his hand.

For example, the No to AV campaign (popular among Tories) is utilising the contempt of the people for the Deputy Prime Minister in their leaflets. After a stream of unsubstantiated nonsense attributed to Vernon Bodganor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, which claims that AV would immediately mean an increase in Lib Dem numbers and therefore more hung parliaments, the leaflet states “Under the Alternative Vote, the only vote that would count would be Nick Clegg’s”.

On the other side of the leaflet is a laundry list of Lib Dem broken promises. Fully half of this No2AV pamphlet is devoted to demonising Clegg before insisting that the AV system will somehow magically ensure a boost in Lib Dem numbers, which is scientifically assured by clever people to be bad. It’s bogglingly stupid. Similarly, a previous pamphlet listed the complexity of the voting system as a reason to vote it down before succinctly explaining the system.

The one argument No2AV.org have going for them is that the new system will cost more, but what price proportional representation? What price for a system that can help to avoid the need for tactical voting, a system in which voters can follow their hearts and know that, should their first choice not win, their voice can still be heard in driving forward a party of similar ideals rather than standing silent and wasted against an opposite force?

One major reason for voting yes on AV is that David Cameron feels in his gut that it’s a bad idea. This is a quote I came across while watching a video about this subject on guardian.co.uk website by Headline Superheroes.

Mr Cameron, Dave, if you will, feels in his gut that this system is a bad idea. It’s entirely possible that Dave went on to provide some non-bilious reasons for his opposititon to the system, but I love the idea that he left it at that. Ultimately it would be his way of avoiding the answer, “because the Tories are no-one’s second choice and AV would ultimately hurt us”.

People shouldn’t need to check which way the wind is blowing to make sure that their voice is heard. It may be imperfect, but AV is a positive step in the right direction. A journey of a thousand miles and all that…

The Green Lantern movie is only a couple of months away (its US release date is 17th June), and I don’t mind admitting it to you, Internet, I am excited.

I think, as a whole, Lantern fever is an ailment more prevalent among our Colonial cousins than among people here in the UK. Even then, I’m not sure how firm a hold the story has on the American psyche beyond the fact that Sheldon from ‘Big Bang Theory’ often wears a natty looking T-shirt emblazoned with the Green Lantern Corps sigil.

Ultimately, Green Lantern strikes me as a somewhat obscure hero to pluck from the DC pantheon for the Hollywood treatment. What about Flash? He runs really fast, it’s a nice simple hook. Supergirl? Surely she’s long-overdue for a gritty reboot, especially with yet another Superman film in the offing (having said that, Flash also already has a movie to his name, albeit a fairly budget effort, but my point stands - it’s reboot o’clock).

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My brand new Nintendo 3DS has arrived and it rocks so hard that I can hardly bear to look at boring, regular, real-life 3D. I’d much rather look at it through the 3D camera and screen of my brand new, high-tech rose-tinted spectacles and go, “ooh, look how 3D and life-like it looks”.

The first time I turned the device on I was practically quivering with anticipation, thanks largely to a three hour charge time out of the box (Nintendo, you tease). The 3D calibration that occurs with the first activation gave me my first glimpse of the lenticular screen’s 3D effect. Were I a weaker man I might have let an “eep!” of excitement slip out as the screen perspective plunged into 3D that first time. Fortunately I’m made of sterner stuff.

Being a little game-poor from the off (Sims 3? I said “game” man!), I initially relied heavily upon the two preinstalled games; Augmented Reality and Face Raiders. The Augmented Reality game, while likely something of a 15-minute flash in the pan activity, is, if nothing else, an outstanding way to demonstrate the capabilities of the 3DS.

You lay an AR card on the table and the 3DS uses this as a base point in the outer 3D camera’s picture frame to project 3D images over. This allows the animated targets to shift in real time as you move the whole console to get a better angle on them. It’s fantastic stuff.

The viewing angle on the screen is very tight. Deviate even slightly from a dead-on view and the 3D effect splits and blurs. To be honest this shouldn’t really be a problem but it does quickly shatter illusions that the 3D effect may just be the result of magic. It’s also slightly bothersome when you’re being shunted by London tube momentum, I’ve found.

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Those who know me will be aware that I regularly make the journey from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly of a Friday evening. Those who have also made this journey will be aware that this is pretty much the worst possible time to do it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself in the manic bum-rush for the first off-peak train on a Friday evening but it is a place where human dignity does not reside. This magical drop in price used to occur in time for the 1840 train, which was bad enough, but in recent memory this was arbitrarily changed to 1900.

Such was the cost in human suffering that Virgin trains have been forced to add an extra train to their schedule to ease the money-making rod that the grubbing bastards have made for their own back.

At 1857 a specifically unreserved and off-peak train rolls out of Euston taking with it a fair percentage of the cattle who would otherwise have risked life, limb, and wheelie luggage in their “no guts, no glory” dash for passage to Manchester.

The one drawback to this grudging concession (because there has to be a drawback, the Virgin money-making machine knows not of compassion) is that this slightly earlier train somehow contrives to pull in to Manchester a full 15 to 20 minutes after the 1900. Sigh

Virgin trains are no better or worse than any other gouging bastards who find themselves looking at a market frothing at the mouth for their product (have you heard about the cost of Champions League final tickets for instance - it’s obscene), it just happens that I am on my way to Manchester at this very moment and wanted to vent.

God bless my Dell Streak for allowing me to do so. And curses upon Virgin trains! Curses! It’s enough to make a body jump on a Mega bus.

Almost. I have some self respect (read “money”) after all.