Pan's Labyrinth

Last night I watched Pan's Labyrinth; an award-winning 2006 Spanish-language fantasy film written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro. It had been recommended to me by a good pal who's big into "foreign films" which I also love, but sometimes admit to being a bit slovenly about taking on subtitles. It's like going out on a date with someone you know is less intelligent than you. Just having to make that extra bit of effort can make you switch speedily over to docu-reality TV instead. Hate to sound like a complete idiot but you know what I mean?

Also, I'd heard that the backdrop to the story severs to post-Civil War Spain in 1944, after Francisco Franco has come into power, and feeling terminally ignorant about history after making a concerted effort never to concentrate in school… I felt intimidated. However, after an hour-long episode of Eastenders where Stacey went into meltdown about that red-pubed ugly fuck Max, and having to endure really bad storyline inputs to integrate the smoking ban into the lethargic UK psyche, I was ready for something with a bit more mega-bite. I reefed out cow blankie and ransacked a few fake-fur cushions and steadied myself for the film.

Jaysus, it was not what I expected… it was a dependable mix of Schindlers' List & Narnia pooled into one beautiful hectic mind-fuck. I'd expected cos it was a 'fairytale' something a bit more child friendly, but not so. However, it's a fascinating entirely beautiful film – I would categorise it as an anti-fairytale, the 'magic' being that it melds the horror of adult war with a child's relatable imagination in getting through it. You know the score… as a child you believed in magic (I certainly did, at times still do).

The preamble tells of Princess Moanna, daughter to the king of the underworld. She became probing about the world above and scampered to the surface, where the brightness of the sun blotted out her memories. Growing old as a human, she died, causing turmoil in her kingdom. However, the king always believed that her spirit would one day return, reincarnated in the form of another. Cut straight to a young kid with a weak pregnant mother en route to stay with a Fascist captain Vidal, her new stepfather. She meets an insect who turns out to be a fairy and while the rebels are getting cut up (badly) all around the near tranquil setting of a country army camp, she discovers a labyrinth that turns out to be her ancient father's portal to receive back the mortal soul of his long-lost daughter.

Inbetween domestic abuse, the brutal army-shenanigans of a hatchet-job fascist she agrees to carry out 'three tests' to try to get herself back to the underworld. The child, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), is totally absorbed in her task, but her fairy tale never veers too far away from the reality of the war that is going on around her, and dealing with her sick mother. But still it thrives on the magical. There's a fat toad in a tree, a Faun who does her head in (he reminded me of a modern trade unionist), fairies that are minuscule and manipulative and a paedophile who sleeps at a table full of tempting food. Her tests align themselves so squarely with the war that's happening outside her fortified imagination that the film ends up working on two levels. The brutality of war Vs the endlessly sad optimism of a child who has no real idea how to make it through.

The filming is so wonderful that even the effortless special effects make Hollywood look like an eBay botched relic. The main fascist character, just like Hitler, and every other mad man who suffered in childhood, takes out his anger on the anti-fascist rebels he has been assigned to seek out and eliminate while stationed at a countryside mill. He doesn't give a bollix about Ofelia's mother, just his unborn son - an extenstion to his ego - but Ofelia sets out to save the day, and fails, but ends up in the Kingdom anyway.

It's an anti-fairytale because it's honest enough to acknowledge that fairytales are horseshit, but it still ends up giving you a fairytale ending while fucking up your head totally. I thought it was marvellous. Just what a malcontent requires on a Tuesday night. However, this morning I woke up and felt that bit more enchanted, hard to explain, but it has left an unusual sprinkle all about me. One of those moments where you realise, yet again, that the world is wedged with repulsion and splendour in equal measure. And that it's OK to be forever conflicted.

This is England (the film)

I went to see Shane Meadows's new film: THIS IS ENGLAND at Queens Film Theatre in Belfast last night and it blew me clear away. I can't think of anything else today except getting back to see it again. It's totally rare for me to feel like this. It wasn't just the fantastic social relics of the 1980s that jerked me (crimped hair, cola cubes, Margaret Thatcher's stridulent whine, patterned carpets, perms, grim housing estates, etc.) the main character; a lonely 12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose, 14 in real life) is so incredible that I can honestly say I've never ever seen a performance like it in my life. If he doesn't get an award - or several - I'll be severely pissed off.

