A day of movies

I don't get out much, me.

What with being hopelessly poor and unemployed (not for lack of trying) I don't get to the cinema as much as I'd like - the cost in London is at least £8 per movie, and seeing as how I can't afford the £16.50 a month for an unlimited pass - I'm on cereal at lunch time as it is - it is a rare thing indeed when I get to see so many films as I did this Sunday.

Major props need to go to my buddies Dave & Dave (genuinely), who helped me out with the prices of the tickets so I could see three new movies in an afternoon, which is near enough to my idea of heaven.

Appropriate then, that the one that was any good was Drag Me To Hell - Sam Raimi's morality tale about greed and consequences.

And the importance of taking your mother off speakerphone.

The others, Tormented and 12 Rounds were not so good, the former being lame and uninteresting, the latter being a remake of Die Hard With A Vengeance (sans any acknowledgement, natch.) with a wrestler in the lead role and, predictably, less charisma.

Reviews of the movies will be up in a bit - but I was really pleased to get back to the cinema . I love the whole experience; from ignorant queue jumpers who ask to see the "Beyoncé movie" (I believe it's called, Obsession) to shaking your head at the frankly balls out rip off that is £3.15 for a watered down cup of SodaStream.

So, forget that two of the three movies were lame - the company was good, the seats were good, and the whole experience brings a warm feeling to my heart.

So reignited was my passion for films that when I got home I watched two more - the kids film Night At The Museum (a nice way to spend Sunday evening) and later on, I introduced Mrs Algo to the joy and wonder that is Bride Of Frankenstein.

The downside - really weird dreams combining elements of all five films. A reanimated dinosaur with Frankenstein shouting "Rexy's Alive" who then kills a bunch of irritating schoolkids before kidnapping John Cena's wife and getting cursed by the freakiest lady ever.

(John Stewart impression) -

"Hello... Hollywood? I've got this great idea for a film...

What's it called? I'll tell you what it's called....

Drag the 12 Brides Of Frankenstein to the Tormented Museum of Hell.

Yes I'll Hold........."

The upside?

The name "Darren Mullet" will now be a signal for all rubbish slasher movie villains. And lazy shorthand is what got this country where it is today.

Here endeth the lesson.

A
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What are those people doing on the stairs?

Hmm... If you have any kind of nerves over self image I would not recommend the world of Extras to you. Consider my day today.

I was representing a sperm. Yup, the Male Gamete. Great.

I'm not really complaining, I love the fact I've had three weeks with work in and I've had several absurdly easy jobs recently.

Let me explain in more detail;

By Waterloo Bridge there are two of my least favourite buildings in London, The Hayward Gallery and The National Theatre, awful ugly homages to concrete blocks, they exude all the artistry and beauty of a hazardous chemical spill. Next to them is the Royal Festival Hall and South Bank Centre, nicer buildings and our base for today's filming. Dressed all in white, and and male and female, we headed for the awful concrete steps of the two concrete monstrosities, to run up and down on the sperms way to the womb.

By the way if you, like some people, were asking why both male AND female, biology fans will know there are Xs and Ys in Sperm, unlike the X purity found in the female gamete, the egg. Hope that helps answer that issue.

I'm not very fit.

OK... I'm unfit. Running up and down stairs is not my best suit. But I did as much as I can and felt at the end of the morning as if I'd really worked properly for a change. I even got a little starring shot later on (as the worlds greasiest sperm - don't ask). It wasn;t a job for those keen on personal space either since we were all jammed togther in a thirty person in 5 square foot huddle for much of the afternoon, really confusing passers by, who must have thought a really strange fully clothed orgy was going on. weird.

Oh well. I did win for once at the evenings game night so hurrah for that.

A
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Not a real news story...

Police announced a worldwide hunt today for the actor Eric Roberts - brother of noted celebrity and millionaire actress, Julia.

Authorities first became aware of his disappearance following the blatant appearance of an imposter using his name in the recently released, The Dark Knight, which is currently screening worldwide to generally positive reviews.

"The imposter clearly hadn't done his research", said Police Deputy Wyatt Home yesterday, "It was clear within a second that this man had none of the attributes we associate with the real Mr Roberts".

The deputy went on to list the real Mr Roberts' attributes in question;

"Well, there's his terrible acting, his immense punchability, and the tendency for audience members to wish they were dead when they see his face on a Cinema screen."

The deputy confirmed that any members of the public who may have felt familiar Eric-Roberts-like symptoms were presumably taken in by the imposter's near perfect hair and make up work.

"Sure, he looked like him", said Home, "But only a fool would associate the Eric Roberts I know with a half decent acting performance like this one."

He went on to point out that almost no review he has read so far describes "Roberts" as miscast, lousy or excreble, a hitherto unheard of event.

The deputy was unable to add any more evidence to his claims; "you just watch the screen and you know. This performance... the discrepancies... it's not something that you can doubt. That just isn't him"

When asked whether or not this claim could be, in fact, a repeat of the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" events of 2005, where the same authorities would not accept a solid performance from Val Kilmer, the deputy refused to speculate.

