Thursday, December 06, 2007

The Creature Alone



It seems that David Cameron met Arnold Swarchenegger at a Policy Exchange Crimbo bash on Monday reporting delightedly that he was taller than the girly-man. The Gubernatorial top ten films were presented to Boy David and they included two of the action man’s efforts,“Twins”, a barely functional comedy, and the marvellous sequel Terminator 2.We are in a period of political sequels are we not? “Heir to Blair “, Cameron, and the bogey gobbler, are trying to achieve a similarly elusive blend of new and familiar themes.

A brace of films with the typical failures and successes of sequels is Alien and Aliens .The original comprises dissonant elements ;the dialogue and acting style are theatre work shop with sections of improv' providing an ultra realistic feel accentuated by the high background noise. The artistic vision is contrastingly high Gothic with pornographic images of corrupted flesh woven into dark arterial structures.The scaffolding is is an old B movie plot with traditional chase scenes , a secret identity and a female in peril. These ingredients complement each other in a creative tension.Pseuds corner here I come ;but it is an alchemical achievement .

The follow-up was an artisans delight and importantly a new film in old clothing. Wisely,it ditched the ambition of the first and settled for a high class actioner The Elstree,(Bond), wizards, incoporated the look into superlative product.A thrill ride replaces existential terror,but if its aims were limited,it delivered a satisfying experience to the oft cheated franchise follower. It was only when Universal threw the whole years budget at Aliens 3 that the series “Jumped-the-shark ”.

Don safety goggles while I stretch metaphor to breaking point; ready ? The Blair period appeared to contain internal oppositions.The weakness of the Conservative party brought this about but also the New Labour versus old Labour battles as personified by Blair and Brown.While neither predominated the government maintained energy,( all the wrong sort in my view, but bear with me).Cameron was initially impressed and set out to be Blair Project 2. But trying to pick up the story and pretend it was always written that way ( See Matrix Re-loaded) always fails .You have to make a 'new film' and that uses its ancestor rather than wears it like a posh boy affecting incongruous (political) bling. Had it gone on this way I would have been concerned ,but following Iain Duncan Smiths work and the policy reviews, not to say the vigorous debate on Grammars , Europe and so on over a decade, the Conservatives have forged what looks like a Government in waiting. Intellectual ferment and even disagreement can be productive and the paucity of Browns bench is the result of the silent "Terror" of life under the Talibrown.People have a sense that something is happening on the right and it feels like the future.

Brown is not a sequel , Blair did that himself , he is a spin off.No doubt he hoped to be ‘Frasier’, but he was too large a character in the original hit . Its more like having Punch wandering about pointlessly with no Judy to hit .Alien climaxed in a duel between the sleek black carnivore and Sigourney Weaver.Brown , remember, caught his prey and ate him. Imagine that had happened in the Ridley Scott film and the sequel consisted of hours of the creature, sitting about picking its teeth alone in space , whistling , perhaps flipping place mats into the bin ?

Bums are beginning to ache already Gordon ,and the two years of this non government stretch before us like an interview with Alan Shearer..

1-Anyone not come across “Jump-the-shark moment”. Google it

30 comments:

Old BE said...

The danger is that while he has his hands on the levers, Brown is a dangerous man. He seems to have decided almost on a whim to build four super prisons and to ban non-EU migrants. No discussion, no debate, just a quick announcement in the papers.

Will there be any reins for Cameron to take up by 2010?

Newmania said...

to ban non-EU migrants

He has not doen anything of the sort Ed is you are talking about the English test it will make not a sod of differnce. They will not have a number and there can only be one reason.

The prison calamity is more the inattention of the last ten eyars than buiolding more now . We need more

IMHO

Old BE said...

Yes we need more! But do these mega prisons solve the problem? Who knows - it is just announced. Jack Straw pulls the rabbit out of the hat and we are supposed to stand up and cheer on Gordon the Brave.

The non-EU migrants thing was headline news yesterday. I think it related to "un-skilled" people.

Newmania said...

It relates to unskilled people outside the EU and only if there are deemd to be enough both here and in the EU in someones opinion.You are not seriously going to stop spouses getting ehre with language requirements and the chain is endless.