Basically, Shaun seeks solace and friendship in the company of a gang of skinheads not long after the death of his Dad in the Falklands War. It starts with horrific images of the war and newsreel footage from that time - horrific in a different sense to now as it's not all blood and guts and digital filming - more emphasis on quiet horror; squaddies smoking cigarettes while dumping dead bodies on an airfield to be flown back to English soil, and so on. The lie that was sold to them about what it means to be English, the consequential beefing up of nationalism & the National Front that followed.

The plot is basically that Combo (Stephen Graham) returns from jail secreting the stench of combative racism, which can't quite mask the whiff of something lost and very sad. He's in love with his ex-mate's> girlfriend...eventually plucks up the courage to tell her, which normally hard men don't do, apparently. "It was a horrible night," she says to him, "I was just 16 and pissed off my head". For three years in prison it's all he thought of; before his heart turned to worms. Not quite sure if he was supposed to have been abused, but he defo came from an 'absent father' household (big thing in 1980s' Britain). He knows how to exploit young minds that are looking for answers, snooping around grim England for a sense of self, you get the idea.

Of course there is violence (some of this I did find a bit 'put on'... the confrontation with the local 'Paki' shop owner, for instance, wasn't particularly real or reasonable)...but there is also a lot of accidental humour and most importantly; raw emotion. Shaun and Combo steal the show. The script is absolutely stunning; hilarious from the off but it's not that type of saccharine piss take that you so often see on British sitcoms now, even the most hard-boiled ones. Shaun manages to nab a girlfriend "way taller" than him, she's wonderfully dippy, Smell (Rosamund Hanson), who just looks crazy and talks shit, like teenagers do... Shaun gives her a sloppy wet kiss at one point in the back garden of a council house and cos he's so tiny and gorgeous and cute and real, it genuinely brings you back to that moment in your own life. She berates him for not sucking her tits; they have a bona fide conversation about his teenage concerns. He is just adorable.

There is one scene that is so first class that I know it will become legendary. They shave Shaun's head, dickie him up in a Ben Sherman shirt, some Dr Martin's boots, braces, etc. After weeks of partying, frolicking, talking, being brainwashed, getting stoned, this scene is simply the small tight-knit gang turning a corner into an alley-way and strutting along in slow motion... Shaun is angry and proud and beautiful in his crombie, Combo has an unmistakable hard-on bulging from his bleached jeans...the impact of this 6 second walk amplifies everything that shone of originality & personality in 1980s youth culture.

It moved me so much because I remember clearly from my own life how powerful the skinhead girls were, how enraged and splenetic the blokes were. I was a Mod for years throughout my teens, spent most of my time drinking with skinheads and scooterists, weekends away on scooter rallies not giving a fuck. There were no mobile phones, wanker game stations or web-based mania to distract you from teenage resolve. And just to add in another head-mash... the film that captures a young boy's grief at losing a parent is mirrored in real life as This Is England is dedicated to Shaun's real mother, Sharon, who tragically died of a terminal illness before the film was complete. She never got to see the performance of her little son's life. I left the cinema hardly able to breathe. You will not see a more powerful or provocative film this year. Trust me.

Blood Bombs & SadDAMN WHOsane

God Tesco's smoked mackerel pate with a toasted Feelgood Doctor bagel, garlic mayo, organic red onions and rocket is a culinary soothsayer just in time for the blood bombs to start falling from the pubic sky. Nice, eh? I have no class as you'll know by now from virtually all my blogs! The most annoying thing about being hormonal conjoined with shopping online is that there's no chance whatsoever for control or horse sense.

I was on a deadline earlier (interesting article, wow, from one of the first female Gardai working the streets of Dublin in the early 1960s and details of a telephone box racket with priests and prostitutes... more on this another time)... when the shopping arrived. I kinda winced at the door and thought, 'hmmm, a lot of bags?' as it's only me this weekend and the Wet Witch of course (still haven't heard what time she's arriving, if she's reading this will ye buzz me later before I get onto the wine?).

I dragged the bags in and only half unloaded as I had to send the article off at a certain time, etc. Just been downstairs and there's all kinds of bollix from chocolate nuts to cheesy frozen pies, all the stuff I am trying desperately hard to steer clear from to try to lose weight. But calories rule over sweet rationale and I know better not to argue with myself during these precious few days every month.

