I just rewatched Blade Runner for the second time in two days, so to speak, having watched it yesterday for the first time in over a decade. L and I will probably go to see the sequel soon, so I wanted to refresh my memory. The film I found myself watching yesterday afternoon was utterly intriguing: dark and brooding. It intrigued me so much yesterday that it nigh on demanded a second viewing today.

I won’t attempt to post a full review on here now. Whole theses, even full volumes, could be written about this filmic text – as I’m sure there have been. Of course, it harks back to the film noirs of the thirties and forties; but there is also something emphatically eighties to this film. The [i]mise en scene[/i] cannot seem to escape the period when it was made. It is also very urban, never escaping the confines of a claustrophobic, dystopian, future los Angeles. I noticed too that it is shot exclusively at night, and there isn’t a single glimpse of daylight throughout the film. Could this mean that the entire story just takes place over one night.

I can now see why so many cinephiles are so interested in this film. It raises so many questions while you watch it, and leaves you to wonder about so many things: what would it mean to be a replicant? Are our memories what makes us who we are, and if a memory could somehow be implanted would that personality be real? Can you create artificial personalities so detailed that even they think they are human? The biggie, of course, is the question of whether Deckard was a Replicant: I was just watching it, scanning each frame for clues, and I cannot decide. Ridley Scott did not think he was supposed to be one, but I think you could find good evidence that he is. Either way, I now can’t wait to see the sequel: this is a franchise I can see myself getting into – it is science fiction taken seriously and used to say something about the human condition.

Yesterday was a very cool day indeed. We went up into town to see the Pink Floyd exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. While of course I’ve known about them, I’ve never particularly been into Pink Floyd; but this was something Lyn on the other hand was really looking forward to seeing.Pink Floyd have a reputation as one of the most inventive and influential music groups around, so I was curious to find out a bit more about them.

It took a bit of time to get up there (it always does when we go into central London) but once we got in, we were immediately fascinated. There was so much information on the band’s history and style; there was so much to see and digest. The only problem was, the headphones the museum gave us to listen to as we walked around didn’t quite work: they were meant to trigger as you went past a particular exhibit so you could listen to information about it, but mine seemed to keep fading in and out at random even when I wasn’t moving. Either I’d be listening to something and it would suddenly fade out, or something random would start even when I wasn’t moving. It soon began to get very irritating.

That aside, we had a great afternoon. We had arranged to rendezvous with Dominik up there, and we spent a good two or three hours at the exhibition. I came away my curiosity whetted and itching to discover more. Pink Floyd now seem quite awesome, and I want to go deeper. What I managed to glean from the headphones was fascinating: an inspirational, inventive and unique band which has been at the forefront of music for over fifty years. I now see why people like Lyn, and indeed my Dad, are so enthusiastic about them. Most of all, though, now I really want to go see them play live.

You know, this autumn marks twenty years since I started my GCSE English. My parents had to fight for me to do it: I went to a special school which luckily had a comprehensive nearby. A few students from my school – the more academically able ones – took the odd class at the nearby comp. I had always shown a gift for writing and a passion for literature, so the idea was for me to do GCSE English alongside able bodied peers. That way, I could benefit from more specialised teaching, and hopefully go on to do the more advanced stuff, instead of frittering away my potential.

It was fairly daunting at first. Up until that point, my education had been a matter of small classes of no more than eight or nine fairly disabled classmates, being taught at the most basic level. All of a sudden I was in a class of twenty or thirty able-bodied kids, where I knew far more would be expected of me. I didn’t have a LSA to accompany me until a month or two in, so for the first few lessons I was completely on my own. I knew I had to pull my socks up and make an effort, so that is precisely what I did.

Luckily we had the most awesome teacher in front of us. I often still think of Steve Dale these days, wondering what became of him. It was Mr. Dale that gave me my first taste of proper education: through him I got to know Shakespeare, and books like To Kill A Mockingbird. He was an inspirational, energetic teacher. I also recall that, that first year, he took some time off for the birth of his first daughter. The aura he gave off when he came back was truly wonderful. She would be nineteen or twenty by now; I wonder what became of her.

Time, inevitably, passes. I think I have mentioned on here before that the comprehensive school, Woodford Lodge, has now been demolished. Yet without it, without that first taste of real education twenty years ago, I doubt I would be who I am today. I have been thinking about Mr. Dale a lot recently: he was wisecracking, yet wise. He shared my love of Tolkien. I wonder what he would say about me – I’d love to show him my MA Thesis. It seems a lifetime ago that I first began to walk, two or three times a week, over the fields to Woodford Lodge and back, my head full of wonderful new ideas and imaginings, little realising that I was becoming me. It now seems so distant, yet I still remember the breeze on my face and the singing of the birds in that quiet corner of cheshire.