They will not have a number and all the time they will not we know why.In any case ten years too late

Old BE said...

I agree N, but it makes a nice headline to fill the BBC News page while there is a corruption scandal rolling on doesn't it?

Nice piece of populism with which Mr Brown can be "personally associated".

Philipa said...

Hello gorgeous pants, much work today but had to say hi and I liked Twins but not as much as 'Junior' - I could really identify with the Emma Thompson character.

Thought Boris's column was superb this morning.

Newmania said...

Cahnnot agree On Boris this AM P. A weak one I thought

Anonymous said...

I cannot imagine life in a country with four gigantic prisons called "Titans" - how mad and evil is this government?

Newmania said...

I `m quite pleased that the wrong doing of bad people will be ounished with a scary name Mutt . At the moment they get nowt

Francesca Preece said...

That picture is uncanny to our dear ole prem :P

Good work and nice theme - I always thought the government was one of horror.

Newmania said...

Nameless dread TTG

Salutations

Anonymous said...

One of your your best, n, brilliant!

Newmania said...

Thanks anon ..?

Anonymous said...

Oh, sorry, n, anon was Flo' in a flowing rush again.

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

I used to have this thing called 'time'...but one of my grown up sprogs came back home again

Auntie Flo'

Newmania said...

Imagine having grown up children,.. Elliot seems qquitye grown up to me having mastered the "poo in the potty " conundrum.

You probably get an A level for that nowadays

Anonymous said...

I see Broon as wolf man, half wolf, half human. That sallow skin, those nasty little pointed stumps of wolverine teeth beneath the £10K enamels. And he certainly has the chilling glint of low cunning and money hungry greed in those yellow eyes...ok, I know only is real but it was fashioned to match the other, wasn't it?

Little wonder then that this government are so keen to allow mad scientists to mess with our genetic code, DNA and the EU's rewilding of ecological corridors directive, otherwise known as Jurrassic Park Mk II. It's all to make wolf man feel more at home and a little less conspicuous.

My friends laughed their socks off when I predicted a year ago that nulab would soon have their own Jurassic Park. Well they aint laughing now that even the Telegraph's reporting it's already happening here.

Not just wolves either, we're to see the return of the lynx, beavers, wild boar, elks...next it'll be Tyrannosaurus, mark my words. It all fits in so nicely with their project Ark too, for after nulab finally manage to get us all nuked and the politicos and public service payroll voters emerge from their bunkers.

The results, like everything else nulab does, will be catastrophic, because these wild critters will end up taking over just as the grey squirrel and spanish bluebell did.

Auntie Flo'

Newmania said...

I saw that Flo , I thought it was a question of reintroducing prviously indigenous species . I have seen the idea a few times actially and I am certian it will never happen . Wolves need a large area to roam and they will not conveniently stay away from push chairs at he supermarket.

Won`t happen

Anonymous said...

It already has happened, n, under the auspices of nulab's corporate (donor?) pals too.

One of the few means a billionaire has of owning thousands of acres of land and keeping it exclusively for their own use - i.e. keeping us, great unwashed and right to roamers, off of their land - is to designate it a rewilding or ecological area.

These rewilding schemes are also designed for the post agricultural era in UK. Once farm subsidies are stopped or reduced to the point where UK farmers can no longer afford to run their farms, the Governement will have a massive problem in maintaining th sustainablity of the countryside.

At present, farmers are stewards of the countryside. They maintain the water courses and ditches etc which prevent flooding, contain weed growth, cut hedges, cut down dead trees and 'elf and safety hazzards, take out sapplings to sustain vital heathland and control the growth of forests, control animal pests and vermin and so on.

Without that farming husbandry and stewardship, our countryside would soon become very red in tooth and claw, n.

The forest of Essex, teeming with (very) wildlife, vagabonds and outlaws once stretched from London to Colchester and beyond. What's left of that forest is now surrounded by heathland where trees, sapplings and furze are constantly cleared to prevent the forest taking hold again -as it would do in a matter of just a few years

Yet once nulab and the EU carry out their new Clearances of the countryside (every bit as devastating as those Marx condemned in Das Kapital)in order to develop and concrete and develop over as much of UK as they and their developer pals can grab (in line with the EU's money/power mad dream of constant migration/enlargement and ever expanding cities), who will be the steward of our land? And who will pay the cost of this stewardship?

