THX 1138 to Hemen for this one...

This is the front cover for the DVD of George Lucas's debut film THX 1138, a science fiction about a underground dystopian world where drugged up drones lead lives devoid of emotion or feeling.

My friend Hemen works in HMV, a partially underground dystopian CD and DVD shop, where he helps drugged up drones find discs to stick on the goggleboxes so they have something to stare at whilst they eat their Chinese takeaway later.

THX 1138 is currently on sale for £2.99.

*Man wanders up to Hemen, holding aforementioned bargain of a DVD purchase*
"Oh right, what's this about then?"
*He flips the dvd over to skim the back, which aside from the blurb also displays a large film still of a drone getting violently beaten up by a group of police androids*
"Jade Goody?"
"Errrrm. No, not really. Not at all actually."
"Oh."
*Visibly disappointed, the man wanders off*

What we have learnt from 'He's Just Not That Into You'

*If you force someone to marry you, they will have an affair and hide their smoking from you, but if you don't force someone to marry you, you will split up, get back together after a few months of ritual humiliation on your part and living on a boat on his part, and he will compromise all his values and marry you anyway.

*Baltimore is nothing like the Wire. There are still corners, but they are clean and empty. Front steps are street kid free and lead to frosted glass doors, not crack dens. Everyone has exposed brickwork and distressed leather furniture and every house overlooks the Domino Sugar factory. It's also a yuppie's dream, as it appears you can afford a massive warehouse loft to yourself simply by managing a bar, or doing some vague office job where you actually spend all day squealing and jumping up and down or running out at a moment's notice to catch your hubby cheating.

*Jennifer Aniston has a head like a sweet potato**.

*If you a sexually liberated feisty young woman who knows what she wants (read: slut) you will end up sad and alone (even if you are Scarlett Johanssen) but if you are a kooky fuckup with no social skills who acts like a twelve year old, you will meet the man of your dreams because 'at least you try'

*If you are Jennifer Connolly you must be asking yourself why on earth you are in this film.

*If you are gay, you will flock around Drew Barrymore like squawking seagulls ready at any moment to drop a dead fish of sassy relationship advice into her lap. You will also be well schooled in rolling your eyes, clicking your fingers and generally binding the different storylines together in various tenuous ways. You will dress like the last ten years never happened (see right)

*The best place to tell your wife you cheated on her is the flooring aisle of Homebase. This section was also good ammunition for the argument I had with my brother that you really can't tell the difference between laminate and real wood flooring.

*The mirror in your house is not for checking your hair, it is for Seeing Into Your Soul. Every so often you will look in it with a faraway gaze, then either sigh wistfully or smash it into lots of pieces. If the latter, you will then get a new mirror, symbolically put it on the wall of your new batchelorette pad and repeat.

*Scarlett Johnanssen truly has a fantastic figure. Dodgy hair extensions not so much.

*You will leave the cinema uneasy at a film that on one hand shows some quite obvious truths about relationships (if he doesn't call... if she doesn't sleep with you... if he doesn't want to marry you etc etc) but on the other hand ties up all the ends nicely and 'happily ever after' under the weak justification that these women are 'the exceptions to the rule'. Unless you are the slut. (see above)

*Wood Green is the BEST place to see any film of even slight comedic merit. Honestly, the cinema was half full but it was still like sitting in a Ricki Lake audience when some fat woman just stripped down to her red polyester neglegee- the whooping! The laughing! The genuine gasps of shock at coming-a-mile-off revelations! I swear I even heard a 'go girl!' at one point. There was also one man with a really distinctive loud laugh, which is just great, because you end up laughing at their laugh rather than the lame pratfall that happened onscreen.

Update: Rather good article in the Guardian about this twatfest of a film and why romcoms in general are vile

**I know, I know it's all anti-woman to say so, but she is getting to the age where you can't get away with superlong romcom facial closeups when you are projected sixty foot high onto a screen. It's harsh, but it's just not that nice to look at. See Sarah Jessica Parker in SATC. That said, it's not everyone, the rest of the SATC 'girls' and Drew Barrymore did not offend the eyeballs so. Maybe 'a face for television' is the kindest way to say it.

"What fresh hell is this?"