A















To Eric Roberts fans - this is only for fun and is a total in-joke! I didn't mean to upset you both.
To everyone else - he really is quite good in Dark Knight (yes it is really him).
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A big bloody great Torch! On the roof!

Oh, wait... that's a Russian Tank firing into a foreign country... oh damn.

For people who are into the hilarious goings on of the dumb political world, a wonderful shot today during the BBC's Olympics coverage of a suddenly confused and worried President Bush in the deafening "birds nest" trying to get Vladimir Putin to come over and take interest in what he had to say - probably the exact moment he heard about the Russian and Georgian conflict.

Thing is, he's probably only annoyed because the Georgians are taking troops out of Iraq to help out the ones at home. "Come on guys, THIS IS YOUR HOME NOW!"

Seriously... I wonder what the big deal is over a tiny pseudo country in the middle of nowhere. It can't possibly be that an enormously important pipeline taking energy to the West goes through there can it?

Sometimes things are so transparent its just a joke. Russia is in an absurdly dominant military position over the Georgians so the only way the Georgians have a hope in hell is if the West back em up! But how far is the west going to go? Not far enough to keep Georgia in possession of South Ossetia. Nice political move, Mr Putin. You've clearly played the board game Diplomacy in your childhood.

I'll post a less acidic entry when I can think of something...

Good game, diplomacy, by the way. Look it up.

A
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Thought I would share this with you all.

I've had a few business meetings like this in my life...


In The Know: Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex
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Movie Review: Labyrinth

God this film is so good, how is it that shite like Never Forget gets put on in the west end when a top drawer musical for the whole family like this gets left in 80s movie limb0o...

What makes this film fantastic is how it does the very most it can do without overreaching and hits the exact tone for the whole family.

Of course there's lots of wonderful bits, as well as some very silly bits (Trouser package anyone...) including the humour which is top drawer from Terry Jones and pantomime dialogue from the very heights of the art.

I write while watching and every new second of this film reminds me how much I love it, we're just at the scary bit where the baby's vanished and its all silent, except for sub radiophonic workshop stuff in the background. I think we're about to see DAVID! God he looks stupid.

I don't think anyone else could have played this part... its just perfect. I have a tendency to put on my best David impressior n when I watch (it sounds a bit more like Cary Grant than Bowie) but fantastic dialogue demands quoting - "turn back sarah!".

Dwarf killing fairies... a homophobic dwarf! I love doing his voice as well. HEUGH!

I think its probably the best example of humans and puppetry working together. I love the dark crystal as well, but that's a very different proposition (and Mrs Algo won't watch it cos she gets scared) with all puppets its virtually a cartoon.

Oooh... live movie watching update, one of the wrong names for Hoggle is Hogwart! J K Rowling, anyone..?

And it has an appalling synth score thil movie - that I own! sweet.

Why doesn't she just climb the walls anyway?

Anyhoo... f you haven't seen this film then get it and watch it - or come over to mine and I'll putr it on for you.

This film rocks.

Oh yeah! Dance Magic's coming on! You remind me of the babe! I've never realised before how sudden and pointless this first song is... it doesn't actually say anything or express anything much at all... except to make you laugh, and I suppose no more point is required really. It may be tis that really stops it getting to the west end...the songs bear no relation to the plot at all. I prefer it that way really.

I guess we'll just have to hope someone writes some great songs for it... maybe I will...

Catch you later...

A
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The Chicken and the Egg

This is one of my pet peeves this perennial and retarded question "what came first, the chicken or the egg?". This question is supposed to be one you cannot answer and people look at you smugly as if to say - "what do you think of that then? can you get your head round that?"

Frankly, yes I bleeding well can thanks very much.

There's a quick way around this and a long way around this.

Even quicker is to say "who cares" but so sick am I of the whole thing I really want to to lay the issue to rest for myself and hopefully by osmosis resolve the question for the whole world.

First; the quick way:

DINOSAURS LAID EGGS.

If you mean chicken eggs, read on.

The initial appearance of any species is described differently to people who believe in;

1. Divine creation
   
2. Evolution

NB there is no allowance for intelligent design here because the whole concept is, in my view, little different from divine creation wearing a new coat. Please continue...

Dealing with the first of these is simple and quick too. God created Animals on the fifth day and not their unborn forms, so if my reading of Genesis is correct, you can unequivocally say that the Chicken came first. You may believe that in fact God created the chicken inside the egg in order to start life as he meant to go on. Fair enough, but you in this case would answer "egg".

In neither of the God hypotheses is there any sense that the question is unanswerable. Quite the opposite.

In the evolutionary sense things are a lot more complicated. The way I'd put it is that the first chicken in the modern sense, say chicken(x) was the child of a different animal, not a different species (or it would have been an abberation as opposed to a permanent mutation) so what we have is a parent called chicken(x-1)* which is an intermediate between the two species of chickens as they are now, and their nearest common ancestor with another animal, ducks, say.

