#in the dream i was being chased by The Joker (of the people fame)

[aenthroppe]

There's blood in our courage And love is in the air If you don't want us to follow suit We must stop to care

Lyrics that came to me after waking up from a dream this morning

[footballfanfictions]

The thrill of the chase - Chapter Three

Pairings: Mason Mount/OC, Ben Chilwell/OC

Authors Note: Apologies again for how long this has taken to write, life has been absolutely manic the last couple of weeks. As always, I hope you enjoy this and feedback is gratefully received.

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 He’s pinning me down against the bed, leaning over me. His hands are everywhere, touching and caressing me wherever he can reach and his mouth is on my neck, sucking a patch of skin to mark me.

My hands are in his hair and I’m tugging at it to get him to look at me, so that I can connect our mouths again, but when I pull his face to mine, it isn’t Ben anymore. It’s Rory.

I wake up from the fantasy in a cold sweat, my bed sheet stuck to my slick back and my pyjama top crumpled. I put my head into my hands and sob quietly. I’m not crying because I’ve had some sex dream about a footballer that snogged me. I’m crying because once again, I*’m thinking about my ex boyfriend and it’s becoming obsessive.

I sit up in bed and find myself checking his social media. His facebook has him check in to some fancy hotel in the Cotswolds with his girlfriend. They had met not long after we broke up. In fact, the gap between us breaking up and them supposedly meeting was so slim that it made me wonder if he had been talking to her before we called it quits. I had no proof of that of course, but that didn’t make me feel any better about any of it. I imagined the two of them sharing a bed together in their hotel room, enjoying the comfort of sleeping next to someone. It had been so long that I barely remembered what that felt like. 

I almost texted Bri, she would have been happy to talk even if I woke her, but I wasn’t quite ready to share what I had been thinking about recently. It would be hypocritical of Bri to judge me for thinking about Rory when all she went on about at the moment was making her ex jealous. That made me think of Billy and how much he liked her. I had this awful feeling that if he did ask Bri out that she would use it as an opportunity and not give him a fair chance. Billy did not deserve to be used like that. 

I ran my fingers through my damp hair and collected it into a ponytail, tying it with the band that I had kept around my wrist since letting my hair down before bed. I had this weird habit that whenever I was feeling stressed, needed to really concentrate on something or make a decision, I would always tie my hair up. Rory had always thought it was nuts. I had noticed from their instagram pictures that his girlfriend never really wore her hair up. I always called her that, his girlfriend because giving her a name would make her feel real, and maybe there was a part of me that didn’t want her to be real and still clung onto the idea that we were just on a break, exploring our careers and travelling only to come back together again, get married and have three kids and a dog. 

My parents had tried really hard to hide their devastation when I told them about the break up, telling me that there were plenty more fish in the sea and that the timing just wasn’t right for me to meet someone. They had then of course both reminisced about their university partners which had led to a row when my dad spoke about his university girlfriend Mandy a little bit too fondly. 

I stared down at my phone, deciding that I needed a distraction, and the best distraction was work. I logged out of my own instagram account and clicked on the first saved profile in my list. It was the player that I had been posting for the other day before Billy had his accident. I checked his recent posts and likes and nothing seemed to be out of place, except perhaps for the fact that it was around 3am and he was getting regular messages, the name Sam appearing on my screen once again.  By this point in my maddened, ex-stalking state I will admit that I was curious. I clicked the icon that took me to his inbox and began to read. 

They were conversing about his impending separation from his wife and about how they couldn’t wait to be together. I felt like throwing up in my mouth that one of the players that I worked with would behave like that, although I hadn’t really met this player in particular. His name was Jorginho and he was known as somewhat of a joker.  I kept out of his way for that very reason, not being a big fan of practical jokes and pranks.

I was about to close his inbox when another message came in.

What do we do about Ben?

I blinked and re-read the message several times. Ben? 

What on earth could Ben have to do with Jorginho cheating on his wife and leaving her for this woman, I wondered.

I clicked on her profile then and scrolled back through her pictures. She was a stunning brunette and her posts were mainly bikini pictures with the odd paid promotion thrown in here and there. I scrolled until a picture stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a picture of her with Ben, both smiling into the camera, their arms around each other and a caption that read ‘my everything’.

There were a few more pictures of them together and it was very evident that she had once been Ben’s girlfriend. At first I felt a bit numb, then I felt a pang of jealousy, and then I felt angry that she was conducting an affair with one of his team mates right under his nose and probably planning on lying to him about it.

I didn’t know what to do with this information.

He never has to know. I’m spending one more season here then my contract expires and we can go anywhere. 

I read his response, that confirmed what I feared. They were going to sneak around and hide this from Ben, probably until the divorce was finalised and then they would disappear off to another country and Ben would be left to read about it in the press. Unless i did something about it. 

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I had a meeting with Marina this morning. She commented that I seemed really distracted and I commented that I needed content other than Mason Mount to post onto social media. Marina had laughed and said that he was increasing our social media engagement and that we had new fans and shirt sales as a result of his appeal. I muttered something rude under my breath about what I thought about his appeal.

Marina and I had a really good working relationship and could banter with each other whilst still acting professionally and having a great deal of respect.

We had decided that I could capture my own content for our social media whenever I liked and would be provided with equipment such as a camera to enable me to. I had agreed to this to get me out of just posting Mason, but it did mean extra work for me, doubling up on the job of the club photographer and that I would need to spend more time outside on the pitches with the players, something I wasn’t sure I particularly fancied doing.

I hadn’t spoken to Ben since he kissed me, and now I felt even worse about it because I had been thinking about Rory, and had discovered that his ex and his team mate were sleeping together.

It was only the first of September, but I had started thinking about content for Halloween and maybe even thanks giving as we now had an American player at the club. 

I was just messing around with different shades of orange in photoshop when there was a knock on my office door. 

I got up from my desk slowly, silently praying that it wouldn’t be Ben because I couldn’t face him without blurting out the secret. 

Instead I had the displeasure of opening the door to find Mason Mount stood there.

“What do you want?” I sighed. 

“God you are sunshine and rainbows this morning. You look like you haven’t slept.” he said grinning. He was trying to make me laugh by jokingly insulting me and then cupped my face with his hands and started to stroke beneath my eyes with his thumbs. I was about to ask him what the bloody hell he was doing when he said “just smoothing out the wrinkles”. 

I shook him off and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Sorry.” he mumbled. 