...were apparently John Waters' words while making Cry Baby, which was beset by disaster after disaster, from torrential rain to one of the main actors, pornstar Traci Lords, being caught up in a massive scandal when it was revealed she had been underage for basically all her porn career.

Being fidgetty of nature I can't watch a film without simeoultaneously googling it, and one thing I was curious about was what Kim 'Hatchet Face' McGuire looked like without all her makeup. And then whether she was dead or not, as one of the only pictures of her on the net is from www.findadeath.com. (She aint, the guy who runs the site got a fan pic of her and anecdotally linked it into a different actor's obituary, unfortunately with the tag 'www.findadeath.com' stamped right across it, so has inadvertantly sparked off an urban myth that she has died. Well, I assume it is an urban myth, there is no other evidence of her death online)


As Hatchet Face in Cry Baby

With Johnny Depp back in t'day at some sort of premiere I would imagine

Screenshot from 'It Came From Baltimore' the bonus documentary on the DVD which could have saved me a lot of googling.

Other interesting point of note is that when Traci was facing arrest, to make her feel better, the cast and crew all admitted what they had been arrested for in the past. ("Grand Theft Auto!" "White Slavery!" and "Kidnapping! But not really I swear!" were apparently among them, which doesn't seem that comforting to be honest) The young and slightly naive Amy Locane, feeling left out because she hadn't ever been put in the clink, turns to Patti Hearst, (in a cameo role as Traci Lord's mother) and asks 'but you haven't ever been arrested, have you?'

Tom Cruise is a twat part 1,2339492048757

‘I grew up wanting to kill Hitler,’ Cruise says of his suitability for the part. (in Valkyere)

‘As a kid I would run around with a pretend gun playing games, acting out the war films we watched on TV. It was like, “Who is going to be the Nazi?” And it was never me. I always wanted to be the one who was going to get them.

Oh rightio, that would make me a shoo-in for George Bush Snr in the upcoming dramatisation of the Gulf War, which as a child I would occasionally attempt to re-enact with my brother.*

And oddly enough, as I was the older bossy one, I was always 'the Americans' while he was left being Saddam Hussein and lying dead on the floor in about five minutes. It's a bit of a stretch to say that 'I grew up wanting to kill Saddam Hussein', though. (The Chuckle Brothers on the other hand...)

I wonder what happened to the kids Tom used to play with who were all 'ooh! Ooh! Can I be the Nazis? Pleeeease?'?*Have I mentioned this already in this blog? I have the sinking feeling I might have done... Father in foreign news? Advance knowledge of world affairs but obviously not so much that I knew about the UN coalition? Well anyway, there you go, it's a nice little story anyhoo...

Scoop! Exclusive! Etc!

The BBC news website this morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7786462.stm

SOB post from September:

http://speechesofbiches.blogspot.com/2008/09/as-de-menesez-inquiry-rumbles-on.html

Wow, I almost feel like a proper journalist and everything.

I'm surprised the Daily Mail hasn't got hold of this one yet...

Gordon Brown is starring in a film made by lefty euro foreigners!!1! As a terrorist!!!!!1!1! A GERMAN terrorist!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!!1!!!!!1

Even tho it aint him it lookz liek him n dat is sik enuff. I fink e shud resine now.


*..or maybe they have, lord knows I don't want to sully my internet search history and check.

'OMG look at her SHOES!!!11!1!!!!'

Who would have thought that Kristin Davis would be the best thing about any film, let alone the SATC? Her comic mugging was about the only redeeming feature in this predictable cheesefest of an extended advert.

I did like SATC on tv, I went to the cinema with my brain firmly switched to standby and my cynicism (oooh! I'm SUCH a Miranda) tucked away safely in my back pocket, but even then it would take a very simple woman indeed to be moved by this souless schtick.

SATC had genuinely moving episodes, you felt for the characters, they seemed real. On the big screen it is not just their fabulous wardrobes which are larger than life...they have all become such parodies of themselves, we feel nothing for them. At one point when Carrie is emotionally devistated (no, not saying why) and slowly takes off her sunglasses for the first time to see her sorrowful reflection in the mirror, a member of the audience with cynical volume muttered 'wow.' There was a pause and the whole cinema errupted into laughter.

