Tuesday 3 June 2008

Minutes at Midnight

I have great difficulty reading my own words when I write on paper, it's mostly for this reason I don't write on paper. If you ever see me sitting in a meeting scribbling away, you can almost guarantee that I have no intention of ever reading said scribbles. A few weeks ago, I find myself in just such a meeting when I'm expected to jot down the minutes, “it's fine” I think to myself, “I'll just write them up while it's all fresh in my mind”, alas, no such luck as tonight was the first time I had enough time to get it all done.

I stare at the notes, blankly and what I think happened is a spider got into my bag, pressed it's legs into an ink pad then walked all over the note pad, I would have better luck deciphering hieroglyphics! A bottle of beer later and the words slowly get drawn into focus. Tap tap tap goes the keyboard, I can't say for sure how much of it is fiction (albeit fact based) but I read through it and see very little resemblance to scrawlings of the original.

Hey ho, I'm sure no one will notice and I'm almost certain that the people who will read it, don't read this.

All of this started after watched 'This is England', it's a film I missed in the cinema and not really one that crops up on my “amazon recommends” list, but it was on tonight and I thought why not? I'm pretty glad I did, it was (at times) a moving account of life in improvised England in the early 80s. The war, the poverty, the desperate need to blame someone for the poverty and subsequently the racism. It was all shown through the eyes of a child who joins a group of skinheads at a time when they weren't synonymous with racist thugs but were certainly heading in that direction.

I wont go into it much more but it's well worth a watch, even if Amazon doesn't think so.

6 comments:

anonemouse said...

from what i remember of beer-drinking (which, obviously, is not much, but which has more to do with the fact that i don't drink beer -- damn, i don't even drink... yeah, right. -- let alone don't drink too much of it) words, and almost everything else, begins to fade rather than come into focus...
are you sure you don't have some kind of latent superpower josh, which is 'triggered' by the intake of the fruit of the hop? you could become 'Beerman' perhaps, and i can just see the 'B' emblazoned on your chest (or your vest) now...
as re TIE, i really enjoyed it too, and have seen it at least twice in the cinema to date.
in fact, i'd happily watch it again and again (altho' perhaps not back-to-back for all eternity...)
check out shane meadow's other stuff, such as 'once upon a time in the midlands' to see where he has come from and where he's going to. it's well worth the trip 'that far north' and i can say that with impunity despite growing up not to far from there and swearing never, ever to go back...
as for amazon, what do people who keep books in warehouses instead of reading 'em know anyway?
these johnnies are much more trustworthy and they ain't trying to sell you anything:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/this_is_england/

so, next time, why not try them tomatoes instead?
(i should point out at this point that the point of my making that point is that i have no share, interest or stake (or point...) in RT whatsoever, but just think that the 'democratic' many subjective voices, one objective opinion approach to reviewing is a pretty safe bet to finding yourself enjoying a flick rather than shouting at it and the back of the deeveedee case where a lone, crazed reviewer had proclaimed it the best thing they had ever seen (presumably just after they had their eyeballs, eardrums, rozzer and tastebuds surgically removed...)

Josh said...

That is one way of looking at it, yes, but before I go out into the world donning my underwear over my trousers all 'B' chested. We should spare a thought for the ink pad walking spider who made this all possible, that's where the true talent lays I am but a humble beer swilling interpretor.

Rottentoms are all good but so is:

http://www.screenjabber.com/thisisengland

But the thing is, it's not a film that would have come to my attention in the first place. I'm glad I watched it tho.

anonemouse said...

while the thought of you, all beer'd up, B'd up and in OTT y-fronts, conjures up a world all on its own, the shocking truth that you are but the humble sidekick to the real spiderman is nothing short of the gateway to a universe of, badly documented, comic adventures...
scribble, burp and away!

Josh said...

Bad documentation is what I do best.... I'll submit a story board to see if people do indeed marvel at the marvel.

anonemouse said...

you ron man!

Josh said...

Do you mean me? I ron man? Really? Me?