I let him in then rather than the two of us just standing in the door way. He walked over to my desk and perched on the end exactly like Ben had done before he had kissed me. Except surely Mason wasn’t going to do that.

“What can I help you with?” I asked, trying my best to be polite to him. He had tried after all to make me laugh. It wasn’t his fault that I was so worried about everyone and everything else going on around here.

“I have a bit of a problem. My girlfriend is in this girl band and they are doing a music video next week that she wants me to be in so that they can get more views. The thing is, I’m not sure it really fits with my brand.” he explained, looking down at his shoes and the carpet, his eyes darting back up to me every few seconds while I considered a response. 

“Well footballers have been in music videos before without it affecting any of their sponsorship or brand deals.” I responded, thinking about the music video Fernando Torres had been in for a spanish band years ago. 

“Maybe it’s not my image i’m necessarily worried about. I feel a bit used but don’t know how to tell her.” as he spoke he looked vulnerable for the first time and the cheekiness was all gone. 

“So if I’m getting this right, they’re a band kind of breaking through and you being in the video would get them a lot of views and might get them really famous. Don’t you want your girlfriend to be successful?” as I asked him, he looked thoughtful, and then sad.

“I don’t really want to be with someone that now only wants me because I’m famous, and wants to leech fame from me.” he shrugged. 

I remembered the rant I had at him about how privileged he was for being rich and famous at such a young age, but I now started to consider that it must come with some drawbacks like not knowing if the people closest to you actually like you for who you are or if they want to use you for fame and fortune. 

“Well if you like, if they ask us for permission I will say no and that i need you for one of our campaigns whenever it is scheduled for and that it’s non negotiable because the club pays your wages.” He grinned and hopped off the edge of the desk. 

He made to step towards me but I held out my hand to stop him.

“No need to thank me.” 

He nodded and proceeded to head towards my office door. I stopped him just before he grabbed the handle by saying “Can I give you some advice? I don’ think that you should be with someone like that either.”

Without turning back to me, he sighed and responded “I don’t think that you should be with someone like Ben Chilwell”.

Before I could say anything else in response he opened the door and left

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By lunchtime my brain was completely scrambled. I had busied myself with my idea for a thanksgiving tribute to Christian Pulisic the American player and planned special catering for the day to include a full turkey dinner in the canteen for him. That would of course give me the perfect opportunity for a post about how we are so thankful for him and want to make him feel at home. Marina would love it. 

I thought about hiding in my office until everyone returned to their jobs or their training and then going to the canteen, but I knew if I did that there would surely be no food left.

I was just loading my tray up with small items from the tapas menu when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Looking over it, I saw that it was Billy. His smile was 50-watt and could light up any room.

“Hey Billy, are you okay?” I asked him.

“Oh yes.” he nodded. “I’ve got a plan to ask ye friend out. Wanted to run it by you if you’re free?” 

I looked around and most of the tables were free so I agreed and said we could sit together and talk about it over lunch and that maybe Bri would join us if there wasn’t some kit emergency keeping her away. He smiled at that.

We sat down at a table by the window, a nice amount of sunshine came through it which warmed my back and the back of my neck nicely.

Billy went off immediately into explaining his plan to ask Bri out. He was going to have one of the lads accidentally rip his training shirt during the morning session so that he would have an excuse to go and see her.

“Hang on - tell me what day you’re planning this and I can distract her dad for a bit.” I interjected.

“Already got that covered sweetheart. He’s on a conference all of next week!” he grinned.

I looked puzzled and he laughed at the expression I was pulling. What kind of conference would a kit man need to go to? Were they brining out a new range or under armor or something like that?

“I know it sounds mad.” 

“It doesn’t just sound mad, it sounds like a good opportunity, go on.”I encouraged him.

He was going to fill one of the old unused offices with flowers and somehow convince Bri that she needed to follow him there so that he could ask her. It was so sweet and completely something that Bri would go for so I told him that his plan sounded brilliant and that I would help him in any way possible.

“I’m going to get her thinking about you in preparation you know.” I said, showing Billy a freshly edited picture of him on my phone screen that I was planning on posting that afternoon when I got back to my desk. “This beauty is going on all our social media pages. By the way, why did you never tell me that you used to model?”

He blushed bright scarlet when I brought up his modelling career and then we both descended into fits of laughter over it.

“You’re a really good friend, you know” he smiled. “If I can call you that.”

“Of course I’m your friend Billy.” I agreed.

“Well seeing as we are now best pals, do ye want to tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked.

I gulped, my mouth and throat suddenly feeling dry and uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell him what I had learnt about Jorginho, but maybe I could at least be honest about Rory.

“I had a really bad break up about a year ago and it’s still bothering me. Just you know, seeing other people happy and wondering what could have been.” I shrugged, trying to seem not fussed. I was bothered though and talking about it made the pain in my chest when I thought about him that little bit worse. I felt tears threatening to form.

Billy put his hand over mine and squeezed it.

“If you’re still following him or still friends on facebook, you need to delete him so that you can move on. Do you want me to do it for you?” he offered, holding his hand out to me for my phone.

Billy was right, I needed to let go of the part of me that still missed Rory, the part that felt jealous every time I saw what he was up to, and I could never get over that while it was accessible to me. 

I gave Billy my phone and told him Rory’s social media names even though he was the top person in all of my search history.

“Oh Katie, I’m sorry. It can’t have been nice to see him announce his engagement on here.” he said sympathetically.

It took a second for my brain and heart to catch up with each other and I felt sick to my stomach as I ask him to repeat himself.

I hadn’t heard him wrong and he showed me the post. I must have missed it by being so preoccupied with Ben’s situation. He had taken her to that fancy hotel in the Cotswolds to propose to her. Their grinning faces staring back at me from the picture didn’t feel like people I knew anymore.

“That’s that then. The end of that chapter of my life, officially.” I scraped my hair back and tied it up quickly.

“He’s gone from your virtual life too now.” Billy said, passing the phone back to me. 

“Thank you.” I said quietly. 

It’s hard to describe how you feel the second your hope for something shatters. The reality was that Rory was never going to realise that he had made a mistake and come back to me, because the reality was that we weren’t the same people we had been when we had first met at university and we had genuinely drifted apart. I could point the finger and blame him for possibly cheating, sure, but what good would that do me? Truth is we weren’t meant to be together and he hadn’t made a mistake. He had done the right thing to lead him to the person that he was supposed to be with. I just wished that I didn’t feel this way. I was sure that if I had moved on and met someone else my reaction would have been different. I might even have congratulated him. 