I’m afraid to say that, after this week, any residual respect I had for the United States of America is now gone. If it’s withdrawal from the climate change accord wasn’t bad enough, how can anyone possibly respect a country which allows its citizens to get hold of guns so easily, and then does nothing when so many people are shot in cold blood? I realise this might be a cultural issue, and that one must respect cultural diversity, but as far as I am concerned, America is nothing more than a collection of umpteen million fools, deserving only the worlds derision. Don’t they realise the obvious truth, self-evident to anyone capable of anything approaching rational thought, that making guns harder to get hold of would make bloodbaths like the one we saw this week far rarer? It really frustrates me, as I’m sure it does many people. This, on top of the election of Trump and the rest of it, means that I cannot respect America any more.

I’ve only just got to my computer, but I’ve already found something intriguing. This bbc story on immersive cinema literally begs me to explore it further: it’s something I’d not come across before, but it ties directly into my master’s subject. It’s a new type of cinematic experience, where, as well as watching the film, viewers apparently interact with characters played by actors who come into the auditorium. It’s just about begging me to try it out and explore it further, as it seems to take the cinematic art in a new direction. My masters was about the ways in which the audience could be said to ‘enter into’ film via their art or analysis; this project specifically encourages and invites such entry. I’d also love to see whether anyone has written anything about how this new form of filmic reception ties into more established ciniphiliac writing, such as the work of Bazin (where’s the nearest decent academic library when you need one?!). I’m intrigued, and itching to find out more.

I know there’s a lot of this meme going around, but it was just too funny for me not to make my own contribution.

I just came across this short video on the bbc website, and thought it definitely worth flagging up. Part of their 100 Women series, it’s by a transgender woman who is also a scientist. She fascinatingly and tellingly talks about the differences in the way people treated her before and after she transitioned: people stopped assuming she knew as much, and trusted her to know technical details less. It’s perhaps only through situations like this that we can see the true extent of sexism in our society: we have a person here who has experienced both sides of the divide, and who is able to articulate the differences between them very well.

I now need to make a confession. When I posted my entry earlier, I hadn’t actually watched May’s speech. Suspecting it would just have made me angry, I just read a few headlines and guessed the rest. Watch one tory speech and you’ve watched them all, eh? However, I just watched the evening news bulletins: the speech was an utter, utter car crash! Almost everything which could go wrong, it seems, did. In fact I very nearly began to feel sorry for may, but then I remembered who she was and what her party is doing to ‘us’. For all her sops about building more council houses to try to convince people may is on their side, this is a government pushing through draconian benefit cuts, which is inflicting some of the most conservative, regressive legislation for decades upon us.

The tories are clinging on to power by the skin of their teeth. They really, really needed a good speech today – a performance strong enough to turn their fortunes and bring the country together behind them. What they got was so bad it was comic: an about average tory speech so riddled with mishap it was almost Pythonesque. Yet it is nothing more than these jerks deserve, and May’s days in Downing Street must surely now be numbered. I must admit, I love a good car crash sometimes.

If Theresa May had any honour, she would have got up on that stage in Manchester just now, dropped to her knees and started pleading for our forgiveness for all the pain she and her party have put this country through recently. She does not, and so instead we were subjected to the usual mixture of half-truths, lies and slander directed at the opposition we have come to expect from the Tories. The party is a joke, clinging to power by a thread, forcing the country through a brexit process based on a delusion. How dare she stand there and claim she is motivated by compassion, when the only thing that motivates any tory is greed and pure self-interest? And how dare that p’tahk Patel slander Corbyn and Labour, claiming that the tories, not Labour, are the ones who care about the poor? To hear these vile, vile people spouting such bullshit, insulting our intelligence with their outright lies, makes me incredibly angry. Daily I see evidence of the suffering these scumbags are causing, often firsthand; for them to stand there, patting their own backs and pretending to be a force for good, makes my blood boil with rage.

