Skeletor!

This is epic!

‘I’ve got AIDS. Beastman AIDS!‘  Yeah. Try to get that out of your head.

The Man from Earth

I ran across this little gem almost entirely by accident.  The Man from Earth is a brilliant film that you’re unlikely to have watched unless it’s been recommended to you by somebody else. With minimal production budget, and virtually no funds at all for marketing, the film has had to rely solely on word of mouth for its success.

Written by the bearer of geek wet-dreams, Jerome Bixby, it focuses on a departing college professor whose friends throw him a surprise farewell party at his cabin in the woods. When they probe him for his reasons for leaving, he claims that he is a 14,000 year-old Cro-Magnon who somehow has not aged over the past millenia. Every ten years or so, when people realise that he’s not getting visibly older, he packs up and starts a new life.

This isn’t taken kindly by his friends and colleagues. Not only do they find the idea preposterous and outlandish, but even when they overcome the first hurdle of cynicism they are then faced with someone who claims to have had first-hand knowledge of much of humanity’s history. Unsurprisingly, his views at times differ significantly to written history which raises the tension levels in the room to boiling point.

And herein lies the film’s greatest strength, which is a pretty unsettling one: the film puts forward a damn good argument. It’s bizarrely feasible.

Virtually the whole film is set in his living room, and it is shot and rolls out like a play, with the plot moving forward through the intellectual and emotional arguments between the various characters.

There are some actors here that you’ll vaguely recognise (I’ll never forget the face of the portly fellow who sucked off Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Mysterious Skin) but the chances are that you won’t know the names of any of the cast.

Obviously a difficult film to market, it’s found its success through BitTorrent, with the producer thanking users for the film’s spread (hear that Hollywood!?). On the surface it might seem like a boring premise with no selling point, but it’s probably one of the most rewarding films to find its way onto my screen in the past year.

Ok, so what’s the bad stuff? The production quality is just not there. The images are grainy, the sounds are disjointed and the whole film feels like it was shot on a student’s budget (which it probably was). However, these are minor flaws in a great movie.

Having won a slew of awards, the film’s success shows what media is capable of and hopefully it’ll act as a catalyst for similar releases. With real quality finding success without the backing of the major studios, it’s perhaps inevitable that more and more gems will sneak through.

I just pray that it’s a trend that catches on. Fuck knows, it sure beats another Transformers movie, no matter how much Megan Fox bends over.

Neil Gaiman’s Instructions book trailer

I can never get enough of Neil Gaiman. The man is a genre unto himself, and everything that he touches seems to turn to gold.

Even his poorer outings (like American Gods) tend to be pretty good, while his best efforts are remarkable. Few authors manage to deliver such profound work in such an understated fashion. If you don’t believe me then just pick up a copy of The Dreamhunters or Murder Mysteries and decide for yourself.

Smoke and Mirrors - The anthology containing 'Instructions'

One of his more memorable pieces is to be found in his Smoke and Mirrors anthology. Instructions is a poem that acts as a guide on how to survive a fairy tale. Now Gaiman has teamed up with celebrated fantasy artist, Charles Vess, to convert the poem into an illustrated book. Here’s the amazing trailer:

A serene Saturday

A burning ambition that I’ve always intended to fulfil is that of attending a Premier League game. Ten months on in London and this goal still hasn’t been met, so I decided to do something about it on Saturday. Unfortunately all of the Premier League games were sold out but tickets to the next best thing were still available - a Millwall F.C. game.

For those of you not in the know, Millwall is one of England’s truly great clubs. Unlike a Liverpool or a Manchester United Millwall hasn’t made its reputation by winning any major trophies. It’s currently battling for promotion from Football League One (30 odd places below the bottom Premier League side) and its factory-like stadium is situated in the delightful South East of London.

However, Millwall’s history is unmatched in one aspect – that of brutal and bloody violence. You see, Millwall’s the club that Mike Tyson would support if he weren’t such a pussy. These are the guys who have a reputation for drinking beer, throttling opposition fans with barbed wire when their team wins and firebombing retirement villages when it loses (or if there doesn’t happen to be anything on the telly worth watching).

Millwall fans getting ready for the big game

And that’s pretty much their legacy in a nutshell (that and a run to the 2004 League Cup Final where they got trounced by the Red Devils). Oh, and they have a song:

No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us, No One Likes Us – We Don’t Care!
We Are Millwall, Super Millwall, We Are Millwall From The Den!

In short, it’s an experience worth having. When a mate (a Millwall fan) called and asked if I was interested in catching the Gillingham game, I of course said yes. With just enough time to write up my will and buy a stab-proof vest, I caught a train at London Bridge and tried to be as invisible as possible in a carriage crammed full of gigantic dock workers, beer cans and Millwall tattoos.

After meeting up with my mates and having a few beers at a local pub, we made our way into the stadium (past a disturbing lack of security). Walking to our seats we were greeted by a gaggle of fans frothing at the mouth and waving ‘pikey’ signs at the visiting Gillingham contingent. For a moment I was worried that I had made a significant mistake and that my lack of tattoos would prove to be a fatal flaw.

Well, suffice to say, I obviously survived the affair, and I actually ended up having an amazing time drinking it up with some local fans.

The match report follows:

• Goals: Millwall 4 – Gillingham 0
• The amount of times I heard ‘fuck’ in the 90 minutes: 97
• The amount of times I heard ‘shit’ in the 90 minutes: 14
• The amount of times I heard ‘cunt’ in the 90 minutes: 173
• People removed by security from the stadium: 4
• Number of stabbings witnessed: 0
• Best comment of the day: ‘Nutter, your dad was a cunt for having you!’

As you can see, ‘cunt’ is the preferred term when attending a Millwall game and one needs to master its use in order to blend into the crowd and to fully appreciate the event. Some variations that can be integrated into your speech for the 90 minutes of playing time include:

• ‘You cunt’
• ‘Fucking cunt’
• ‘You fucking cunt’
• ‘You yellow cunt’

If you can accompany the slur with a two-fingered ‘V’ at the opposition then you’ve just taken your first step to becoming a Millwall fan.

The match itself was a a scrappy affair, however three of the goals were pretty damn good, albeit they all benefited from poor defending, and the seats offered a perfect view of all of the action, both on and off the pitch. With the London sun blazing in at 17 °C (this is the borderline territory where Londoners consider bringing out the oil), a kick-ass atmosphere and a great excuse for drinking, it was a Saturday well spent.