That evening I went home and cracked open a bottle of wine, and once I reached the bottom of it I cried myself to sleep.

[mst3kproject]

419: The Rebel Set

 I’ve got two off-topic intro stories I can tell here and neither one is worth it so I’ll tell them both.  One is that I did in fact have a four-hour layover in Chicago once.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough time to do anything but wander around the airport, eat soft pretzels, and be mildly impressed that they have an entire dinosaur skeleton in Terminal C.  No way I could have fit robbing an armored car in there.  Also, although I am from Canada I have never been to the Canadian Exhibition – but my grandmother once had a vision of Jesus there, so I guess it is a great place to meet celebrities.

Master Criminal Mr. Tucker hires three nobodies – an out-of-work actor, an unpublished writer, and a guy whose mom was famous for something – to commit a robbery for him.  Then, when they’re all stuck on a train with him, he sets about murdering them one by one so that he won’t have to share the money.  It worked for the Joker, right?  He stages Famous Jr’s suicide and throws Writer off the train, but Actor (a guy named Johnny, married to a woman named Jeannie) gets wise and tries to turn himself in to the police.  Somehow or other it all ends in a drawn-out foot chase through a train yard in which Tucker kicks Johnny’s ass repeatedly, until finally electrocuting himself to death. Johnny goes to jail.

Did this movie somehow switch titles with The Beatniks by accident?  There are beatniks in this one, whereas there were none in that film, and there were rebels in The Beatniks, while the protagonists of The Rebel Set don’t seem very rebellious.  Weird.

In many ways, The Rebel Set reminds me of a Coleman Francis film.  For starters, there’s the dreariness of the sets and photography.  The Beatnik Bar looks like it’s in somebody’s basement, it’s probably dim and chilly and the poetry is bad, and it just isn’t somewhere we want to hang out.  The train never looks like a train, mostly because nobody bothers to pretend it’s moving – anybody who’s been on a train knows it’s never a smooth ride. The roadside where they stage the accident doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near Chicago (unless this is set in the same universe as The Beginning of the End).  The railway yard looks like John Carradine is just around the corner singing Night Train to Mundo Fine.

For another thing, The Rebel Set is full of little moments that make no sense at all.  Like the rich couple who decide to slum in the beatnik bar, where the husband heckles the one-eyed poet until they get thrown out. What the hell was that?  It had nothing to do with the plot.  Why were they even in there?  Or how about the two ditzy old ladies on the train who sit around and have strange conversations with Tucker and the conductor?  There was a moment when I honestly wondered if they were undercover cops but they were just… there, like the kids in The Beast of Yucca Flats feeding soda pop to the pigs.  I think they were comic relief, but it’s kind of hard to say when they were so conspicuously not funny.

How about the conductor wanting the Writer to help him with his memoirs? The Writer takes his card but obviously doesn’t mean to call him, because he considers the material beneath him. Again, I think this is supposed to be funny, but it’s not.  The conductor (who is later insulted again by the old women when he won’t stay and listen to them yammer) doesn’t seem like somebody whose life story is likely to be as interesting as he thinks, but the rude brush-off he gets does not make us like the Writer, either.  I’m honestly not sure we’re supposed to like any of these guys.

Who is this stuff for, anyway?  Is the scene with the rich couple intended for the ‘creeps’ or the ‘squares’?  The couple are presented as pompous and patronizing, even the wife, but the beatniks are a bunch of fatalistic losers who are nearly incomprehensible.  The one-eyed poet is clearly meant to be an object of fun, as is the ditzy waitress. The scene seems to be trying to have it both ways, going ‘lol, stupid rich people!’ and ‘lol, weirdos!’ at the same time, and therefore alienates both.

Also like a Coleman Francis film, The Rebel Set manages to squeeze all the excitement out of things that should constitute action and suspense.  Red Zone Cuba had us confused during an invasion and falling asleep over daring escapes.  The Rebel Set tries to have chase scenes, daring heists, and murders, but it mostly just makes us go, “huh?” The heist proceeds according to plan, with no real feeling that the criminals are at risk of discovery.  The fight between Johnny and Famous Jr. on the train is predictable dialogue followed by clumsy fisticuffs.  The chase at the railway yard goes on, and on, and on, while Johnny gets repeatedly beat up by an old guy dressed as a priest.

The only scene that comes near working the way it’s supposed to is when Tucker throws Writer off the train.  We knew it was coming, of course, but Writer declaring “I don’t want any of your damn money!” and then the cut to the train going by, with the blare of the horn to drown out his scream, isn’t bad.

Yet another thing that makes me think of Coleman Francis is how, despite its bizarre attempts at humour, The Rebel Set as a whole is a No Joy Allowed movie.  Nobody gets a happy ending.  Tucker dies, but so do Writer and Famous Jr.  Johnny survives, just barely, but he’s definitely going to serve time no matter that he confessed and helped catch Tucker – since nobody saw Tucker’s death, for all they know Johnny murdered him, too.  Jeannie just wanders off alone in a strange city, having lost everything.

In fact, The Rebel Set is so Colemany-Francisy that I was surprised Johnny survived.  I really expected him to be gunned down by the cops in the railway yard, no questions asked.  I figured Tucker would get caught and brought to justice, since he was obviously the villain of the movie, but I thought all three of his stooges would be killed first, victims of his hubris or something.  Instead, The Rebel Set hammers home how tragic the situation is by having Famous Mom show up at the end to tell reporters she is going home to her son, unaware that he’s in the casket being carried by.  This tries so hard to pull on the heartstrings that, like Last Clear Chance, it loops past infinity and earns snickers instead of tears.

Does this movie have a message?  I have some trouble with that.  There are a couple of ideas that could count as a theme, but none of them work, and they certainly don’t unify the film. The most obvious is crime doesn’t pay, which is another thing that makes this feel like a Coleman Francis film.  Both Red Zone Cuba and The Skydivers had criminals being punished for their deeds, along with everybody else around them.  The only thing missing from The Rebel Set is the airplane.

