Sam reviews…
Nov.29, 2004, filed under Miscellany
It has been a peculiar year for films, chez RF Devon. We seem to be managing a hit ratio of about 1:5 – so for every 1 enjoyable film we’ve seen 5 crappy ones. A couple of weeks ago we watched The Day After Tomorrow. The only thing I can think of to say about this is that it was worse than The Core, and that was so bad I even wrote to Oakley trying to persuade them to sue over the use of the word ‘Unobtainium’. I pointed out that they would forever be associated with a film that sucked chunky goat vomit through a twisty straw. They didn’t respond, the ingrates.
Last week we watched Troy. It started off pleasantly enough (although I must confess sadly that it wasn’t until I remembered that Brian Cox, who played Agamemnon, also played Stryker in X2, and that was why he made me uncomfortable when he was on screen, the nasty piece of work). Brad did the arrogant, troubled hero thing.
But then it went wrong.
Slash fic, for those who don’t know, is erotic, usually homo-erotic fan fiction. Spock and Kirk, Han Solo and Chewbacca… you get the picture. Troy played like anti-slash. Patroclus was Achilles’ cousin? Really? You think Achilles was miffed enough to drag Hector’s lifeless corpse around the walls of Troy because Hector killed his cousin? From whence think you that the term ‘Greek sex’ comes? Why is Achilles shagging that female? Why is there a scantily clad female showing the svelte curve of hip and waist every time some male gets slightly undressed?
"We’re all steaming Heteros here! We’re REAL MEN! We shag FEMALES! See this woman? I’M SCREWING HER! No BUM BUGGERERS here! No SIR! This man is my COUSIN. Not my BUM CHUM at all!"
It was almost impossible to watch without motorboating ("But… but… but… but… but…" Anyone else remember Panic Station?) Didn’t help that Helen, supposedly one of the most beautiful women in the world, was basically quite ordinary-looking. More stick-thin blondeness than I really needed, thank you. Even Peter O’Toole was asleep, despite being a big ham. In fact, the only people who looked like they were having fun were the fat guys in leather aprons, who evidently saw this as a perfect excuse to practise their Brian Blessed impersonations.
Oh yes. And their treatment of the gods. Best summed up by: "Gods? What gods?" You have to go to the special features section for them, and they don’t even mention Discordia. They could not have given a Greek epic more of a Christian fundamentalist right-wing make-over if they’d tried.
But it was a lot better than The Day After Tomorrow. That’s not saying much. The only advantage that The Day After Tomorrow has over the rancid pile of fœtid rat puke that was Cats and Dogs is that it was so dull I slept through most of it and therefore did not feel the need to scrub inside my head with a brillo pad to get rid of the memory of having seen it.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