Not the developers who are making a killing out of destroying our countryside - extensive, development linked flooding over much of the country now reveals the wreckless extent to which nulab are freeing developers from virtually any responsiblity for the problems their development causes.

That's where rewilding comes in. In Jurassic Park aka UK, wild animals will be the stewards of this new, surreal and post-modern landscape.

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Newmania said:

I thought it was a question of reintroducing prviously indigenous species



Yes, it is. However, these species which nulab claim, given climate change and the need for development, are more appropriate to the sustainablity of our country than farms haven't lived in UK for a 1000 years or so.

Wolves, lynx, beavers, reindeer, wild boar, no farming - what sort of landscape and lifestyle are nulab planning for? Post nuclear, I believe.

Meanwhile, these rewilding initiatives fit in very nicely with nulab's evil dream of driving Conservative supporting blocks out of the countryside and into dispersed, electorally impotent clusters in our towns.

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Here you are, n, adopt a UK Wolf courtesy of the Wolf Trust.

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:oNbwGudwCrkJ:www.wolftrust.org.uk/+wolves+in+UK&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk


"The Wolf Trust is a non-profit voluntary organisation for the understanding of wolves. We advocate a revival of the natural heritage of the Highlands of Scotland through a reintroduction and recovery of wolves.


Research on wolves (Canis lupus) began some decades ago, yet most people still only know the traditional mythical wolf. The Wolf Trust replaces the traditional wolf with the real wolf based on scientific knowledge and rational understanding.

Love or hate wolves (and other predators) we must understand and learn to live with them. Not only are they part of our natural heritage, they are a biting test for human morality and toleration for other creatures."

"WE ALSO SUPPORT A LYNX AND BEAR REINTRODUCTION INTO BRITAIN."

Remind me, what was thas the name of the mad professor who was eaten by the Tyrannoaurus in Jurassic Park?

Anonymous said...

What the nualb deceivers and their mad professors are not admitting is that the plan is that these rewilding corridors will stretch south eastwards (always south eastwards, yes?) to the Dengie Pensisular, some 30 odd miles from London - and beyond.

Auntie Flo'

Newmania said...

I must say I didn`t see it that way Flo...its a bewildering propsect certainly

Anonymous said...

Bear Kills, Eats Man in Alaska July 17, 2000

By The Associated Press

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- In a rare predatory attack, a brown bear killed and partially ate a man...

``It was not a matter of slapping him around. The bear ate on him,'' state trooper Sgt. Steve Garrett said Monday.

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Oh, my God, a bear eating another man - YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP_oS-gqYQU

Auntie Flo'

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'm getting obsessed with this rewilding bears:

An 11-year-old boy was dragged screaming from his family’s tent and killed by a black bear during a Father’s Day outing in the Utah wilderness.

The boy, his mother, stepfather and a 6-year-old brother were sleeping in a large tent on Sunday night in American Fork Canyon, about 30 miles (48 kilometres) southeast of Salt Lake City, when the stepfather heard the boy shout "something’s dragging me". The boy and his sleeping bag were gone.

The cut in the nylon tent was so clean, his family, who was not identified, first believed the boy had been abducted, US Forest Service officers said.

Auntie Flo'

Newmania said...

Flo ....perhaps a lie down ?I saw bears mooching around the camping site in the Rocky Mountgains a long time ago

(Father worked in Canada)

lilith said...

The artistic vision is contrastingly high Gothic with pornographic images of corrupted flesh woven into dark arterial structures.

Pornographic? So that's what gets you going, huh? ;-)

Newmania said...

I wasn`t thinking of pornography in a good way.

Anonymous said...

One of my colleagues who has worked in Canada claims that bears are lovely creatures who harm no one there.

Silly man, how can the threat of bears how in the vast, underpopulated spaces of Canada in any sense be compared to the havoc they could cause in overpopulated UK?

Sorry, n, but I don't like bears since seeing that video of one stripping the flesh from a man

Auntie Flo'

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