I just finished watching the third episode of Star Trek Discovery for a second time, having given it an initial viewing late yesterday afternoon. I now think I’m ready to say how disappointed I am with Discovery: last week I was more than willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but what I just found myself watching was utterly disappointing. The plot makes no sense, for one: why are they giving a known, convicted mutineer so much freedom on a new ship? Indeed, why is the program as a whole just focussing on one character, Burnham, in stark contrast to every other Trek incarnation? It is’t as if she is a particularly interesting character; indeed, she just strikes me as neurotic and melodramatic. The whole show just feels like an average american drama with the Star Trek title tagged on to it. It had none of the qualities we first fell in love with Trek for: instead of the depiction of a diverse group of people working together to explore space, this was merely about one rather irritating woman and her struggle to fit in. The fact that, despite having been convicted of mutiny she seemed able to roam the ship doing whatever she wanted, made no sense. On top of that there was a lot of psuedoscientific gibberish about some sort of biology-based propulsion system apparently faster than warp drive, totally out of keeping with the rest of Trek. Of course I’ll continue to watch Discovery – Trek is Trek – but, as it stands, it has a lot of work to do to redeem itself and bring itself alongside the likes of TNG and DS9.

Why is the bbc or any of the major news outlets not saying anything about the major anti-tory protests up in Manchester yesterday? Tens of thousands of people were marching against both Brexit and the tories, yet you hardly hear a word about it down here. Of course, one glimpse at social media tells you it was huge: many of my northern friends were involved, and some of the stories and details I’ve come across are really rather alarming. Vast crowds kettled by the police as the tories try to keep up the pretence that the country does not loathe them; people being arrested in their droves despite protesting peacefully. As far as I’m concerned that protest represented the british public as a whole, appalled at the tory party currently at it’s draconian worst, and at Brexit being forced upon us essentially against our will. If the beeb et al. is truly committed to showing us what is really going on in this country, why didn’t they cover this protest?

Lyn and I had quite a lovely evening yesterday. The cafe in the park was putting on a charity nights, and had invited L to go along and do a DJ set. We had a great time: everyone had a free burger and beer (I stuck to coke – I’m still off the hard stuff) and we sat there chatting, listening to Lyn as the sky went dark. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else, so it was a great social event. One of the staff there, Sakiko, is a singer: at one point they asked Lyn to pause her set while she sang three or four beautiful songs, her opera singer-quality voice gliding up into the quickly darkening london sky.

Unfortunately soon after that it began to spit, and everyone started to head home. It had been a great event, and all for a good cause. It was in aid of the local hospice, so I made a small donation and we set off home, hoping they will put on more events like that soon.

[i][/i]This blog entry is simply to wish my niece Elise a very happy first birthday. Can it really be a year since I recorded her birth on here? It hardly seems it. I hope she is having a wonderful day anyway, and that she is getting spoiled rotten by her parents.

While part of me rather doubts it’ll ever come to anything, this is just too cool for me not to flag up. ”People will soon be able to fly from city to city within minutes, rocket and car entrepreneur Elon Musk says. Mr Musk made the promise at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia.” He speculates that we could soon be using hypersonic rockets to fly between cities; rockets capable of flying between London and New York in less than half an hour. Imagine it: instead of having a coffee in the park, I could enjoy my daily dose of caffeine on Broadway, or in Sydney, overlooking Darling Harbour. Bring it on Mr. Musk, I say.

Today I have the pleasure of noting that yesterday my blog hitcount passed the three million mark. As I noted when it went over the two million line a couple of years ago, it seems to be going up faster and faster. I know bigger sites can expect three million hits in a day, but this is just my little corner of the web where I waffle on about whatever takes my fancy, so I must be doing something right. Watching the hitcount go up and up gives me the incentive I need to keep blogging, so you can expect much more. Mind you, I’ve decided to steer clear of politics for a bit: the political situation is getting too stupid to bother with, and makes me far too angry.

From time to time I rather facetiously like to brand Star Wars a kids franchise. I uses to assume that it was aimed at adolescents and post adolescents – roughly the same audience as, say, Star Trek. Yet, especially since the franchise was taken over by Disney, I have taken pleasure in teasing Star Wars fans that theirs is a children’s franchise. Yet, the question arises, is it? What’s the difference between a children’s franchise and one aimed at adults? To me, Star Wars seems to lack a maturity adult franchises have: it has more in common with Harry Potter than The Lord Of The Rings; it’s characters more crudely drawn, it’s plots simpler. To my mind, Star Wars tries to claim gravitas for itself, but that gravitas is frittered away by the inclusion of absolutely infantile things like having aniken skywalker race tie fighters. Darth Vader was once one of the most awesome, menacing villains in film, but knowing he was part of such a childish sequence, cheered on by the cringeworthy Jar Jar binx, places him firmly besides the likes of Jafar and Sheer Kahn. The light sabre was once an iconic weapon, yet it was rendered a mere prop for martial arts stunts in the newer films; the equivalent of Mithrandir’s mighty staff became a hogwarts students wand, stripped of iconic weight in favour of a far more shallow type of coolness. Adding the second blade to the light sabre was the semiotic equivalent of a dose of monosodium glutamate: it may have looked cool, yet, because it was done only to look good and to bring in the bucks, the change lacked any artistic merit.

