Diary of an up and coming sociopath

This weekend Rob came down after passing his driving theory test to hang out before we took Mum out for Mother’s Day. Because he didn’t feel up to walking much, we opted to stay local rather than go into central London and decided that we should go see Be Kind Rewind, continuing this year’s run of fairly attractive-looking films. (coming next week: Diary of the Dead!)

We had to get the 207 to ‘Bush again, which as we’re all aware is one of London’s officially sanctioned MurderBuses, but unfortunately after I talked it up as a complete death trap, we didn’t witness even one psychopath talking to himself, so I probably just look like a complete wuss or something. Once at the cinema, we tried to buy ice cream and found ourselves queueing FOREVER while the guy at the counter bumbled about attempting to serve everyone. We’re talking genuinely comedic levels of slowness here. I don’t know how complicated serving people ice cream is, but I feel no remorse in suggesting that if he can’t figure out how to do even that in a timely and efficient manner, perhaps he should go back to university.

Despite his best efforts to delay us, we did actually make it into the film. No condescending Bus advert this time, which I was slightly disappointed by (I was eager for Rob to experience the full levels of patronisation that being under 30 in London entails) but some interesting looking trailers, at least. It’s fair to say that Be Kind Rewind was a lot less like we were all expecting. The trailer paints it as quite a wacky comedy centred on film parodies, but the truth is quite some distance from that. The film parodies are integral, yes, but there aren’t actually many of them - Rush Hour 2 is the only one that gets as much screen time as Ghostbusters does, for instance.

Much like the Tenacious D film, it had about half as many jokes as I was expecting. Unlike the Tenacious D film, there is, at least, a lot more going on besides. Gondry’s got this film packed with subtext, and there’s even an entertaining bit where they declare that they should start their (original) film with the death scene, and you realise that BKR did, in fact, start with that death scene. It’s a nice touch. I definitely found myself coming out of the film with plenty to think about on a technical level, though there wasn’t a huge point being made. It falls short in just about every area, unfortunately. The characters don’t carry the film, the jokes don’t, the plot doesn’t and there isn’t really any specific point to the subtext, just a collection of ideas.

If you want to read too much into it, it’s a love letter to the dying and personal nature of video rental, but that’s not really a topic that’s up for much discussion. You could quite easily make a film about how video rental “killed” cinema and be just as correct. There’s a lot of sentimentality in the film, so it’s kind of ironic that if anything, the main failure (certainly, for me) that it lacks the heart such a subject needs to bring the audience on side with the filmmaker’s point. It was a real technical achievement, story-wise, that it managed to pound the topic from every angle, but all the clever film-making devices in the world didn’t manage to make me care about it.

So there you go. Not a great film, but one you might enjoy if you like pulling things apart. Though hilariously, I would advise you to skip the cinema and rent it. You know, “rent” it with your favourite “massively illegal torrent website.” (This joke just reminded me of one of my favourite Simpsons jokes: Fat Tony’s line “You were done a favour by our… how shall I say…? Mafia crime syndicate.”)

Anyway…

The following day, Rob and I went into town to buy a Mother’s Day card (100% organisation from the brothers Hunt, clearly.) and then played some guitar hero until Mum arrived. We went into town and into Browns, a brasserie-style restaurant that I had chosen to avoid having to go back to Belgo’s. Perhaps a little classier than I was expecting - they had a guy playing the piano, for christ’s sake, but Mum loved it and that’s what mattered. I had an excellent roast with some frankly amazing rare roast beef and I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed eating restaurant food that much. Afterwards, Rob got the train back home so I took Mum and Terry to see St. Pancras as requested, then we went to Bank, walked to Monument and over London Bridge so that I could show them a few more landmarks. It was dark by then, so I showed them a bit of Borough High Street, including the cafe I used to take lunch in when Kelkoo was located in the area. The particular Cafe was run by Turks, and one of the girls behind the counter was ridiculously attractive but always wore an eyepatch, which made her seem oddly attainable. I’ve told people that before, but even now it feels like I’m going to hell because of it.

After convincing Mum that it was too late to go for drinks (it was almost 7:30 and London Bridge is a good hour away from home) we got the tube back, though because Terry needed the toilet and we literally couldn’t find anywhere in London Bridge area that wasn’t out of order, we stopped off at Bond Street and ducked quickly into a pub, paying £1.50 for a coke to trick them into thinking we were paying customers, and thus allowing use of the toilets. Ha ha. Those idiots had no idea how we fooled them!

In the evening I wrote up a bunch of articles for Den of Geek, reviewing the recent Lost episode and the Lost game, and then the following morning, discovered that they also put my Lawless review up. That’s THREE new articles up there today. Now that all the writing is ticking over nicely, I’ve even made myself a timetable to ensure nothing I’m working on gets neglected. I’ve recently legitimised myself by writing stuff that’ll (allegedly) appear in print, though I’m filing that under “don’t believe it until you see it.” - now, if I could actually start making some money, this lifestyle might even start to feel like a proper job!