The ending, with Famous Mom’s sudden appearance, suggests that there’s a side of Appreciate What You Have: Famous Mom didn’t take time to be a mother to her son when he needed her, and now that she’s decided it’s time, it’s actually too late.  This could apply to Johnny, too, since it could be argued that he didn’t appreciate Jeannie and how hard she worked to support him.  He lies about what he’s doing, both to protect her and so that she won’t try to talk him out of it – but he would have been protecting her far better if he’d just refused to get involved.  At the end, he’s ruined her life as well as his own.

How does this apply to the others, though?  I guess you could say that Famous Jr. didn’t appreciate that his mother loved him, but the point was that she was never around.  Writer certainly isn’t presented as a guy with anything to appreciate, since the only thing we find out about him was that he spent years writing the Great American Novel only to be told it was unpublishable.  I think we’re supposed to see these guys as men who lose everything, but they don’t seem like they had much worth losing.

The third possible theme is don’t get distracted from chasing your dream.  All three of the guys Tucker hires have some kind of goal going on that they might have realized if they hadn’t ended up dead or prison.  Famous Jr. wanted his mother to love him – and it is revealed at the end that if he’d stayed home, he would have gotten his wish. Perhaps this is meant to imply that Johnny could have made it on Broadway, and Writer could have been a New York Times best-seller, if they’d only kept trying.  Rather than work for fame and fortune, they got distracted by an apparent shortcut, and it destroyed them.

Besides the ending, there are a couple of places where The Rebel Set is slightly less dreary than the Coleman Francis Trilogy of Tedium.  We mostly know what’s going on, at least, and it tries to be funny even if it doesn’t succeed.  Johnny and Jeannie are allowed to actually love and support one another, whereas onscreen couples in Coleman Francis films are usually bitter and distant.  There are actual location shoots that aren’t in a desert somewhere and occasionally there’s music.  Even when it’s not being as nihilistic as Francis, it’s still pretty bleak and dull, and I get the idea it was also made by somebody who thought tragedy was automatically art just because it’s tragic.  It sucks, and I have no interest in watching it again without Joel, Crow, and Tom to lighten things up.

[a-fresher-start-blog]

A Comprehensive Guide to the Clubs of Southampton

For some students, clubbing is an essential part of the university experience. For those going to the University of Southampton, I have compiled a list of all the clubs I have been to and my opinions of them, complete with some dos and don’ts. 

Jesters: 

Jesters, the Palace of Dreams. Famed as being one of the absolute worst clubs in England. For those who say that Southampton has no culture, take them here. Jesters is a club for those who love cheesy, sing-along bangers from the 90s and 2000s. Before you leave on a night out to Jesters, ask yourself: “How much do I love the shoes that I am wearing?”, because the floors of Jesters are perilous for any shoe. I would highly recommend a trip to Primark before braving the sticky grey floors of the Palace of Dreams, and DO NOT under any circumstances wear heels here. Trust me, I’ve seen people wear bin bags to Jesters. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to have a Jesticle, Juicy Lucy, Fuzzy Duck (my favourite), or a Joker cocktail. I have not met one person who can identify the ingredients of these drinks... be warned though, these drinks have so much alcohol in them that they could make Lindsay Lohan blush. I would recommend going on Mondays because the drinks are cheaper and there will be loads of students there! 

Sobar: 

About 10 seconds down the road from Jesters is Sobar. This club is best enjoyed on a Tuesday because that is when it’s busiest, any other time of the week it’s utterly dead. Similar to Jesters, don’t wear your favourite pair of shoes here otherwise they won’t be your favourites when they turn grey and horrible. The signature beverage at Sobar is the Quadvod, a dizzying concoction consisting of 4 (yes 4) vodka shots, topped up with WKD. Once again, go easy on these. Trust me from experience. The music here is generally a mixed bag of cheesy hits and traditional club music which makes a fun experience for any group. But be careful on the metal stairs in the smoker’s area, I’ve seen people fall all the way down these before. 

Oceana: 

Often (very annoyingly) referred to, by the same people who call chicken nuggets “nug nugs”, as “Ocies”. Although I have a personal vendetta against this venue for throwing me out 4 times (once before I even got in), Oceana is actually alright. Despite the expensive drinks and very strict bouncers, I’ve had some good nights here. Since Oceana is split into different rooms for people with different music tastes, which means that there’s a genre for every taste (my personal favourite is the cheese room), however because of this, you and your friends will likely get split up for a while. Oceana is best enjoyed on Wednesday as a result of their Student Therapy nights which sometimes feature guest celebrities. This club also runs a stricter clothing policy than Sobar or Jesters, but it is safe to wear nice shoes here. The ID checking here is also far stricter and the entry fee is more expensive so be aware. Oceana is also a bit of a trek from most of Southampton’s student halls, you’ll probably need to get a bus or Uber there. Make sure your phone has data and has charge in it at the end of the night though to call an Uber, because it is a long walk home. Take my word for it. 

Switch:

If you love loud drum n’ bass music, a large dancefloor, and notable DJs, then (Chase and Status, Idris Elba, Pendulum) Switch is the place for you. Although I haven’t been here as often as other clubs, Switch is a great place to be. Because it is a bigger club, like Oceana the drinks and entry fee are expensive so it’s worth spending the whole night here. The dress code is a bit more relaxed than Oceana though which is nice, although it's not as casual as Jesters or Sobar. Don’t make the same mistake as I did though, the sweets and bodyspray in the toilets aren’t free... 

Bedford Place: 

Bedford Place is home to some really cool clubs. If you live on Archers Road then there’s a high likelihood that you’ll spend all of freshers week here. Honestly, the clubs in Bedford are all pretty similar, but my personal favourites are Orange Rooms and Popworld. Popworld especially because it is the most reasonably priced and in my opinion the most fun. It’s best suited to lovers of purely cheesy music. Who doesn’t love that? Expect to see a few fights while you’re waiting to get in, sometimes between bouncers and drunk club-goers. I cannot stress this part enough: DO NOT GO ON FRIDAY OR SATURDAY. I went with some friends on a Saturday night once and we were almost certainly the youngest people there. I can imagine that for any girls in the group they would not appreciate being chatted up by a 40-year-old local who’s having a night out by himself. 