I get the impression that George Lucas sees himself as cinema’s equivalent of JRR Tolkien, a claim that has always struck me as highly presumptuous: contrary to what he and his fans claim, his creations do not have anywhere near the complexity or detail of Tolkien’s. Lucas is just a self-promoting hack; the producer of kid’s films which he passes off as for adults. I mean, how can anyone claim Jar Jar Binx ranks alongside characters like Samwise Gamgee or Spock? Star Wars did once belong among film’s great sagas, but these days it’s for children. I’m sorry, star wars fans, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re obsessing over kid’s films.

I was wondering the other day how I could watch Star Trek Discovery. The solution, it seems, was quite obvious, although I did need to get my credit card out for it: sign up to Netflix. That’s what I did last night, and I’m now happy to report that I’ve watched the first two episodes of the latest incarnation of Star Trek. On top of that, having signed up for a free trial month, I now have easy access to all the TV and films I could possibly watch – this will keep me busy for days, if not weeks!

As for Discovery itself, it struck me as a good start, but I don’t think I can say much more than that. While there was a lot that was familiar to the trekkie – and I relished seeing Klingons again, with all their internal house politics – there was a lot that was unfamiliar too, such as new species. While this was certainly trek, it wasn’t quite the trek we know. It was great to see Klingons speaking the Klingon language with subtitles (Qa’pla!), for example, but on the other hand they didn’t look like the Klingons in any of the previous series (although this might be explained in a future episode, given that their appearance has changed before). Further, these two episodes struck me as a tad too feminine. They seemed driven almost entirely by two female characters. That is fair enough, I suppose; but the captain and first officer reminded me too much of Janeway when I wanted something more akin to Kirk, Picard or Sisco.

Nevertheless, I’ll certainly continue to watch, and eagerly await the next episode. Now I have access to all these tv programs, I’ll also be watching much more. In fact I can see myself becoming glued to my computer screen for most of the coming winter. The problem with things like DVDs was getting someone to put them in and take them out, but between Netflix, Youtube, Iplayer and other video streaming sites, that problem is now sorted. I may have to pay for Netflix, but looking at the range of what’s on there, just under eight quid a month is probably worth it. That said, then, I’m off to watch somee more.

Lyn might like this news. On Friday evening, BBC Four will broadcast a documentary about pirate radio stations. Lyn is a big fan of Radio Caroline and that kind of independent online broadcasting, and I’m getting into it too. This might be a good watch, then. It will certainly be very interesting to see what the beeb – a broadcaster as mainstream as you can get – say about that type of alternative media, both historically and contemporarily.

The new incarnation of Star Trek, Discovery, premieres today, and I’m just itching to find a way to watch it. It’s on Netflix in the US, but I haven’t seen where or how I can watch it over here. From what I’ve read, it looks pretty good, full of references to the other series. I’m still hoping they can somehow get Picard and the Enterprise D/E crew to make an appearance. As I wrote here, I’ll also be interested to see what it has to say about contemporary america, and what it has to say – if anything – about this new Trump era. Of course, how Discovery stacks up against other Trek series remains to be seen, and I can’t comment properly until I find a way to watch it. It has been so long since Trek’s TNG/DS9 heyday, it has a lot to live up to; but for now I’ll just say that it’s good to see ‘proper’ Star Trek back, as opposed to the reboot films.

I have been watching quite a lot of Youtube recently; it has become one of the websites I go to most, and I can spend hours on it watching videos. I’m sure we all do these days. I was just thinking, though: Is YouTube to film what twitter is to the novel? Short, intense forms of writing are encouraged online; is this similar to the short film form we see on YouTube? Do the shortened forms of both languages share qualities, i.e. Directness and immediacy? Short videos online are becoming far more analytical these days: people are increasingly using YouTube to say things they formerly used writing to, such as film analysis or political commentary. At the same time, as on twitter, these videos are a short, rather abrupt form of discourse – most videos I watch are only ten to fifteen minutes. Broadly speaking, they use the conventional grammar of other video media, but, just like on Twitter, it is highly abbreviated in order to deliver the maximum amount of information in the minimum time.

Thus, online, discourse is becoming shorter as a whole, yet no less informed. Intellectual expression – how we communicate our ideas and thoughts – seems to be changing, adapting to the online world. It is adapting to the shorter attention spans we now seem to have, as well as becoming more democratic inasmuch as we all have the ability to get our views across. This new online video language is one anyone with a cameraphone can use. Yet it is becoming no less deep and engaged: in fact, going by the videos I’ve been watching recently, people are far more intellectually engaged and curious than when they only had writing to express their ideas. Perhaps this is because new forms of media in a way encourage people to experiment. Either way the online world is opening up new languages and ways to express ourselves; visual, image-based forms of communication, more easily understood than the rarified neoacademic forms of writing used up until now.

At least amid all my current fury over Brexit – and last night’s newsnight enraged me so much it was frightening – I can still find good things to think about and look forward to. I caught this interview last night: David Attenborough, it seems, is back. I thought he had retired – and who would blame him? – but apparently he’s still going. At the end of a fascinating, and at times heartbreaking, interview in which he summarised sixty years of natural history film-making, Sir David gave us a big hint that his awesome career may not yet be over. He said he still felt like he was about 45, and alluded to more programmes to come. That’s great news, and enough to cheer me up. Something to cling on to as elsewhere things get more and more stupid.

I just want to jot down something which occurred to me last night which may be useful in future work. I was watching The Simpsons. I rarely watch it these days as I like to watch the news, but the last two or three nights I’ve turned over to watch the simpsons instead. As I was watching, something rather interesting occurred to me: the simpsons exist in a kind of eternal present. It’s quite an old program now: we’ve been watching it, every weekday at about the same time, for almost thirty years, yet the characters do not age. By rights, Bart, Lisa and Maggie should be adults by now, yet they are the same age as when we first met them. At the same time, the series keeps up with the times, existing unageing in an ever-present. In last night’s episode, for example, there were references to mobile phones and Facebook. Thus we see the same strange relationship with time that we see in the Bond films. They too are always set in the present of when each film was made; Bond does not age, but exists perpetually as a virile thirtysomething. In both franchises, we see the same odd time dynamic. Neither changes, and both keep up with the present, being always set ‘now’. Could this help explain why they are both so successful? Can we see something similar anywhere else?

Would someone please explain to me why, yesterday afternoon, the leaders of the world allowed some orange idiot from quite a poor television show to presume to lecture them on world affairs? The fool in question had no business being there; he clearly had no idea what he was talking about. And yet, in the United Nations joint assembly, yesterday afternoon the world’s leaders put up with the complete joke America calls it’s leader thinking he had a right to tell them how to do their jobs. If I was an American, I would be embarrassed to be represented by that vain, egotistical moron. Then again, I don’t care: since it elected Trump, America has lost my respect. I now consider the country a collection of spoiled children driven by immature, petulant whims. Who they elect is their business, but why should the leaders of more mature countries (mind you, the UK is hardly one of them at the moment) put up with the sight of that utter jackass talking to them as if he ranked among them? Frankly to watch that p’tahk stand there and lecture the UN, when it was clear he had no business being there and was way out of his league, was an insult to that noble organisation.

Hour after hour the fact that Boris Johnson still has anything to do with governing this country becomes more ridiculous. Hour after hour, the government struggles on, trying to maintain an absurd fiction. It becomes more farcical by the hour. I just came across this Owen Jones article, explaining just how silly things are getting; it’s well worth a read. For my part, I’m now convinced that this cannot last and that Brexit will collapse. How can it? The uk is a laughing stock: our international trade situation is a complete mess. We now need to renegotiate umpteen treaties which were working perfectly fine as part of the eu. I mean, this is just silly. No sensible government could let such stupidity continue, which is why I’m certain we’ll remain part of the eu. It’s just a matter of time, and the only question is when will they drop the pretence and call this moronic game to an end.

You were probably expecting me to have said something by now about Paris having been awarded the 2024 olympics last Wednesday, given that I was once so enthusiastic. To be honest I didn’t blog about it because it was just so anticlimactic. We already knew, weeks ago, that Paris was gonna get the ’24 games and LA the ’28. There was no big countdown, no big unveiling, and nothing to get excited over. Hardly noteworthy really. Nonetheless, I suppose I am still pretty interested in the subject: it will be interesting to watch how Paris goes about organising these games, and what they do with an event they have struggled so long to get. From what I read, the plans already look pretty damn spectacular. Most of all, I want to see what they do with their opening ceremony. Knowing the french, it will be very creative, artistic and cerebral, but I want to see whether they try to do anything as awesome as this. Oh well, I just have to wait seven years to find out.

