Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - On Stranger Tides

So. Pirates of the Caribbean 4. It won’t come as a surprise to some, but yes it’s rubbish. The story is that Jack Sparrow has to go and find the fountain of youth for Blackbeard and Barbossa or something and they meet some mermaids along the way and blah blah blah. The ‘plot’ doesn’t actually matter that much as I use that word very loosely. It is less of a plot and more just a bunch of stuff that happens. It’s just a series of interconnected bits that are tied together by magic string and pixie dust. Without giving away the ending too much, there is a scene that is almost identical to the end scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

What’s more, the characters are duller than dishwater. However, they are perhaps an improvement on Keira Knightly and Orloondo Bland’s characters. (Thanks Mark Kermode for that one) Johnny Depp is his usual self in this episode, doing his very unfunny Keith Richards impression, which was only vaguely amusing and novel the first time round. Ian McShane is fine, but doesn’t get to do much really. I forgot he was in it for a bit.

Director Rob Marshall has done some impressive work in the past such as Chicago and Memoirs of a Geisha, which I enjoyed quite a lot. He also directed the strange and flawed musical film ‘nine’ which was funny because the songs were so over the top. This however, is so ‘normal’ and by the numbers I was bored out of my skull. I fell asleep for a bit during the fountain of youth scene, but that might have been because it was a midnight screening and it was 2am by that point. That’s another thing, it’s too long. It does not need to be this long!

I’m sure that it will do amazingly well at the box office, but for the more discerning filmgoer, this is one of those films that you endure just to see and say you’ve seen it rather than actually liking.

I saw this film in 2D and I could see a few places where they had just designed it to get the 3D things jumping out at you. This annoys me immensely. It feels like they just included it to poke 3D viewers in the eye and it is way too obvious.

Ok rant over. Now go and watch Attack the Block instead.

The Xcrement Factor

So the ‘X Factor’ has finished. Finally. I felt like I had to write this blog as I am totally and utterly fed up of trashy, gaudy and shameless reality television commanding our screens. It appears like a limbering, snivelling, freak-like creature - it is so repulsive, yet so compelling at the same time. I mention the X Factor specifically because I believe this to be the worst of the bunch, but all the others are arguably just as equally to blame.

‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ is another of these reality show. Presented by bumbling Geordie duo Ant and Dec, it plagues our screens with z-list celebrities eating grubs and performing other sickening jungle-themed stunts. Famous for appearing on it this year is Gillian McKeith, the fake doctor who is famous for making fat people cry on TV and can somehow tell you how healthy you are by poking at your shit in a box.

Another big offender is ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. An appalling excuse for a dancing competition whereby the ‘judges’ who are failed entertainers-in-disguise either lay on the praise to hear great cheers from the ‘audience’, or give sniping criticisms to hear pantomime-style boos from a crowd of complete idiots. Overseeing all of this is the eternal coffin-dodger Bruce Forsyth who croons and gurns his way through each weekly (weakly) episode recounting knowingly lame joke after knowingly lame joke.

This reality fad has gone on too long. I think its time is due and it should fall out of favour with the public and be relegated to the thousands of other channels sandwiched between QVC and Dave+5.

I know what you are going to say. It’s just a bit of fun, it’s a laugh, and you’re being overly critical of a genre of television that has captured the heart of the nation. No, this ‘genre’ of reality television needs to curl up and die. Soon. It is ruining the culture of celebrity by creating them from talentless nobodies who happen to have a passable singing voice; it is deceiving the public by getting them to vote by phone for something that is (probably) rigged from the start by the evil Simon Cowell and his monopolising record company; it pretty much takes up the whole television schedule and pushes really decent programmes from the spotlight.

Talent should be something that is discovered by people working hard and getting themselves out there. True talent shines through, and is not achieved by feckless billionaires giving them a recording contract in exchange for their soul.

The reality talent show is, I believe, the evolution of the freakshow. Thousands of people come and stand in front of the judges and sing their hearts out, most of them knowing they are awful. Do these people know they are being laughed at? If they are not already criminally insane, do they know how this show is making them look?

Ben Elton got it spot on in his book ‘Chart Throb’, in which, someone explains that because of the maths of the whole thing, the four main judges can only see a tiny fraction of the people who audition. Due to this, people are split into three main types of reality talent tv personality: clingers, mingers or blingers; these are the people who are most entertaining for the public, and who get to see the judges and be on the show. Although Ben Elton’s novel is a fictional piece of work, he does have a very good point and it gives a good insight into how the well oiled money machines works. This is partly why the deception of the whole thing should be exposed for what it really is, and that is a shallow, pathetic and depraved expression of the world in which we live.

War. What is it good for?

The Government has today announced that they will be increasing funding for schools to teach children with family members in the armed forces. This will be in the form of £10 million and a promise to help armed service families get a mortgage. This has been difficult in the past as they move around so often.

The Royal British Legion’s single, ‘2 minute silence’, reached number 20 in the UK charts even though it contained no audio whatsoever. It alluded to the Cagean idea of nothing ever being silent, but I fear that it didn’t really include as much thought, art or humour as John Cage’s 4’33” did back in 1952. However, I applaud the Legion getting 2 minutes of silence to sell so well and raising funds for the much deserving armed forces.

The funding of the armed forces has been in the news often since we went to war in Iraq, the lack of equipment and support being the main focus. Charities such as ‘Help for Heroes’ and ‘The Royal British Legion’ have tried to remedy this by appealing for funds from the public. However, I believe that charities shouldn’t have to do this; the Government should be willing to give the armed forces what ever they need for any war that they enter into. In a recession, a war is an expensive business, especially against an enemy that is as transient and abstract as terrorism.

I believe that more money should be available for armed service personnel and their families, and it is right that Government should put more effort into this area after they led us into an illegal war to begin with. It is hypocrisy of the Western world to have nuclear weapons and forbid any other country to have them.

It costs approximately the same amount to fund the NHS for a year as it would to replace the Government’s controversial Trident nuclear submarine missile system. This imbalance between a system straining to give life and a system promising death and destruction is harrowing to say the least.

So today’s announcement by the Government is a step in the right direction, but, however much charities do to help the people in the armed forces, it won’t solve the fact that they are stuck in a war zone with no foreseeable way out.