Oh god and don't get me started on Jennifer Hudson, a woman apparently only cast for her ability to bring some good ole token sass to proceedings. I mean, she can act most of the others off the screen, but given that her dialogue mainly consists of 'uuuh huh girlfriend', and hideously twee one liners, they might as well have saved themselves the money and brought in some bit character from Keenan and Kel. I mean honestly, who says 'I came to New York to find love'? Emotional men. Lesbians. Not smart women in a town where they outnumber men 2:1.

But yeah, the clothes are fabulous, the shoes are fabulous, the locations are fabulous... but then they always were. But the series had more, it had (a rather ditzy, materialistic, bittersweet) soul.

In summary: The SATC Movie.. it's like meeting up with your old best friend from school and finding out you have absolutely nothing in common. But that they do have nice shoes.

Edit: The best review of the film I have read, on Jezebel.com, a site any woman with a semblance of a brain should waste some of her daily time on.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Hmmmmm

Childhood film nostalgia is a funny thing. I'm currently sitting here with my brother, watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of our all time favorite films from the days of yore. We both remembered exactly what would happen when: 'Oh yeah then they go off the cliff in a dinghy' 'He drives because he has boxes stuck to his shoes' etc, what we both didn't realise is *ahem* quite how racist it is..

Now I know Indian cuisine is a tad different to chips and peas, but monkey brains, beetles and snakes? What region is that from? And who knew Indians in turbans (Sikhs?) who worship Shiva (Hindus?) also spend their time sacrificing humans by tearing out their still beating hearts?

Then again maybe we're just being unduly sensitive and PC because our uncle is Indian, and although he covers everything in chilli sauce and is want to make horrible phlegmy noises in the bathroom, I have yet to see him drink from a skull or attempt to extract my brother's still beating heart when he forgets to flush the loo.

It is still a great action film though, brain and social consciense set far aside... much better than the Goonies, which everyone else in the world ever watched as a bairn, but is curiously absent from my and my brother's collective memory. Either some awful psychological event happened to us that afternoon, or our parents had the taste to not expose us to a load of shrieking yank brats looking for treasure. Hmmm that said, it's kind of hard to take a moral high ground when we gobbled up images of colonial India which would make Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai etc's heads spin. Although Harrison Ford was very fit back then and there is only one shrieking stereotyped child...

Edit: My brother would like to make it clear that he has never forgotten to flush the toilet ever. Even though hardly anyone who reads this blog knows who he is, and a quick straw poll of those who do suggests that even though he never forgets to flush the loo, he certainly looks like someone who might. Conclusion: Brother of Biche needs to stop lacing his trainers with string and buy a jacket that doesn't have 'anti capitalista' glued to the back with PVA glue.

RAMBOOOOOOOOOO

Interesting fact: Steven Berkoff only took the role in Rambo II because when his agent told him about it over the phone he misheard and thought it was a biography of the 19th Century poet.

Holy Screensplits Batman!

Ooh I've been looking for an excuse to post something about the new Batman film for a while now... they have been doing some amazing viral work for it, which is hugely elaborate and most pointless as the film is clearly going to be huger than huge and would have been before poor Heath popped it anyway...

But I digress, the official trailer for the Dark Knight came out late last week, but after only about 24 hours the obsessive viral addicts already noticed that it seemed slightly familiar... them clever marketing people have done it again!

The film above splits the screen between the new trailer and the original 1989 Batman trailer. Observe. Genius.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Geek that I deep down am (well, scratch the surface really) I was quite excited by these photos of Ozymandias, the Nite Owl and the Comedian from the upcoming film of Alan Moore's Watchmen. I was somehow drawn into a massive long ramble about graphic novels just last week, where I waxed lyical about the complex storylines, the art and the skill at being able to convey a wide range of emotions or a whole backstory in just a frame to some family friends. Unfortunately for all my oratorial olympics, every time I paused for breath they would respond 'oh so they are like cartoons right?' or 'like Garfield?' until I imagined a graphic frame of me howling with frustration, causing the walls to shake, fists clenched and face upturned. It would be from above so you saw my upturned face with gritted teeth and eyes desparing, and I am flanked by the two well meaning family friends, one of whom has taken a Peanuts anthology from the shelf and is gesturing to it as if to say 'like this?' The other one would be wearing a cardigan and holding a mug saying 'Abergavenny Jazz Festival 1999' Don't you wish I could draw huh? Anyway, I really hope Watchmen will be good, Moore's other works that have been filmified range from V for Vendetta (v good) and From Hell (alright, but ruined by some shocking accents but saved by Johnny Depp) to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (poo, dispite the presence of Stuart Townsend) One thing I wonder is how they are going to film the ending, which has New York being destroyed by a nuclear bomb for a greater good*. Mind you, they did Cloverfield, so I think Hollywood has got over the whole 'thousands of New Yorkers being killed by terrorists seven years ago' thing, those brave resilient Los Angeles producers...