Hobbit: 

Less of a venue for a big night out, but great for a quieter night. The Hobbit serves awesome Lord of the Rings themed cocktails and this theme continues throughout the venue. It also has a jukebox which guests can use, however they will turn it off if anything resembling Justin Beiber is played. Seriously guys, play some Slipknot or something if you’re not a metal connoisseur, you’ll thank me later. If you go enough and drink all of the cocktails then you can win a free Hobbit t-shirt and you qualify for a card which lets you buy the Smaug and Nazgul cocktails. Go you! The Hobbit also puts on some really cool gigs from local bands which are also worth going along to. In my opinion, Hobbit tops the list for the quirkiest venue in Southampton and is well-worth a visit even if Lord of the Rings isn’t necessarily your cup of tea! 

This is just my own personal run-down of the clubs that I’ve been to. I’m probably missing a couple, but since I’ve been at Southampton for 2 years, I feel like I know my way around pretty well. It’s up to you now to go out and make some memories to tell to your friends who probably went to far more boring clubs than you. You tales from the Palace of Dreams will be legendary! 

[aion-rsa]

Wonder Woman 1984’s Maxwell Lord is a Trumpian Villain For Our Time

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The best movie villains are ones who tie into a deeper theme. The Dark Knight Joker isn’t scary solely for his mad unpredictability, he is terrifying because he embodies a thematic nihilism that Bruce has chosen to fight against every time he puts on the cowl. It will (hopefully) be six weeks before we see Wonder Woman 1984, but Den of Geek had the chance to garner some insight into the sequel film during a set visit two years ago.

Coming away from that visit, I was most excited about the relevance of the film’s main themes to contemporary America. While the Wonder Woman sequel is set in 1984, it seems to be a story that taps into the anxieties and frustrations of late stage capitalism (though the producers and cast never used this terminology). Wonder Woman 1984 antagonist Maxwell Lord (played by The Mandalorian‘s Pedro Pascal) is the perfect villain to embody that theme. Described by producer Anna Obropta as a “desperate, self-obsessed, fraudulent entrepreneur who runs a business selling the American dream,” Wonder Woman 1984‘s depiction of a villain doesn’t sound so far away from what many of our society’s real-life villains look like, and that might not be a coincidence…

Maxwell Lord has a long history in the comics. First introduced in 1987’s Justice League #1 and previously depicted on-screen in Smallville and Supergirl, Lord is generally depicted as a cunning and powerful businessman. In Wonder Woman 1984, he is the president of Black Gold International, a corporation that promises to give the people of America, according to the trailer, “everything [they] always wanted.”

“[The 1980s] was the height of everything that we’re now paying the price for,” says director Patty Jenkins. “It was like we thought for sure it could go on forever and there was going to be no price and you could just exponential growth then it could keep going and all of this excess. And so I think, in that way, we’re talking about then and we’re also talking about right now. We’re talking about what we’re dealing with right now because that struggle is very much alive in our own psyche.”

Producer Anna Obropta expands on this discussion of theme by highlighting the decision to set the sequel film in 1984.

Why 1984? America was at the peak of its power and its pride. It was everything from commercialism, fashion, wealth, even violence was in excess. It was a decade of greed and desire with time of me and more, so America was really at its peak. It was humanity at its best and at its worst. 1984 because it was a year of lessons learned, lessons for a goddess warrior and lessons for all of us.

How does Maxwell Lord tie into all of this? He epitomizes that greed and desire, building his unsustainable business model on that part of all of us that wishes for having without consequence. As Jenkins puts it: “[He is] somebody who’s everything about that era and what we believed in then that has resulted in who we are now.”

When it comes to a film, nothing you see on screen is a coincidence. It was a conscious, ideally story-driven choice made by a production department under the vision of the director. When it comes to the aesthetic of Maxwell Lord, it’s not a coincidence he dresses like Donald Trump circa 1980-something. When we visit the costume department, a photo of 80s-era Trump is on a board of inspirations for Lord’s costuming.

“[Maxwell Lord is a man who] appears to have quite a bit of money, but not so much taste,” costumer designer Lindy Hemming tells us. “So he has really beautiful tailoring done by lovely tailors, and beautiful fabrics, really elegant and expensive, but just something is not quite right. How’s that? They don’t quite fit and they’re not quite right. And I’m sure that people will think I don’t know anything about tailoring when they see it, but the truth is, that’s how we wanted them to be.”

Speaking about using a younger Trump as inspiration, Hemming says: “There is something about the period of Donald Trump and being a businessman, isn’t there, of being rather sleazy a little bit, and a bit goofy and a lot of talk. So that’s why he’s there.”

Much of the action in Wonder Woman 1984 is based in Washington D.C. During our set visit, we get to tour Diana’s swanky-yet-comfortable, D.C.-based apartment, as well as a White House Oval Office set where, presumably, Maxwell Lord spends some time. Later in the set visit, we watch Jenkins films a scene that sees Diana and Steve facing off against Maxwell Lord and his henchman in the halls of the White House—another not-so-subtle hint that, while Lord is very much his own filmic character with a history in the comics, his specific portrayal in this film draws at least partial inspiration from the real-life antagonist currently sitting in the real-life Oval Office.

“You know, what I wanted this movie to be about was pretty clear fairly early on,” says Jenkins, discussing the thematic important of truth and its manipulation in the film. “There is something about what the world wants to talk about right now, and [Diana] happens to have this lasso of truth, and truth ends up figuring in very large.”

It should be noted that, like most big-budget studio tentpoles, this film is not overtly political. In fact, when discussing having filmed in D.C. and the city’s prominence in the film, Gal Gadot specifically says: “The movie is not a political movie, but … it taps on issues that are very current.”

I don’t believe there is such a thing as an apolitical movie—films that viewers tend to classify as such are really just movies that reinforce the political and social status quo. I doubt that Wonder Woman 1984 is going to be particularly subversive (though, frankly, as a big-budget Hollywood film that centers women in positions of creative authority both in front of and behind the camera, its existence in and of itself is subversive), but I am interested in the filmmakers interest in using the 1980s as a setting not solely for its fun fashion and its hip tunes, but as “a metaphor for this time,” as producer Charles Roven puts it.

The best antagonists and themes also challenge our hero in some way. Maxwell Lord and his promise of easy happiness driven by greed and desire goes against everything that Diana believes in and works for, but that doesn’t mean she might not be susceptible to the temptation. (Isn’t it interesting that Steve Trevor somehow appears decades after his death?)

When we catch back up with Diana, she is secretly saving the world as Wonder Woman, but also working in cultural anthropology and archeology at the Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian.

“While she’s still doing her best to stoically perform her duty to protect humanity, we learn early in the film that she’s very slightly disengaged with the world, and a bit lonely,” says Obropta. “The world whips around her, as people chase after dreams of wealth and power and fame, dreams that are apparently for sale by [Lord].”

