Typewriter 2.0

I am once again in a hotel, and I am once again thinking about journalism in general and war correspondents in particular.

It’s a rather pleasant hotel.  It’s in the centre of London, with a view out over the docks to the city (and there is almost everything you need to know about London, if you wrote that on the back of a postcard from the past anywhere else in the world, you would have the mental image of a place of transit smelling of desperation and mackerel, populated by wanton types with earrings, and that’s just the sailors.  The only boats bobbing in the dock here are Sunseekers and the city is the City, proud to leave all the lights on in their huge office blocks to create the impression that everyone is still hard at it after dark, shouting into telephones, Like In The Movies).

The air conditioning is hidden and efficient, there is no lazily rotating ceiling fan that can cross fade to become the rotating blades of a helicopter.  Maybe it’s stealth?

Nevertheless, there’s something about being in a hotel and not being on holiday that makes me think about journalism in general and war correspondents in particular.  I’d like to say it’s the mutual incompatibility of pool toys and AK47s that make any holiday hotel a haven, but sadly that’s no longer true.

So on the strength of my previous post about ambient soundtracks, I should probably be putting together the faux war correspondent soundtrack, era by era.  Let’s start with the 1970s.  Busy traffic, foreign murmuring, farting scooters, the occasional mooing of an ox, the whup whup whup of a Huey passing overhead and the clackity clack (‘don’t talk back!’) of the typewriter.

Vietnam was, I have read, the first televised war.

There have been plenty since.  I remember ITV reporting Afghanistan.  Film reports of Sandy Gall sitting in a cave somewhere in Afgan, breaking (unleavened) bread with the Taliban, who were off to beat back the Russians. 

And of course the Falklands.  ‘I counted them all out, I counted them all back’.  A Union Flag waving from the top of an aerial as a squaddie yomped to Port Stanley and Victory.

Gulf War I and Gulf War II.  Gulf War I was night vision cameras on tanks streaking across the desert.  Gulf War II took things to the next level, that next level being vertical as we were treated to footage of the nosecone cam of a bunker buster.  Not to mention the ‘shock and awe-shit there goes that little place that does great falafel’ of the opening night bombardment.

Gulf War II was the last television war.  Now, conflict plays out on snapchat and Twitter, barbarism on Youtube.

What the medium of the next Big One will be I’m not sure.  Possibly when the nukes start flying, the next war will be recorded by the cave paintings of the survivors but actually I think a more realistic prospect will be that the next major conflict will be reported by ABC when it’s a throw down between the Red and the Blue, rather than the Grey and the Blue.  I think Blue won last time?

Vietnam was certainly a reporters’ war.  It also produced memoirs and collections of reportage and, of course, a load of great movies (although the greatest war movie ever made is ‘Where Eagles Dare’, followed by ‘The Eagle Has Landed”, followed by ‘Heartbreak Ridge’.  Basically, if it has ‘Eagle or Clint, it’s all good).

As previously reported from the front line in Salisbury, I’m pretty sure that my ancient Powerbook could stop a .303 round that would take down a Decepticon, but I would rather like it if the keyboard sounds could be set to different themes.  Obviously ‘space’ and ‘rainforest’ or similar would be popular, but I’m attracted to the idea of ‘quill’ and, of course ‘Imperial typewriter’.

For the (written) record, I once owned an electric typewriter, a Brother, once plugged in and placed upon a table, typing generated a report like a fucking artillery barrage.  Hardly the sort of thing to write tender love poetry upon, that ladies could then read, and frot themselves senseless to.

ITDB

The chaps who invented IMDB.Com deserve a Nobel Prize.  I’ll get to why in a moment.

The internet has now been around long enough for apocryphal stories to grow up about it.  I don’t mean web pages that record camp fire stories or folk tales or any of that nonsense, or eBay selling haunted crap, I don’t know much about the paranormal but I do know that if there was an artefact that proved beyond doubt the existence of the supernatural, it would not be on eBay.  It would be in the cellar of the Pentagon with all the alien stuff.  What I mean is stories about the internet that are only possible because of the existence of the internet.

One such story is how IMDB revolutionised the dating scene in LA.  Prior to the existence of IMDB, any asshole with a Porche an a wrap of coke could hit on a girl in a club, tell her he’s a producer or something, and try to get her to sleep with him in the expectation that she would get a guest spot on Magum P.I as ‘Pool Girl 2’.  Only afterwards would the ugly truth emerge, that he works in a Porche dealership in Sacramento (should such a thing even exist).

Thanks to IMDB.Com, girl goes back to her place, makes an excuse to lock herself in the loo with her laptop and after a brief search, finds out that ‘Gary Hairful’ has no production credits and so will not be getting sex that night.  He will, however, get tasered in the nutsack while she films it on her ‘phone, or whatever they do in Hollywood.

The International Movie Database, or IMDB, is an internet success story the way that all success stores about tech should be success stories.  Apparently, IMDB was started by a couple of blokes (disclaimer: women can be tech giants too), probably in their bedrooms, that probably smelled of socks and Lynx, and was basically a listing of who starred in what movie and who the best boy, key grip and gaffer were.  I have no idea how they got this information but I really, really hope that one sat hunched over a keyboard and the other one read the credits as they rolled on a TV screen as a VHS tape played/paused/played/paused.  The truth is probably less romantic and no doubt involved less Pot Noodle than I imagine.

Fast forward and IMDB is now the definitive resource of who did what on movies and television.  That’s why the inventors deserve a Nobel Prize.  While others win the Prize for curing disease, these guys have cured the awful suffering of recognising an actor, and wondering where the hell you have seen them before.  ‘The Bill’, it’s always ‘The Bill’.

So, IMDB, is a force for good.

So why not another definitive and comprehensive source of useful information that could be used in social situations?

Why not an International Tattoo Database?

Just a few years ago, tattoos were a relatively scarce commodity per square inch of human flesh.  Before blokes started getting Maori markings to show their tribal allegiance to Oswestry and women started getting Cantonese symbols because they liked Number 38 on the menu or whatever, you got a tat if you were in the military, where part of a tribe, had been in prison or had been in a concentration camp.

Before tattoos became fashionable, they used to mean something.

Now, you’re in a bar, your hitting it off with a young woman and you notice her shoulder tattoo.  Does she like mystical symbols, or hot and sour soup, is she a committed lepidopterist of renown, or a sex worker, or is it a curiously shaped birthmark and she is the rightful Queen of Wessex?  A discreet visit to the ITDB and you can decide whether the evening is going to end with you already thinking about what to name your kids, or exiting the venue now via the lavvy window.

Likewise a lady can establish whether that coat of arms on a fella’s forearm is a distinguished regiment, C Block HMP Chelmsford, or even worse, a minor public school.

ITDB, a force for good.

A change of scene - movies

If you want to change your universe, then surely one of the best ways to do it is to sit in a dark room, devoid of distraction, and watch adventure, excitement, action, romance and drama unfold in front of you in spectacular technicolor, to a rousing soundtrack, eating popcorn. People have even started sporting glasses to allow them to see things in three dee and immerse themselves even more. And buying larger sizes of popcorn. With the 'bucket' now the standard size, can the 'barrel', 'bin' or 'skip' be far behind?

Life on the screen, even in two dimensions, can be much more attractive than life in the aisles, especially if you have just run out of popcorn. Glamorous and heroic types leap into action, fall in love and step in time with the plot, the music or the werewolves depending on your taste in flicks. Even if the film is unrelentingly dire, the will be something about the way the hero wears a sweater while staring moodily out of a window into the rain that makes you think 'hummn, nice chunky sweater'. Even 'the horse whisperer', a film so without merit that when having to sit through it I was rather hoping that the vet would turn up and shoot me, has pleasant scenery.

It is captivating, to gaze into an oblong of excitement where people have adventurous and glamorous lives, seemingly unencumbered by the fits of rage that grip any normal person whenever they accidentally see one of those BT adverts on the telly.