*Well, in a rather large nutshell, but I don't want to ruin the book for people who haven't read it and really really should.

What the Ill Informed Have Been Muttering About Today

* Was the Camden Market Fire caused by developers desperate to drive out the last few stall holders who were refusing to sell their pitches to them, so they could build a big glass monstrosity like the Ice Warf on the opposite side of the road?


*Have you ever seen two couples more in the throes of love than the Smiths and the Cruises? Look at the way they are touching! Nothing says 'we have lots and lots of straight up heterosexual relations' more than pointed touching and a dead eyed gaze. (okay pic not great, but if you read the London Paper you will know what I mean)

Yeah okay the ill informed have not been muttering much today. But they will be back tomorrow I am sure

What's That Coming Over The Hill..

... is it a giant anthropomorphised paedophile hand? Giant anthropomorphised paedophile hand!

Photograph taken from my recent-ish travails in Japan. I mean, I am assuming that is vaguely what it means, but given that I can't so much write my name in the language it could just be a health warning about dirty fingernails or something.

I am quite amused by the idea of loads of little Japanese kids growing up in fear of giant floating evil hands; a completely irrational, imagination fuelled fear much like the one I suffered from when locked my dolls in the bathroom every night for a couple of years after watching Childs Play.

I then saw it again about six years later when I was about thirteen and felt like a right tool as it could actually be the most un scary shit horror film ever.

Baftas Exclusive!

My top secret source exclusively reveals:

Daniel Radcliffe - "Totally a man in a child's body. Everything about him is really really small"

Jeff Goldblum - "Really nice. Tall. Not at all letchy, that's just his face"

James Macavoy - "Ab-so-lutely tiny"

Kevin Spacey - "Really believes his own hype. Didn't come across as that Queeny"

Jessica Biel - "Tall and stunning"

Harvey Winstein - "Very fat and creepy looking"

Eddie Izzard - "Looks very normal in the flesh"

Wow, there you have it. Heat magazine eat your heart out.

Cloverfield: An Uneasy Biche writes..

Like most people who piddle away their lives on the internet, and whose endless search for gossip cannot be saited by UK websites, I was getting mildly excited about the release of Cloverfield.
For those who have been hiding under rocks/not online (same difference) It concerns New York under monster attack in an action movie stylee, but from the perspective of some ordinary New Yorkers with videocameras who are having a party... what is it? What will happen? Will they escape the city? Bravo JJ Abrams again etc..

Then last night I caught The Falling Man on More 4. For those who haven't seen it, it is, for all the usual amount of naff philosophising and talking heads, an ultimately heartbreaking documentary, although this is largely down to the unforgettable footage.
It is basically about all the people who jumped from the WTC on 9/11; people who either took control of their lives or committed the 'sin' of suicide, depending who you ask. Whatever one calls their actions, the resulting photos and footage, which were generally considered the most shocking of the day, were pretty much omitted from all coverage in a remarkable act of mass censorship. Even when they were pubished in a few outlets the public complained in such great numbers they were not reprinted for a very long time.
Indeed the whole issue was so delicate that when a journalist called the NY City Morgue to enquire how many deaths from jumping they had, the mortician replied that 'there had been no jumpers. People were sucked out the buildings by the wind but no one jumped.'

Anyway, as the documentary focussed on journalists who were trying to identify the one man in the photo above, one individual out of the thousands who died, it made me think about Cloverfield and it's narrative. On one hand, it is similar to the documentary as it personalises a tragedy to a small group of people affected by it. However it is also monster action movie, so it has equal amounts in common with Austin Powers' 'does anyone think of the Henchmen's family?' genre parody.

