The Looking Glass

Off for a sneak preview of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland -- the 3D Imax edition.


This isn't really cinema at all, in any meaningful sense: it is cine-spectacle (and not just because you have to wear those unflattering 3D goggles).


The 3D effect here is ok, if utterly "artificial" in feeling -- it has a sort of metallic-y feel to it, as if each element has been overburnished and now shines in a weird way.


The story is the one you know probably off by heart, and Burton does little with it other than go through the motions. For him, it's all about the style.


And the style of many -- but by no means all -- of the characters is delightful. The Tweedles deserve their own movie, Alan Rickman's gorgeous voice makes the blue caterpillar utterly irresistible, and Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat is suitably seductive.


But Helena Bonham-Carter's Red Queen... ah, there she was, channelling Miranda Richardson's gloriously monstrous Queenie from Blackadder, though, alas, missing her Nursie ("right breasty-dumpling... or left breasty-dumpling...?"). Except that Richardson had that evil core which made her creation terrifying: Bonham-Carter felt more like a Panto Dame.


The 3D was more subtle than usual, but each scene followed that basic guidance for amateur photographers -- make sure there's a tree branch or a lamp-post in the foreground of any shot, to give it the illusion of depth. Ironically, the artificiality of it all made the 3D seem more like an illusion than reality.


But this is a Tim Burton film, and you know what you're likely to get. You get it.


And (whisper this...) is it just me, or is everyone getting a bit bored with Johnny Depp's tics, mannerisms and all-round kookiness?

Mother fist

Nothing much to tell you about this photosequence.


"Nasty interior decor, cute boy" probably sums it up well enough.


Verrrry nice pubey bushy goodness, though, untrimmed and magisterial.


With a rather fine winkie, too.


Manly, butch, relaxed...


Yeah, that's all that needs to be said, I think.

Transylvania

Katalin Varga looks like a strange beast -- a British-Romanian-Hungarian co-production (the first I've ever come across), directed by Englishman Peter Strickland.


It feels like one of those late Westerns, a sweeping epic where the majesty and grandeur of the landscape seem almost to overwhelm the humans and their concerns, grave though those might be.


The eponymous central character takes her son in their horse-drawn cart, heading out of her village for a place unknown. Her husband is left behind. There seems to have been some sort of scandal, but the details are fuzzy.


It becomes clear fairly soon that Katalin is not someone who you should cross lightly. At times she seems to be composed entirely of naked willpower.


This culture feels so alien -- not just the (to me) strange-sounding language, but the overwhelmingly rural nature of life. It's as if the modern world has only superficially penetrated here, the occasional cheap cheep of a mobile phone giving us the only clue that we're even in the current century.

This is actor Tibor Pálffy.
He has a very nice penis.

I keep reading that Katalin Varga is a feminist revenge movie, which is both patronising and irritating. It just so happens the character seeking revenge is a woman: feminism it ain't. But it's an engrossing and rich film.

Comment moderation

Some annoying tosser has been bombarding the comments sections of my blog with spam. I wouldn't mind if it were smart spam, but it's just shite.


So, to save me some of the hassles involved in deleting this crap, I turned on comment moderation for all posts over 14 days old. The tosser has now been spamming more recent posts.

I've just deleted three more insultingly stupid spams, but if this wanker does it again I'm going to turn on comment moderation for every post. Sorry about that -- it means you'll have to wait until the next time I log in before you see your sperms of wisdom appear on screen. But I wanted to reassure you that, unless you're a parasitical spammer, there's not much danger of me censoring anything.

Please do keep commenting -- it's much appreciated (unless you're the tosser, obviously).

Artificial?

These four photos, from a much larger set, will suffice.


I found my eyes drawn to the grass.


Is it real or fake? Looks fake to me. But maybe it's in another country?


I couldn't decide.


So I decided just to stare at their limp cocks instead. Much less unsettling. Sooooothing.

Shocking

Just three images of this fine chap, but I rather like them.


I think it's all the clashing colours which have caught my attention -- the pastels and the more plastic colours.


Although he's rather fine.


Er... now I'm confused -- I don't know which caught my attention. Who cares?

Great... Super!

You'll recall that the glorious InterCity 125, British Rail's High Speed Train, is approaching the end of its working life.


This iconic design transformed Britain's inter-city rail operations in the late 1970s and during the 1980s, and it still forms the backbone of the long-haul high-speed fleet.


The government appointed Hitachi (in what it laughingly claimed was a "British-led consortium". Yeah... led by Japanese company Hitachi) to design a new generation of trains to replace the venerable HSTs -- and they came up with the "Super Express Train" (which sounds pretty gay to me, but what do I know?). Otherwise known as SET.


The initial specification for this train was so utterly absurd that it would have defied the laws of physics. Sanity of a sort (or, perhaps, an interlude in the insanity) led to the government announcing it was going to electrify the Great Western mainline, which would otherwise have been the main stomping ground for diesel-powered SETs.


Quite why we need a distributed power-train (an EMU) to operate this when a locomotive-hauled carriage set would have been cheaper, more flexible, and simpler is anyone's guess.


Anyway, the government today announced the whole project was suspended pending an election -- apparently the financing has collapsed following the Great Depression, and the government thinks the new government should enter into the contract.


Yeah... this project gives off the feeling that it's entering a death spiral.

Jobsworths

A fascinating documentary from the BBC exploring the well-known proposition that "immigrants come here and take all our jobs" (UK viewers can watch it free for a limited period on the BBC iPlayer here).


Sounds ghastly, but the delightful (and rather smart) Evan Davies makes it both engrossing and informative.


But it's the participants who are so compelling -- their sense of entitlement and self-pity, smeared around in equal measure; their mouthing of platitudes about how they'd be willing to do any job, followed by the appalling litany of excuses and justifications they then wheel out; their delusional attacks on immigrants when it is they, themselves, that are the problem.


The warmest person in the documentary was the Indian owner of a restaurant, a man of near-infinite patience and generosity; but my heart also went out to the teenager who was so inept he was unable to tie his own tie (but at least he turned up and tried: the other three assigned to the same workplace just didn't bother).


The pair who annoyed me most were given work in a potato factory, but couldn't pack the right number of bags in each box and then expressed outrage that they were being singled out for a telling-off (done in the nicest manner possible) when there was a foreigner in their team -- who, presumably, they felt was to blame.


They then spent their time telling all their (immigrant) co-workers how unfair it was that they were in this country, "taking jobs from English people", while complaining that the production line had been deliberately speeded-up just to confound them (it had been slowed down, to help them).


Wisbech, where the documentary was filmed, is in my part of the world (Evan was seen catching an InterCity 225 from London, but isolated Wisbech -- "the capital of The Fens" -- hasn't been on the rail network for around forty years). This bleak little market town is typical of so many places in England, and much more typical of the country as a whole, I'm afraid to say, than the Metropolitan melting-pot in which I live.


Fascinating viewing, and a damning indictment of the dependency culture we've created where people see nothing wrong in sponging off the benefits system (ie, off the rest of us) rather than getting off their arses.


Especially since at least two of them could have made a very good living as gay escorts. They just have to put their minds to it!

Hug a hoody

I don't find the hoody-look very enticing.


In fact, it annoys me. Not because I find them threatening, but because I can't see their faces properly.


And I need to see the head to work out if I'm lusting after them or not.


Doesn't matter what else is on display... it's the face that really makes all the difference.


Which does seem rather puritanical of me, now I think of it.


But I really can't go along with that magnificently sluttish proverb: you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire.

Cracking

Genius designer Walter Gropius, the founder of the hugely influential Bauhaus school, designed the TAC range of tableware for Rosenthal:


An iconic design, while I appreciate the immense presence of these objects, I find the tea-making accoutrements overly fussy and mannered. They're trying too hard.


The flatware, on the other hand, is almost invisible -- but when you look at it, it has the most exquisite shape. This is fine bone china -- light and thin, but immensely strong.


The reason I've posted these is to draw an end to my current obsession with kitchen supplies, and to satisfy the entrants in my competition (posed in the post below -- see comments for the full skinny).

WTF??

I've been waiting for someone to complain about the absence of cock, and I was going to keep banging on about tableware until then. But I'm now boring myself. So instead, here's a photograph of the former German Embassy in St Petersburg.


Brownie Points and Bragging Rights to the first person who can make the connection between the recent orgy of discussion about crockery and this building.

In the meantime, I'll post some token cock for you.

How did I forget?

In my post about Cornishware I forgot to enthuse about the name given to this object:


The TG Green range of tablewares includes delightful jugs in this pattern (10oz, 20oz and 30oz sizes) which go by the truly magnificent name of "The Dreadnought Jug". How cool is that?

In fact, all their jugs are particularly fine -- this is a (new style) 1.1 litre juice jug:


But the freshness of Cornishware means it also works outside the kitchen -- these beakers make delightful toothbrush holders:


I think I've probably banged-on enough about Cornishware now, don't you think?