And it's quite right and proper to be transported somewhere else for the length of the film, this is, after all, an escapist media. It's when people take the movie home with them that things start getting interesting, and sometimes a bit weird.

It can be as simple as using your iPod to lay down a soundtrack to your life, complete with theme tune and specific sounds for particular activities. Who would not, given the opportunity, want to have music composed for them to accompany, for instance, a montage of images of squeezing veg and deliberating over wine while on a visit to the supermarket. And would that drive to the garden centre not be a bit more interesting with some bespoke chase music? I once drove through the centre of London with the theme to 'The Professionals' on a loop and it was bloody terrific.

The worst offenders, even worse than the sort of people who like to talk about continuity errors on Internet message boards, are the sci if and fantasy fans who dress up as characters from their favourite movie and go to conventions. What strikes me as odd is that you get loads of different characters from loads of different franchises all mingling together, it's like the ultimate crossover event.

The problem is though that the bar has been set incredibly high. Ever since Carrie Fisher put on that gold bikini, there has only been one acceptable choice of costume for anyone at least half decent looking at a science fiction convention. The problem is that Carrie Fisher was indulging in quite a lot of drugs back when they shot Return of the Jedi, the sort that keep you thin. She was not indulging in quite a lot of cake, the sort that result in comments like ' are you sure you are on the right end of that 'slave Leia' chain.

But at least plump Leia's make the effort, and this is appreciated. On the other hand, painting yourself blue head to toe and repeatedly correcting people that you are from Pandora, actually, will not stop them yelling 'smurf!' at you at every opportunity.

Buckle up!

Ricky Gervaise. Not my cup of tea. Not even my pot of piss. Went to see him in Edinburgh a few years ago, where he was appearing doing stand-up in a show called ‘Science’. This has since become the benchmark against which all my other shite experiences that cost money and were profoundly unsatisfactory are measured against, replacing the previous benchmark of ‘My Crying Game Hooker Moment’. But, credit where credit is due, during one part of the show, just about at the point where it lurched from unfunny to unfunny and offensive, he used the term ‘buckle up’.

This has since passed into common…actually too common…usage in the household. Most recently it was used as the opening titles for the film ‘Girl with the dragon tattoo’ unfolded on the cinema screen.

Now, it’s probably fair to say given the popularity of the book that it was more likely that the audience for this film have read the book the film is based on than the audience viewing any other movie adaptation, apart maybe from the ‘Da Vinci Code’. But some, even most, does not mean all and looking round the theatre, there did seem to be rather a lot of ‘old dears’ in the audience.

I am not one to stereotype, I leave that to readers of the Daily Mail, but I’m guessing that if you were to ask a pensioner if they would like a trip to the cinema with their grown up children to watch a film which has been marketed as an intelligent thriller, they would say ‘yes please, and pass the Cadbury chocolate éclairs’. If, however, you asked them if they would like to come and see a film that has graphically depicted scenes of sexual violence towards women, they might choose something else to watch, or at least chew…my recommendation being a stiff sherry. By which I mean gin.

Anyone who has read the book knows about the violence, and you could sense the ‘buckle up’ moment coming as those who had read the book wondered how the scene would be dealt with. I was rather hoping for a ‘Reservoir Dogs’ style move the camera off scene, lots of horrible noises and let the audience supply the awful images in their imagination.

Nope. Instead it was full on awful.

What was odd was that the ‘revenge’ scene was just as brutal. Normally when some vile criminal gets his comeuppance, one punches the air. True, this is normally because it’s always fun to watch the Batmobile run somebody over, but also because the filmmaker understands that one goes to the cinema for entertainment, rather than trauma.

The argument for graphic depiction I suppose is that one should be unflinching in the depiction of the sort of vile act that makes the audience flinch. OK, but I think that if you are going to be graphic, you have to make sure it’s not gratuitous. The problem with the movie was that it wasn’t good enough to offset those scenes. If the rest of it had achieved the same intensity, then it would have been contextual, and for the shocked audience would have felt more consensual.