And that's cool..I'm not a Daily Mail reader, I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing Cloverfield, in fact I probably will go see it. But whereas before I would just get into the spirit of it and have a good couple of hours, now I think I would feel decidedly uneasy. We have seen New Yorkers die as their city is attacked for real. Even if it is a flipping reptile and not two planes, it's still rather close to the bone given the way it is filmed and the New Yorker's POV (although that is obviously the point.)

It just seems that time and perspective are funny things...when it happened, we knew thousands had died, but many objected to seeing one actual body as it was deemed too disturbing and disrespectful. Seven years on, you can make an action movie parodying the day and no one bats an eyelid. Is that progress or desesitization? I really don't know.

*serious post over. Let's get back to the screaming queens, eh?*

A New Found Respect for Jerry O' Connell

Well, okay not really 'respect', but his parody of Tom Cruise's gaga Scientology ramblings makes me laugh, so I guess I would think of him more favorably if he ever happened to flit across my braincells again

:( Fallen Idols

It's such a bizarre sociological..paradox.. when someone famous dies. Lots of people feel very deeply affected by it and are genuinely sad, yet the main reason we liked them is purely because they were good looking. Ultimately. Which is maddeningly shallow.
That said, it is weird when an old teenage crush dies. Almost nostalgic. And what with poor old Heath and Brad Renfro last week, Christian Slater and the lead singer of the Seahorses (ahem) had better watch their backs..that's all I'm saying

Look and Learn: An Interesting Story from 1980's New York Black/Hispanic Gay Culture

Dorian Corey was a 'legendary' transexual in New York , who in the 1980's - early 1990's was head of the House of Corey, one of the many Houses that dominated the New York Ball scene.

If you haven't seen the documentary 'Paris is Burning' then you really should, it's an utterly fascinating view of an underground world that doesn't exist anymore. Young, mainly black and hispanic gay men flocked to New York City in the 70's and 80's where they could be free to be who they wanted to be...within limits. These were aspirational times, when you didn't just want to be yourself, you wanted to be you but better, a banker, a yuppie, Joan Collins in Dynasty. Being poor, gay and an ethnic minority meant you had the faintest chance of this happening, except at the Balls, where you could dress fierce, compete in catwalks or vogueing competitions to win prizes and for that evening you WERE fierce.

Most of these young men were rejected by their real families for their homosexuality or transexualism and so saught solace in a new sort of family. Called 'houses' and named after the great fashion houses of Paris such as 'House of Dior' or 'House of Chanel', they consisted of a house mother (usually an older transsexual a.k.a a Legendary, a veteran of the ball scene) and a house father (usually an older butch gay man), and all the other members were the children.
They would all take the surname of their house, and compete in Balls for them.

Anyway, back to Corey. Wikipedia had this unusual little tidbit:

After Corey's death in 1993, a mummified body with gunshot wounds was found in Corey's belongings. The body, which had been shut in a trunk for more than twenty years, had a note attached to it which read "This poor soul broke into my apartment and I was forced to shoot him." It was later identified as Robert Worley.

For more on Ball Culture, which is quite frankly fascinating, see:

Wiki entry on 'Paris is Burning'

NYT article on the aftermath of the documentary.. Paris has Burned

Article on Angie Xtravanganza and Dorian Corey

Wiki entry on Ball Culture

Wiki entry on Venus Xtravaganza

or look up Willi Ninja on youtube

...or How to Make Friends and Influence People in Soho

I'm sure I've seen the blue guy in the John Snow...

'Speeches of Biches - they come for the calming pink background but stay for the stating the bleeding obvious'

Belated Halloween Post 2007!

Halloween costume ideas for the disabled child in your life:

Lots more tips and tricks for costumes here!

What can I say? I'm just bitter because my costume consisted of a pink wig which I have had for three years... I decided to cut it into a bob this year for a 'fresh new look' (aka it was getting all ratty) and ended up looking like the girl from Lazytown rather than the 'Natalie Portman in Closer' look I was aiming for. The girl from Lazytown if she wrapped her pear shaped arse in a black mac and trudged around Whitechapel looking at carparks where 119 years ago some prostitutes were killed rather nastily. *

*Jack the Ripper tour, in case that wasn't clear. Pretty interesting, but only because of what the guy said, which I think would have had the same effect said on a warm coach instead of wandering around law firm carparks and back entrances to office blocks. Although I suppose there were a couple of old buildings that gave a sort of atmosphere, until we had to move on as another Ripper group was on our tail.