The film’s other antagonist, Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Minerva (aka Cheetah), is one of the people who buys what Lord is selling. While Barbara enters the story as Diana’s co-worker and newfound friend, she “falls prey to this scheme of Black Gold International,” says Obropta.

“She starts to transform,” continues Obropta. “At first look, it is a dream come true. She’s wished for and now feels more confident. She feels more beautiful. She feels physically stronger. She feels more seen and respected in the world, but her power takes a very fast, very dark turn as she transforms into this vicious and savage creature, like nothing we could have ever imagined.”

Barbara isn’t the only person whose dreams begin to come true.

“At first, it’s great,” says Obropta, “but what happens if you get everything you ever wanted, everything you think you deserve? … What happens when the entire world gets what they want at the same time? What are the consequences for Barbara? For [Maxwell Lord]? For Diana? For you and for the world?”

Through a certain lens, it’s a capitalist thought experiment wrapped up in a superhero movie, and I say that with the utmost delight presuming that it is still going to be mostly epic fight sequences and Diana getting shit nobly done. Movies don’t have to be overtly political to mean something. They’re reflecting and impacting our culture whether they are meant to or not, whether we want them to or not. I appreciate that Wonder Woman 1984 seems to be trying something thematically new, especially in its use of the 1980s not simply as an excuse to rock shoulder pads and Walkmans but as a major turning point in our country’s relationship to and execution of its capitalist ideals.

“I would say that it’s a good bet that Patty was using that time as a metaphor for this time,” reflects Roven. “There are a lot of similarities to where the world was. It’s remarkable how those similarities just keep growing.”

Wonder Woman 1984 hits theaters on October 2nd. Warner Bros. will be dropping a new trailer for the film this Saturday during the Wonder Woman 1984 panel at 1pm ET at DC Fandome.

The post Wonder Woman 1984’s Maxwell Lord is a Trumpian Villain For Our Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3aDBZsD

[guitarrod]

This is what I told my soon — to — be — stupid son while he finally felt asleep after moaning.

Hey, Chip, Chip? Are you awake? You can face me, son, it´s alright to be scared. 

Hey, Chip, don´t bury your face in a pillow. Listen to your old man talk so I may feel heroic for a while. Sorry about neglecting you all night. It´s a tic I got from the war, or Life. Neglect of civilian life. Maybe I may feel of service while you burrow in your rabbit hole. I got a confession to make. Being a veteran doesn´t help. It just makes you ruminate things at night. I´m glad you finally got to sleep.

Hey, Chip? Forgive your dad but I had to do it. You can learn something out of the old suffering and strife. Joaquin Phoenix´s Joker turned out to be essential. A sort of litmus test for your manhood. What we learn about ourselves in the battlefield, we carry to the grave. No I´m not trying to be funny. It´s easier to get scared now, when you´re a kid, then later in life. And it´s better to feel scared after watching a movie. Preparation, boy. Bootcamp. I´m conditioning you for anxiety. I knew from the first there wouldn´t be any superhero to save your day, boy. This is war.

You millennials, have social media and I´m deeply sorry for that predicament but I had nothing to do with it and try to be the least involved possible. 

Technology? They take our taxes and funnel it into the Pentagon. For what, you´d ask, if awake? Research and Development. The cold war is over and the Taliban or ISIS wasn´t much. Your grandfather had Vietnam. When you´re drafted from your living room straight to the jungle, you´ll grow out of videogames. Hell, you´ll grow out of Pornohub.

Back in the day, some people showed the courtesy of being famous just out of the happy accident of being born famous. That was tough, kid. A world you never want to see again. A cartoon Vietnam. The enemy was finally home. You want terrorism? Have people pretend street culture ain´t manufactured. Hip Hop survived for a measly second. That´s the Nam. That´s napalm drilling a hole in your core. Vietnam had a better soundtrack than suburbia, kid. I apologize for America. But it is what it is. Soulless. Reality has its side effects.

Have you heard of the assembly line, son? Of dear old Mr. Ford. Well, he was chicken feed to Steve Jobs. Again, I´m sorry. It´s my fault I put you into this world, but I´ll take you out. Not out of this world. I´ll take this world out of you. Even if it kills me. But it will take more than ammo and bombs. There´s no one to shoot. Those assembly lines crossed the boundaries of Mr. Ford´s factory and now you carry that assembly line in your baby hands. Your smartphone, son. Whenever you´re online,son, you are enslaved to the treadmill, building nothing out of nothing, until it gets bigger and bigger and leaves you small and emptier. You see the progression. From the whip to a passive existence building a machine that will build another you instead. Your phone will eat you up. At least, in the first circle of hell all a man had to lose was his self-respect, down to the second circle of hell, all he had to lose was his humanity, down this third circle of pure hell you are annulled. You will cease to exist by an algorithm that never learned existence. Life can´t be computed by a virtual world. Life ceases to exist because it becomes invisible When a man spends all day at the factory, he knows where the line is drawn. He is bound to do the opposite once that freedom bell clangs.

When your great- grandfather immigrated to the land of the free, I refuse to add “brave”, you could see the country. Can you see it now? Or do you see concrete and malls? Steamrolled countryside. First, they mow your lawn, then then they´ll cut your balls. 

Excuse the language, son. I know you´re asleep. You got other things to dream about. I can see computer games coming out of your ears. One difficulty level at a time. You´re dreaming of a dream girlfriend. They don´t build those anymore. But you get the picture.

I´m nagging. I´m just an old man to you. But I´m also a veteran. Experience breeds respect. No, you´re right. It doesn´t. I´m just spare parts. Not even. I missed the last upgrade. I´m not fit to be a human being. But I´m damn capable of being your father. They say you are independent and creative, that´s what they would tell the house boy slave. They got you in so deep, they have found a way for you to build your own maze. You carry it with you, at your fingertips. Each day you create a new corridor, new twists and turns. Your phone isn´t an extension of you. You´re not even an extension of it. Both of you have ceased to exist. They don´t need you, Chip. And they don´t need bullets to delete you. All they need is to upgrade the con. There is nothing better for the maHpresume it. He had an investment to increase. So, back in those days, you just couldn´t just go out and pick up an instrument, they made up such a thing as a professional musician. You left your guitar at home and saw somebody else play it. You stopped daydreaming and had a factory of dreams to provide you with them. And anything that will accommodate man´s unwillingness to move will make you rich. Wasn´t it Steve Jobs who said that man doesn´t know what he desires. Well, he does only he´s forgotten throughout the years. Steve Jobs is only a decadent upgraded version of a ral pioneer bitch like Mr. Taylor and Ford. He had the scheme laid out for him already. You buy your fun, boy. You don´t have it.