The order of births can be shown in the following way. I am showing five generations as ashort hand but I have no idea how many intermediates there were.

Common Ancestor - egg - Chicken (x-5) - egg - Chicken (x-4) - egg - Chicken (x-3) - egg - chicken (x-2) - egg - Chicken (x-1) - egg - Chicken (x)

The issue to think about here is that of the nature of that crucial final egg before chicken(x) hatches. Is it a Egg (x-1) or and Egg (x).

In short is it a chicken egg or an intermediate egg with a chicken in it?

My view is that this is an egg(x-1) with a chicken inside it and therefore the answer to the "unanswerable" question is that the Chicken came before its first egg.

The contrary position is that the egg could be a modern chicken egg. That is to say it is an Egg(x) ratherthan an egg(x-1) and therefore you would be saying that the egg came before the chicken.

However you feel about your conclusion - it is clear to me that without a doubt a conclusion to this question can be reached and we can put the whole sorry subject to bed.

A



*that is to say, minus one intermediate specieslet - the parents of the first chicken if you like. minus two would be the next intermediate backwards, and so on. To describe future intermediate evolutions I would use Chicken(x+1) etc.
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Two bottles of wine later, God ceases to matter

Greetings, Algolians.

I'm not sure what got me started on the subject- who is when you're a little, ahem, "wankered"?
I'm pretty sure I convinced a table of twelve people on Saturday that God probably didn't exist (or at least wasn't worth worrying about, let alone worshipping).

Oh, this post will offend some folks. Never mind.

How does the logic go? Well - we all agreed that there were two extreme ways to look at the concept of a "God". Oh, and by the way, forgive my use of the masculine pronoun - I'm too lazy to write anything else.

1. The classic, sin forgiving, interfering creator who sits in the big office upstairs pronouncing judgements, including whether you go to heaven or hell. He also has the powers to interfere with or influence the world.
2. Some less interfering force responsible for the creation of the universe, and that's it.

I'll refer to these as God1 and God2 - note that God1, while having the power to interfere, is not implied to be interfering constantly - he merely can.

Now it would be very easy to find some middle ground here, but all the wrangling we went through to reach this point was a little boring, basically - the middle grounds say, God#, are a bit namby pamby. he's in a war with Satan for example, which implies Satan is equally as powerful, or he has too little time etc... I'm gonna avoid these since we didn't talk about them.


So lets look at God1. This is a being powerful enough to

• create an entire universe and then fake its age.
• design an endless supply of animals including millions of species of, say, insects.
• create emotions and beings that feel them
• Directly affect the future of the universe he created
• etc. etc.

In short, this is one powerful being! Now, if you look at the question of whether to worship this god there are a few things you can take into account.

1. Stillbirth - this is one of the things that really sealed my atheism. What sort of God is willing to kill kids before they're born? Did they have evil thoughts in the womb?
2. The question of "faith". Look, if you're responsible for my creation, don't go punishing me when I turn out atheist, the way I was designed. If I end up being wrong and heading down to the big smoke to burn with all the other sinners he's going to get a stern letter from the Algo!
3. Most normal religious folk will start talking about free will at this point as if its some amazing gift we're required to be thankful for. I don't buy it. If this god person wants me to go to hell, he can just send me there - I don't want him to trick me into any of this thinking I have some kind of choice!
4. Abortion - see stillbirth. Does he want all the abortions to himself? Most pregnancies are self aborting anyway really early on - is that God aborting them?
5. Sexual politics - lets not beat about the bush here. If God didn't want us to have sex with our own gender he would abort homosexual people, just like all the unborn babies he kills. Or if he only wants us to have sex in order to procreate, sex would be 100% successful at leading to pregnancy.

I could go on, I'm sure you could think up a few of your own. The last thing I'll say on God1 is that there are lots of bad things happening the world over all the time - every time one of these happen, Mr Omniscient makes a conscious decision to let it happen.

In summary - God1 is a bastard. He ain't getting no worship from me. You'll note (I hope) that I haven't even started on the scientific basis for his non-existence, or the "who created the creator" argument. I merely point out here that this deity needs a slap.



So, hello God2, increasingly popular in these "enlightened" times. A sort of apologists religious concession. "So", they they say, "We don't know what caused the big bang, and we can call this force God". Yeah, but we could also call it "spongebob". The great plan of a lot of these people is to equate the "God" hypothesis with a lot of the scientific explanations. This is to say that "Well, you can't prove any of your ideas either so this is just as good".

Others have argued that point far better than I could so I won't. All I'll say is, that if that's the God you believe in, why the hell worship him? Or have anything to do with him at all? He can't help you, he doesn't care about you, he certainly won't look after you when you die!

So, in summary, God2 is entirely irrelevant. He's mainly a vehicle for people who like to think of themselves as "agnostic". That is to say, atheists who are ashamed to admit it.

So there we go, two bottles of wine later and we reach a consensus that God isn't worth worshipping. Good stuff.

A
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