I think I need to flag this Evolve Politics up. It is spot on, echoing what I’ve been thinking for quite some time. In it, Mark Turley argues that humanity needs to get beyond the idea of the nation-state. We now face certain problems which can only be addressed if we leave aside our petty differences and come together. ”When you actually break things down, the notion of ‘Nationalism’ really is incredibly stupid.” I could hardly agree more. While he rightly states that organisations like the EU have their faults, and problems such as finding a way to maintain democracy in such a United Earth would need to be resolved, transnational cooperation must surely be better than continuing to squabble as nation-states.

I witnessed something yesterday afternoon which really upset me, but which I think ought to be noted. Lyn and I had popped down to Asda, just for a few bits and pieces. We were going along the side of the shop in our chairs about to go in, when we passed a man and his young son going the other way. What I overheard the man say to the lad really troubles me: they had obviously just passed one of the homeless people who sit outside the shop asking for money; the man explained to the kid that he had given to the beggar because he was English. When I heard that I was appalled. I started to say something, but Lyn wisely stopped me, not wanting any trouble. The implication had been that he wouldn’t have given the beggar any change had he been an immigrant, or perhaps black, as if his compassion extended only to his own ethnic group. How utterly heartless. And to hear that being told to a young child, as if the xenophobic scumbag was imparting some great piece of wisdom, is sickening. That halfwitted chav didn’t deserve a son. Above all though, I worry that this may be a frightening indication of where british culture is headed post 2016.

Would someone please tell that self-important p’tahk Boris Johnson that merely repeating a lie doesn’t make it any more true. He is still insisting that we’ll be able to recoup £350 million a week for the NHS, despite that claim having been shown to be complete bollocks. Even the watchdog branded it ‘misleading’. Yet this is an utterly cynical act on johnson’s part: he knows the country is still divided and a lot of people are still very, very angry about what happened last year; he also has Teressa May’s job in his sights. Thus he is pretending to care about something extremely dear to many people – the NHS – in order to use it for his own ends. He wants to create a rhetorical binary where the EU is somehow placed in opposition to the NHS, using people’s love and admiration for the latter to turn them against the former.

Johnson doesn’t give a fuck about the NHS – like any tory, he’d probably privatise it if he could – but he knows how dear it is to many people, and he is trying to use that affection for his own ends in a sickeningly cynical act. It was this very trick that brought about the stupidity of last year, and he’s trying to use it again. The man should be rotting in jail for misleading the country the first time; persisting with the lie is beyond the pale. The NHS is vital to many; it is one of the truly great things about the UK. To see it being used as a political crutch by a self-important p’tahk who doesn’t really give a fuck about it boils my blood.

I am very pleased indeed with how last night went. I was, to be honest, quite worried about it. I had visions of everything going pear-shaped and the screening turning into a train wreck. Mid-afternoon yesterday I was getting quite fretful. But I needn’t have worried: in the end, the Old Cottage Cafe in Charlton park made a wonderful screening room. The event was quite well attended. The size of the cafe gave it a communal feel, as if everyone was part of the same social group precisely the impression I wanted to achieve. The Londoners films I had selected all fitted together nicely.

My initial plan had been to preface the films with some sort of talk contextualising them, similar to the presentation I gave last year. That way I could explain how the films had come about, as well as weave in some theory and info on Walter Benjamin. As time wore on, though, I began to think that such a presentation might not fit, so I decided to just give out a handout. Last night, however, sitting at the back watching the films, I realised I had made the wrong decision: a brief talk would have set the evening off nicely. Turning my volume down, I quickly tapped a few lines into my Ipad. Then, when the screening was over, I put my hand up and asked to say something. It was just something brief and rather cliche, but it did the trick and went down well.

That, then, is my contribution to the Charlton and Woolwich Free Film Festival done for this year. It has been terrific fun, and I’m already thinking about what I can do for next year’s event. I have a feeling this thing will just get bigger and bigger, and long may it last.

I think I need to flag this short vlog by Ted Shires up because it is, more or less, spot on. In it, Shires starts to unpack the way the Tories accuse Labour of treating disabled people as vulnerable. As he points out, the tories are playing semantics: they are firstly trying to present themselves as on ‘our’ side, standing up for us etc; and secondly they are trying to turn us against labour by accusing them of patronising us. Given this is coming from a party which is slowly stripping us of our means to live, it is sickening. The tories are feigning a support for disability rights, trying to look like they want to stand up for us against Labour, who would have us dependant on benefits. But that’s bull: the tories don’t care about us – they just want to cut benefits so they can reduce taxes for their rich friends. They seek to portray living with the help of state benefits as somehow patronising and regressive, the better to convert people to their individualist, everyone-for-himself worldview. It’s a cynical, deplorable manoeuvre, and tells you all you need to know about the people currently in government.