Have you seen that schematic design that shows you were to fit batteries. Well, that´s your country. Rectangles and squares crossed with straight lines. Do you think your great-grandfather needed to be whipped? He had a square lunch box he carried with him straight to hell. Do you think his grandfather ate at designated hours? He ate when he was hungry. He slept when the sun went down. He looked for his fun just like a dog will ferret out a rabbit hole. Now fun is designated as well. Defined by you who have lost your mind, ages ago. Oh yes, these things are hereditary. Conditioning is the white man´s burden. He´ll condition himself to the prom, marriage and the grave. It wasn´t always that way son. Corporations crossed the line. There´s your smartphone. And now, we finally get to the Joker.

Voluntary futility, boy. You can´t be whipped into it, you have to be born with it. Remember like I said people inherited fame in my time. Today they found a way to make things easier at the supply side. They made reality shows. But they waited their sweet time before they had the gall. They waited until you TV- fed beasts had enough entertainment, lived and learned your life experiences by show and tell through TV, went through all your coming of age rituals in your living room couch strewn with Cheetos and Doritos all over your stomach to be good and ready to learn every single lesson about life laying down. And then they superimposed it, Life, with Reality. Reality shows. Why hire real people to provide your life lessons when your own boring self broadcast on the screen could do the job. Don´t you get it? The age of reality shows is when the bombs fell. You don´t need napalm to be deformed.

And that´s the theme of the Joker. The joke, if you will. Look at me. Look how I´m talking. I don´t even sound like myself. I sound like the Cosby Show. Remember him? The nation´s daddy? Propofol? Remember Eddie Murphy? He told your jokes for you. He made you work less. You could repeat what you saw on TV and copy and paste. Now I´m talking about myself. Sorry, son. I know you´re asleep with your Roblox. It´s all my fault. I had one day of fun and I was drunk and now I got you on the couch with cheerios sprinkled all over. It wasn´t real fun. It was what they taught me.

So the Joker is about the total banalization of celebrity culture. Remember that scene when his social worker said nobody cared about him. She said nobody cared about her too. Nobody cares. Back in the day, we just cared about Clark Gable. Clark Gable lived in the mist of a glossy magazine. We envied the bastard. He had to walk in feather clouds and smile through his pipe overlooking a pool that looked real to us, the magazine swimming hole. Now Clark Gable, thanks to Mr. Zuckerberg, is your neighbor. So we can feel inadequate about him too. As much as we know his timeline is full of shit we can´t repress that animal feeling of inadequacy at the comparison. Your neighbor´s got the pool now. And the wife, and the car, and the reality show. After all, it´s about nothing and everything, isn´t it? It´s about forged envy. Even our jealousy is a compound of fake news. We made it now, son. Why fight terrorists. We terrorize ourselves.

Well, I got news for you. Your nightmares will last but not if I can do something about it. Celebrities have their lives documented by these phones, they can´t take a piss without being blamed for golden showers and orgies they can´t even brag about. We even elected the Mcdonald´s clown. Orange hair and all. Smiling little cruelty. He´s too inadequate to be a horror show. The real horror show is your envy and hunger for something that´s lost its flavor. And when celebrity culture loses its appeal, when it comes crashing down like a stale joke, then we´ve gone full circle. We´ll need a Michelangelo and a Da Vinci for the least credit. We are so sick of chasing fame, fame is chasing us. And you can only run so fast. Son, here´s the deal. A little metaphor. the 1% who have all the money creates a sense of poverty for those with two tv sets and Cadillac cars that a social revolution should be in order. But it will only come when not even a revolution can be romantic. When that 1% is your neighbor, then there´s a real revolution. The revolution of the sane and the hungry and the need to pluck and pick your own guitars. We need new riffs. It will bowl over. Here´s a secret. What makes man move isn´t hunger and strife, it´s pure boredom. And when the American Dream can´t find a way out, then look out!! Look out Da Vinci! look out Michelangelo! Look out Robert Johnson!!!

[rob-blog1234]

WEEKEND TV HOT FILM PICKS!

Check out my guide to the top films on TV this weekend and the best of the rest. Enjoy!

LATE FRIDAY 26th JANUARY

HOT PICKS!

Horror @ 2100    Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil (2010) ****

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a stand out comedy from 2010. Although less effective after a few re-watches it still pulls enough laughs to stay up in 4 star territory. For those who have not seen this film please do! It was one of my favourite comedies of 2010 with its great storytelling and the way it tips all expectations on their head. This film had a remarkably fresh feel. Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine work well together and are a great comedy duo. This is comedy horror done well. Just what the genre needed. Get this on record.

BBC2 @ 2305      Drive (2011) *****

My top film of 2011 by a long mark. Nicolas Winding Refn goes from strength to strength. Subtle, stunning, a stellar soundtrack and great performances from everyone involved. The glances and looks between Mulligan and Gosling are brilliant. So much is said with so few words. Refn is my currently one of my favourite Directors. Each and every shot is perfect in this film. After ump-teen re-watches, it simply gets better and better. This will no doubt become cult cool. In my book it already is.

Best of the rest:

5* @ 2100          Sleepy Hollow (1999) ****

Film4 @ 2100    The Abyss (1989) ****

ITV4 @ 2300      The Blues Brothers (1980) ****

TCM @ 2305      Full Metal Jacket (1987) *****

Horror @ 0035  The People Under the Stairs (1991) ***

ITV3 @ 0250      The Sting (1973) *****

SATURDAY 27th JANUARY

HOT PICKS!

TCM @ 2100      Full Metal Jacket (1987) *****

I’ve had many discussions regarding people’s favourite War movie? …and this is mine. Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is superb. It’s full of classic Kubrick shots and some stellar performances making this a true bona fide classic. The film has 2 clear parts; the first part of the film goes through the marine training from day one of their induction, with a powerful opening scene of each character getting their heads shaved, removing their identity. This training part of the film is bar far the highlight of the movie. The second part, although different is extremely complimentary and deals with their introduction to real army life out in their new various roles, specifically focusing on “Joker” in his role as war correspondent for the Stars and Stripes publication. The film shows the Vietnam War from their perspective and how their lives are consumed by it.  It is full of interesting characters, particularly Private Pyle played by the brilliant Vincent D'Onofrio. Lee Ermey’s wild eyed and aggressive drill instructor is almost cartoon in his extremes and pushes the new recruits to the very limit of their capabilities… and in some cases beyond.  Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is a triumph of cinema and a much watch film. Like War films? Love this.