It's at this time that I usually send derisive emails to global spammers in reply to their litany of Viagra and other shite mails. It especially bugs me when they try to fool you by putting in a paragraph of a shite short story first in the hope that you might be stupid enough to read it before you get to the erection medication and give them a ring. I write back sick shit like: "I hope Saddam's last surviving relatives burn the fuck out of your family farm in Minnesota" and so on. The latest one is yet another gobshite trying to convince only the abjectly retarded and criminally insane that it's possible to earn £14K a week from home by only working two hours a day. I wrote back to them yesterday, hold on and I'll cut & paste it:

----- Original Message -----
From: "d burch"
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: *** SPAM *** Contact from Earn Cash At Home Website
> Sorry, but as you looking at internet scams we feel that we could not be of
> any help to you as we have no experience of such things. Thanks anyway.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 6:25 PM
> Subject: *** SPAM *** Contact from Earn Cash At Home Website
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I'm a journalist doing an article on internet work scams and I'm wondering
>> would it be possible to interview you about your totally outlandish claims of
>> earning £14K + per week.
>>
>> Please feel free to contact me in return.
>> Best Wishes,
>> J

Of course, I am not writing an article, but as he's not really offering a viable work opportunity either I have zero guilt or moral amenability about making him jump. And if he tries to sue me for pasting his email, I'll saw his grandmother's head off, providing of course that she's still alive. I'd never ever harm the dead. If anyone has any cultural crusades or contract killings they want carried out, contact me at this time every month, counting between 21 and 24 days' gap from today. No project is too taxing and I offer my services for free with a bonus bag of green lentils thrown in for dog owners and very old people.

Onto a more austere note: did you catch a glimpse of the Saddam's Tribe Docu-drama charting the downfall of Saddam Hussein on C.4. last night? It was written up from interviews with his daughter Raghad who was allegedly his favourite although not so 'favourite' as to not fall prey to his pathological unwholesome need to fuck up human life. He had her hubby killed and his other daughters' too, in between gassing millions, torturing, murdering and so on. The list of grossness is too long and so over-simulated these days that we're almost immune.

Yet still, his abused daughter commented on the day of his capture: "If age is measured by anguish and sadness, I would have been 80 today. But despite this, my confidence hasn't wavered for a single day in God the almighty..". She took over his legal defence on his behalf and saw it through till the final stages, incredible in a way. Yet, what's astounding is that no matter how much grotesque detail came to light after his downfall, still the granola-eating liberals with their soya-milk swindling concern for all human life once it fits their agenda, roared and shouted about the way this lunatic was treated in jail.

The Irish left in particular are even more nauseous as they're nearly all (better not name that East London liberal intellectual rag)-reading postgrads from far-flung places like Sandycove & Dundrum. You know, those places that have been through so much on the planet. Oh I could go on, but I won't. They did the same when Madonna adopted the baby from Malawi. I laughed my hole off at all the: 'this is abuse of human rights' invective. As I said to lover over a lovely Italian meal in Edinburgh last October: "which would they fucking prefer that Madonna's new kid is chased by paparazzi or flies & cataracts.... what a choice?" And up they piped again when it came to Saddam being hanged. Yeah, he was humiliated; strictly speaking this of course, should not happen, by civilised standards and rules of war, etc. But I have to say, it didn't even stir one emotion in me.

The only thing I felt was surprise that he actually took it all quite calmly, even at the end, not like those Nazis who were hung after Nuremberg... they squealed for their Helga mothers & tried to barter with God. The lefty blockheads have been at it again in recent days following the horrific abduction in Portugal of poor little Madeleine McCann... they used it as a platform to rant about prisoners' rights and why paedophiles should be properly rehabilitated and what about parents who leave their kids, etc., so obscenely insensitive and totally veering away from the issue.

Last night's drama 'from the inside' showing just how injurious and psychotic Saddam was with his own family members, never mind his 'distant' country men and women, was a necessitous reminder of the facts. This barbaric lunatic did not deserve any pity never mind intervention from human rights organisations when justice arrived. He was an insane fucker that may not have been out of place in Babylonian times but in the modern world, his crimes were based on the sickest brutality at home and unbelievable slaughter abroad.

If marshmallow-soft lefties just took a little break from their avocado salads to imagine for one moment their precious daughters, not sitting safely in the confines of the local multi-denominational school on one of Dublin's Dart lines, but lying on a roadside seeping yellow puss after a chemical bomb the likes of which was dropped indiscriminately in Halabja in Northern Iraq in 1988... and maybe a scabby starving dog eating her eyeballs, it might be one small step towards awakening.