It occurs to me that somebody could create a profile of a cafe like the one the beeb has posted here about the cafe in charlton park. I think the two cafes have a lot in common: they both function as hubs for a community, the same customers going in day after day after day. I find it interesting how small little eateries like that have the same function wherever you find a small urban group within a larger metropolis. Charlton still has the feel of a village to it, despite being part of greater London; it’s community feels separate from that of the wider metropolis. Cafes like this are the pins which tack such communities-within-communities together. The bbc has done a photographic profile of one up in Clapham High street; I wonder if I could do something similar in charlton park.

I almost made quite a screw up yesterday, and it was only through a bit of luck that everything turned out all right. I thought that School’s screening of The Jungle Book, which I was supposed to introduce, was today; it was only when I saw the posters on the door of the cafe that I realised it was yesterday afternoon. Luckily, everything was already in place, as we had tapped my opening speech into my Ipad last week. All I had to do was roll up and deliver the speech.

It went without a hitch. I had kept my talk pretty basic and to the point, which, looking at the average age of the audience last night, I think was aa good decision. The hall where the screening took place was rather full, and it was a good thing that we used a microphone to ensure I was heard. I think what I had to say was well received, and I got a good firm round of applause after I finished. I didn’t stay for the screening as I had dinner to attend to, but I hope it went well. The first part of my involvement with Charlton And Woolwich Free Film Festival 2017 is now done; now I have Thursday’s Londoners screening to look forward to.

Call me reactionary or judgemental all you like, but I believe the son of the ‘christian’ parents in this story should be taken into care. They have withdrawn their child from a school because another child in the class has transitioned from male to female. ”Nigel and Sally Rowe said their son became confused as to why the child dressed as both a boy and a girl.” If you ask me, they’re the ones in the wrong. The Rowes are being judgemental and refusing to accept the was in which another person wants to live. Their discriminatory opinions are having an effect on their own child’s education, which surely must be grounds for taking it into care. Such gross judgementalism surely has no place in modern society. Diversity and acceptance should be nourished. The way in which these people refuse to accept other people, and then claim to have been wronged when others point out their intolerance, really boils my blood.

I stayed home yesterday and spent a pleasant day trundling around Charlton and Woolwich, yet part of me is ashamed that I wasn’t up in central London, marching with everyone else against Brexit. The situation is absurd, and I know that the farce must be stopped; yet I decided not to go for fear that I might get too upset. I could see myself getting angry, doing something stupid and/or violent and getting arrested or something. Besides, I had a feeling that the march would be very well attended anyway, and from the looks of it I was right. It was great to see the pictures of so many people showing their support for remaining in Europe, both at the protest and at the Last night of the Proms afterwards.

It’s also very amusing to see all these right wing morons complaining that there were so many EU flags at the Royal Albert Hall. They complain that we ‘remoaners’ aren’t accepting democracy, but precisely the opposite is the case: the EU flag wavers were expressing a fundamental democratic principal by objecting to the outcome of a corrupted, flawed referendum, as well as vehemently demonstrating to our european neighbours that there is still strong support for the union in the UK. I only regret not being there with them, but I’m sure there will be more. Let p’tahks like Farage and Rees-Mogg complain all they want, I have no doubt that there are far more pro-EU protests to come, and they won’t stop until we turn away from the cliff edge we are currently hurtling towards.

I just turned my computer on and found this summary of the eight weirdest fan theories on the bbc website. Lazy blogging I admit, but some of these theories are so intriguing that I just had to link to them. One goes that the Harry Potter stories all take place in Harry’s mind, locked away in the cupboard under the stairs at the Dursley’s; another is that Disney’s animation Frozen was, in fact, based on the classic The Shining. While some may dismiss such theorising as puerile, I find it intriguing. It expresses not only a love of film, but a curiosity about them, and an eagerness to engage with them. While they are, for the most part, just a bit of fun, at the same time they convey a relationship with film which goes beyond the norm, as if it was something more than a mere story. Importantly, these theories often pick up upon small contingent details other viewers miss, arguably linking it with cinephilia. No doubt the beeb just posted this article to entertain people, but I think there is a lot to be read into such fan theorising.