BBC2 @ 2230    Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) *****

Birdman holds up strong on re-watch - It's totally immersive and with some of the best performances I've seen for a while. On second watch I was particularly impressed with Emma Stone who owns the screen with her presence and delivers her lines with commanding assurance. I rate this up there in her performances of mention.

Keaton is an aging actor on the downward spiral out-of-fame after a career as a superhero Birdman. Similarities with his role as Batman are noted and make this all the more interesting. In an attempt to stay relevant he is directing and starring in a stage performance and we follow him on this ill-fated journey to bring his creation to the stage. Keaton is outstanding here and this reinforces my already strong appreciation of his talent. Where to next? Well ALL the cast are phenomenal and I could go on about them all, Galifianakis is perfect- just restrained enough to keep the right tone of the film, Ed Norton is superb and Emma Stone pulls a storming performance out of the bag. Everyone does a sterling job.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's direction and Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography are on full show here. Birdman masquerades as one continuous take but is made up of many long takes sewn together. An editing nightmare for sure, but handled fantastically. As the camera follows and leads us around the story, to the unusual and amazing drum work which is almost always playing, I was left open mouthed in astonishment at this wonderful spectacle. Cleverly filmed with many shots into mirrors with no camera to be seen, this film quite simply pops. All my buttons were being pressed - all the time.

This film isn't just a clever visual spectacle - it's packed full of food for thought. It's dark comedy off set with some serious issues, evidently Keaton is playing a man with many inner demons and this film treads the fine line of decency, treating its subject matter with care and attention.

I really want to go and watch this all over again. It's packed with ideas and the more I sit back and think about it - the more I find. Birdman is a triumph. Don't miss this.

Sony @ 2345    The American (2010) *****

An absorbing and beautifully shot slow paced thriller with Clooney pulling another sterling and affecting performance out of the bag. He really is very good at these type of characters. After I recently watched him in the fantastic Michael Clayton, I immediately wanted to see The American again. Although his character is a closed book we see enough of Jack’s inner anguish and emotion to really buy into his character, his situation and his decisions.

The stylish cinematography and the amazing backdrop of the village of Abruzzo really turn this into a feast for the eyes. Every shot with precision and focus. It is a visually stunning film. The poster and marketing really did not help this films cause. If you come in expecting gun toting gangsters and lots of chases, then you will be disappointed, this is an understated and calm affair with a subtle power over its audience. With Clooney at his expected best this is a superb slow burn thriller from a Director with a great eye for style and suspense

Best of the rest:

ITV2 @ 1330      The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) *****

ITV4 @ 1600      Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) *****

Film4 @ 1750    Avatar (2009) ***

TCM @ 1900     Gremlins (1984) *****

More4 @ 2100  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) ****

5* @ 2100         V for Vendetta (2005) ***

Syfy @ 2330     In Time (2011) ***

SUNDAY 28th JANUARY

HOT PICKS!

Sony @ 1905     Another Earth (2011) ****

Through all the improbabilities and implausible ideas in this elaborate work of fiction, Mike Cahill brings us a subtle, affecting and intimate story that takes place as we discover another planet, another Earth, getting closer and closer to our planet. An exact replica. This huge and admittedly outrageous Sci-Fi concept is merely a sub plot to the main event - It is a story of how two people meet and how their relationship, forged through tragedy, grows.

Brit Marling, who not only co-wrote this film but it is also her fantastic debut in the lead role as Rhoda, turns this light weight, low budget story of a tragic relationship into a serious heavy weight contender. This is no doubt the start of a great career for her. I still haven’t managed to catch her in the 2012 release Sound of My Voice which I’m very much looking forward to.

The film does raise a ton of unanswerable questions but sensibly chooses to stick to its guns and focus purely on Rhoda, her decisions and the reasons for the path she takes. This emotionally charged Indie Sci-Fi fascinates and mesmerises with its subtle, slow pace, mysterious soundtrack and affecting performances.

Film4 @ 2100   The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) *****

Check out Scorsese’s balls-out look at some horrible people doing repugnant things with so much swearing if it was edited it would end before it started. This is a film of excess in every way.

DiCaprio is Jordan Belfort and the film follows his rise and fall in Wall Street. It’s hilarious and repulsive in equal merit, but where this film worked for me is it didn’t seem to be telling me something clever, having an opinion or educating us on what is right or wrong - it simply shows us the American dream encapsulated in one man’s story to power and money. It’s crass, crude and unabashed about what it is. But no matter how much I dissect it I was addicted to this story and could help but follow along wide eyed and mouthed. It’s worth it just for the Lamborghini scene alone. Don’t miss this.

C4 @ 2300   Side Effects (2013) ****

Soderbergh’s Side Effects is one of those films that is incredibly difficult to talk about without ruining it or giving away some of the lovely points and twists of this film. I have always liked Soderbergh’s films in the most part. He has always handled complex characters extremely well and his films have a heavy focus on people and relationships. Here we seen Rooney Mara in a fantastic role. She plays a woman who turns to prescription medication for her anxiety as her husband is released from prison. The film is as much about her story as it is about the pharmaceutical companies that create new drugs on unsuspecting patients. It really touches on some serious issues. Side Effects is simply fantastic. I was blown away on my first viewing and became one of my firm favourites from 2013. If you like thrilling Crime Dramas then this is going to tick all your boxes. Don’t miss this.

Best of the rest:

Film4 @ 1100      The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) ****

C5 @ 1315           Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) *****

5* @ 1545             Footloose (1984) ***

C4 @ 1655           How to Train Your Dragon (2010) ****

ITV2 @ 1745        The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) ***

Comedy @ 1745  Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) ****

5Spike @ 1750    Where Eagles Dare (1968) ****

Syfy @ 2100        Pitch Black (2000) ****

ITV4 @ 2230        Harry Brown (2009) ***

TCM @ 0000        Escape from New York (1981) ****

Film4 @ 0030      Red State (2011) ***