I’m not saying it was a bad movie. It’s not, it’s OK. It’s very uneven though, some actors have Swedish accents, others don’t bother. Daniel Craig is very good, and the other leads are good, the scenery is marvellous, even if it doesn’t look as good as the BBC or the Swedish ‘Wallander’.

Actually, there’s a lot of nastyness in the film, as there was in the book. As well as violence against women there’s murder, dysfunctional families, infidelity, catacide, torture and lashings of Nazis, and unrepentant Nazis at that. It’s just that it kind of gets buried under the on-screen brutality.

When the lights came up on a full house, everyone seemed fairly pleased with what they had seen. At least there appeared to be very little muffled sobbing. Maybe people do like to see adult themes tackled head on. I rather like to see Batmobiles tackle super-villains head-on and I know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

It’s a good film but, if you do go see…buckle up.

A sprinkling of stardust

There’s more excitement in the village than there’s been since the last informal running of the bulls. Discreet yellow signs point the way for ‘cars’ to go to ‘base’ and, intriguingly, ‘set’. It would appear that that crazy old business we call show has come to the village and judging by the plethora of vans, lights, gaffers, best boys and cables, we’re not just being sprinkled with stardust, we’re having it crapped all over us.

There appears to be a film unit at the Vicarage. The Vicarage is no longer the abode of the vicar, it was sold off years ago by the local church to raise money for either charity or to finance the vicar’s somewhat expensive tastes in fine vestments and booze, depending on who you believe.

Actually, I rather liked the old Vicar, he was an ex-RN type who could have come straight out of central casting, looking as he did like an aged version of the jolly mariner depicted on the front of a packet of Player’s Navy Cut. Word had it that the church thought so highly of his work in our delightful corner of a leafy shire that they packed him off to some inner-city parish. Apparently his beard covered most of the expression of shock he wore in his last months, but by no means all.

Whoever occupies the Vicarage, the finest house in the village, has obviously decided to supplement their income by hiring it out as a filming venue. The film unit have been there for a few days now and so I am assuming they are not taping a porno, although the way that films are made these days, maybe they are filming the original ‘Dirty Doinking’ and the sequels ‘Dirtier Doinking’ and ‘Filthy Doinking’ back to back. If they are filming back to back, it’ll be a pretty dull porno.

In fact, the presence of blokes in puffa jackets grunting into walkie talkies, that staple of the film industry, indicates the sort of production likely to end up actually on the box rather than on youhootube. It has gathered remarkably little attention. When I were a lad it would have been the subject of considerable interest, now everyone has a video camera and puts their own film together to broadcast to their mates, even if this is just happy slapping a rotweiller until it comically savages them (I’d give that three stars, four if the dog eats the camera after eating the tormenter).

Or maybe it’s just the wrong type of entertainment. With interior filming in an old house, this is likely to be something that means tight breeches on the men and plunging necklines on the women, Jane Dickens or similar. Of more interest no doubt would be a talent show. Indeed, I’ve worked out the perfect talent show formula – acts are not even allowed to perform, they simply turn up in a room and have abuse hurled at them and their dreams shattered for the entertainment of a baying mob who can, by pressing the red button, activate a hose that shoots liquid shit at the hapless soul at 800psi until they stop screaming. Surely that is kinder than the seconds of suspense that come between the host saying ‘the result of the vote is that you are…’ and the word ‘fucked!’ or ‘Coming back next week’.
For my generation at least, seeing local views on telly is still a bit special. For many, the glamour fades when the view is partially obscured by a BBC reporter in a flak jacket, or a line of riot police, but there’s something about seeing something familiar treated in an unfamiliar way that fascinates, like when they put straw down in front of an old building and, hey presto, it’s the Victorian age, marred only slightly by the double glazing and the satellite dish.

Of course those desperate to break into the business could just hang around the set hoping that the leading man meets with an accident like ‘being bludgeoned by an ambitious local’, or try to get a part by giving the director a blow job. If it’s a porno, that’s the audition.