I just heard Lyn and Paul laughing from the bathroom. I went to see what was so hilarious, and Paul told me a strange story of a woman who got stuck in a window trying to climb out of it, after trying to throw her poo outside. It sounded quite weird, but Paul said it was on the bbc website. He told me to look it up, and sure enough I just found this story. You really couldn’t make it up.

I expect nobody will be particularly bothered when I note that the host city of the 2024 olympics will be announced in Lima, Peru next week. Of course, we already know that the city announced will be Paris, and that Los Angeles will host the games in 2028. I still keep an eye on that process though, as an extension of my interest in cities in general, and my fond memories of being part of London 2012; and the more I read about it, the more I realise it stinks. For instance, I just came across this article in The Guardian: While it has cleared up it’s act a lot since the ‘bad old days’ of the nineties, the IOC is still a pretty rancid organisation, with votes being bought and sold as blatantly as any mafia crime racket. When you dig into it, even just a little, you realise the whole thing stinks.

Since 2012, I’ve been quite fond of the Olympics. Here, it seemed to me, was an event which could bring people together from across the world to one city, in a kind of sporting and cultural orgasm. It could be a force for good, helping to unite people. Yet, as with anything, there is always a down side: scratch the surface and you reveal a den of corruption and vote buying. To be honest, part of me now quite relieved that London’s olympic games are now over and done with, as it means we don’t have to bother with that shit any more.

Yet that wouldn’t be being completely honest. I’d still love for the UK to host another olympic games – I still really think it would be cool if Manchester hosted them in 2032. For that to happen, though, quite a few holes need to be filled in. The olympics is great, but we shouldn’t line the pockets of shady, double-dealing fraudsters. Surely for the olympics to survive as the world’s foremost sporting and cultural event, it’s governing body needs thoroughly overhauling and clearing up.

Preparations for the local film festival are now in full swing. We had the final organisation meeting last night, ready for it’s start on Monday. While I was out though, I missed quite an interesting program on the bbc;I just caught up with it on the Iplayer. World’s Busiest Cities really catches my attention: I’m interested it for a few reasons. Firstly, flaneur that I am, I find the urban landscape fascinating in itself. Cities are all microcosms, but they are all unique. The program I just saw, the first, was an exploration of Hong Kong: it looked at it’s history and culture; it examined the former British colony and how it has changed since it went under Chinese control. I was fascinated, and it made me want to go and explore it for myself. I was especially interested to see that one of the program’s presenters was Ade Adepitan, a wheelchair user, who gave the show a disability perspective.

I couldn’t help but imagine exploring that exotic, densely packed maelstrom myself, Lyn by my side. How different would it feel to London? The city seems to try to balance ancient, traditional Chinese culture on the one hand, and the most extreme form of free-market capitalism on the other. It also negotiates a tension between the remnants of british liberal culture, where free speech is sacrosanct, and the authoritarianism of mainland China. Such contrasts intrigue me, yet I wonder, where would guys like me fit in to such a society?

The city is apparently flourishing, so I was also interested to hear how the Chinese mainland government now seems to want to develop closer ties to the city; china clearly wants to muscle in on it’s success. The question is, how much independence will hong kong be able to maintain, as an ultra capitalist metropolis with an increasingly overbearing communist neighbour? China clearly wants a cut of the capitalist pie.

I’m also interested to note the timing of this program. Now that the UK is shutting itself off from the European mainland, it seems to me that the media still wants us to look outward, or at least to appear outward looking. Thus I expect we’ll now see lots more shows like these, emphasising the wider world and Britain’s links to it. It’s all about maintaining our place in the world, and trying to present ourselves as being still part of global society. Perhaps it’s telling that the beeb chose to profile a former colony in the first program of this series. The question then is, how will it present the next metropolis, Mexico City, in it’s next show?

Int. the levett/goodsell household. Day. The phone rings in the kitchen. Kirsty, our PA, answers. Kirsty: Hello

Caller: Is that miss Levett?

Kirsty: I’m her personal assistant. Can I help you?

Caller: We found your number on a ‘do not call’ list.

Kirsty: Yes, that’s right

Caller hangs up. Sometimes the world just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

How on earth did news of this film creep under my radar? Michael Palin will star in Armando Iannucci’s forthcoming satire, The Death Of Stalin, out in October. Thus not only does it combine a historical subject which has long fascinated me with one of my all-time favourite actors, it’s by one of the greatest satirists around. It just puzzles me that I hadn’t heard anything about it until I thought I would check for news about Palin just now. Either way, this is a film I certainly look forward to watching now.