For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

No Ego Whatsoever, Just an Urge to Control. 

Ken Loach is selfless, heroic and countercultural. And so the state should force you to give him money.

Loach has said that he wants to make the British “confront their imperialist past” and in 1977 he famously rejected the offer of an OBE, supposedly on principle, denouncing the honour as “despicable… deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.” However, this principled adamance did not inhibit the director’s 2003 acceptance of the Praemium Imperiale – the World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu. His Imperial Highness was of course the brother of the 124th Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, whose activities and ambitions were, it seems, altogether more moral and glorious. 

Postmodernism Unpeeled. 

A discussion with Stephen Hicks.

Writing in Innovations of Antiquity, Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden dismissed “transparent prose” as merely “the approved mode of expression for the society and values of the newly empowered middle class.” In the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Mas’ud Zavarzadeh denounced “unproblematic prose and clarity of presentation” as “the conceptual tools of conservatism.” The rejection of transparency as “conservative” is particularly odd, since transparency makes a claim amenable to broad critical enquiry, and thus to public correction. Presumably, if you prefer arguments that are comprehensible and open to scrutiny, this signals some reactionary tendency and deep moral failing. On the other hand, if you sneer at such bourgeois trifles, you’re radical, clever and very, very sexy.

When Scolding is the Payoff for All That Piety and Angst. 

A Guardian journalist dares to send her daughter to a private school. Socialist vindictiveness promptly ensues.

Has Ms Murray not heard the sermon of Arabella Weir, whose definition of a “good, responsible citizen” still rings in our ears and swells our hearts? And who tells us that state schools are virtuous because they teach children “who to be wary of, who to avoid” and “how to keep their heads down,” (though how these things will be learned is oddly unexplored). And what of Kevin McKenna, a man no less pious, who tells us that parents who view the comprehensive system as inadequate – perhaps because of their own first-hand experiences – are by implication wicked and that such parental waywardness is intolerable and should be banned? Has Ms Murray not been told by those who know better that children aren’t special and should be sacrificed for society and the glories of socialism? Perhaps she’s been reading those surveys of state school teaching staff in which respondents report “a climate of violence,” “malicious disruption” and damage to personal property as “part of the routine working environment.”

Now stock up on canned goods and liquor and explore the greatest hits. 

I gather some of my readers are Bond enthusiasts. In which case, and with the new film looming, this audio documentary on the various Bond scores – and the long-running dispute over who wrote what – may be of interest. It’s an hour long but stay with it. There’s plenty of period ephemera and some amusing revelations.

Robert Hodgin’s real-time instant fat suit. 

Above, Noomi Rapace tries to escape from a really shit film.

Spectacular digital effects, of which there are plenty in Prometheus, are complicated, time-consuming and expensive. Likewise, impressive sets and cinematic hardware cost money. Orchestral scores and booming sound design aren’t cheap either. Had Ridley Scott dropped the ball in these departments, it might at least have been understandable, given the number of people to be coordinated and the sums of money involved.

But the script, on which everything else in a film has to hang, is one of the cheapest parts to get right. It typically involves a handful of people, not hundreds of technicians racing against the clock. Not getting the basic story and dialogue presentable, or even close to presentable, is much harder to excuse.

And yes, this applies to any number of other films.

Update:  The particulars of its badness can be found in the comments. Spoilers, obviously.

It’s been a while since we’ve had an addition to our series of classic sentences, so let’s fix that right now.

Ken Loach is the least egotistical of cinema directors.

Yes, today’s Guardian editorial - In Praise of Ken Loach – would have us believe that an ossified Trotskyist who regards the rise of anti-Semitism as “perfectly understandable” is the yardstick of humility and self-effacement. He’s also, we’re told, a moral visionary: 

“Another world is possible,” Mr Loach told the Cannes audience this week. Not everyone will always agree with Mr Loach’s own politics, but the possibility of a better world is integral to the morality of art, nowhere more so than with Ken Loach. 

Being a devout socialist, a one-time Respect party candidate and a hagiographer of Irish republican terrorism, Mr Loach’s moral credentials are somewhat peculiar. Loach has said that he wants to make the British “confront their imperialist past” and in 1977 he famously rejected the offer of an OBE, supposedly on principle, denouncing the honour as “despicable… deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.” However, as Prodicus noted over at Orphans of Liberty, this principled adamance did not inhibit the director’s 2003 acceptance of the Praemium Imperiale – the World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu. His Imperial Highness was of course the brother of the 124th emperor of Japan, Hirohito, whose activities and ambitions were, it seems, altogether more moral and glorious. 

The flavour of Ken’s complicated moral calculus was captured earlier this year over at House of Dumb:  

Nothing sums up the demented nature of the modern left better than a soi-disant socialist party that supports taxing janitors in Leeds to give money to millionaire luvvies in London, so they can make films about how folk in Yorkshire are ignorant bigots. 

Mr Loach had been holding forth on the publicly funded BBC, as he often does, grumbling about “Tories” and once again taking umbrage with multiplex cinemas and the “very narrow” range of films they find viable to screen. The proposed solution to Ken’s problem was, inevitably, greater public funding of independent filmmakers – much like Mr Loach, in fact – and the public funding of a chain of independent cinemas in which these publicly funded films could then be screened, having been selected by publicly funded people much like Mr Loach. This, he said, would “fulfil the possibility that cinema has.” Writing in the Guardian in October 2010, Loach suggested that cinemas should be owned collectively, i.e., by the state, and “programmed by people who care about films – the London Film Festival, for example, is full of people who care about films.” The term “people who care about films” is used frequently by Loach yet is never quite defined, though one doesn’t have to reach far to find the implication. Clearly, he isn’t talking about thee or me, no matter how many times we may excitedly visit a cinema. Bums on seats are not his bottom line. No, our tastes must be guided and elevated, until they conform to the expectations of our professional aesthetes and socialist betters. See? No ego at all. 

And so, what cinemas show should be determined by people who care, as determined by Ken Loach. Such caring, enlightened people might even be inclined to show films made by Ken Loach, and by the friends of Ken Loach, regardless of whether those screenings would find an audience or be economically viable. (If you already have the punters’ money via coercive public subsidy, why fret about ticket sales and those ghastly popular appetites? He’s above such base urges. He’s a socialist, remember?) Central to Ken’s appeal for further subsidy and unearned influence is a belief that the size of the market for art-house / foreign language films, around 2% of total UK ticket sales, is not in fact a reflection of the public appetite for such things, but rather evidence that art-house / foreign language films are in some way being suppressed, presumably on account of their terribly radical content. And this must not stand: 

Those of us who work in television and film have a role to be critical, to be challenging, to be rude, to be disturbing, not to be part of the establishment. We need to keep our independence. We need to be mischievous. We need to be challenging. We shouldn’t take no for an answer.  

However, they will take our money – and not through voluntary ticket sales, as is generally the custom, but with the force of government and taxation. That being what independent, challenging, anti-establishment types do.

Or, further to this, more damning evidence of a misspent childhood. From Avengers #2, November 1963. 

Ah, back when the Hulk used furniture and rumbled in his underpants. And Janet van Dyne was permanently in heat.

Seriously. Even supervillains were ogled. 

Oh, and yes. The film is great fun.  

A time lapse compilation of photographs taken by Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa and the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station, August to October, 2011. Edited by Michael König. 

A taste of Sébastien Montaz-Rosset’s documentary I Believe I Can Fly.

“I’m not sure I can hold on with my toes.”

John Carpenter’s The Thing, as summarised in song by Frank Sinatra.

From the people who brought you this: