Newsflash: hard up pensioner star becomes rent boy

The latest in an ever increasing line up of beloved and iconic Star Wars characters being whored out to advertisers is the beloved spiritual sage Yoda for Vodafone. This is so many shades of wrong I don't even know where to begin with this one...so let's just cut to this somewhat trivial and pedantic thought - Yoda is in a sushi restaurant, the plate placed in front of him is clearly fish sushi. Surely Yoda, sage of sages, most spiritualised of the spiritual, would be vegan? Veggie at least....?

 

Yoda's choice? Mushroom and tofu  .....

 

....or Yoda's delight?  Carnivore heaven

Film Review: Shame

We like to think that it's not all moaning here at dfwmf, and not all slagging off other people's creative endeavours (however poorly conceived or executed some may be! Don't worry, those ones will still get a tongue lashing.) So here is a review of something that was more than worthwhile of feasting our eyes on and invading our brains....

If you’re thinking of taking a date to see the film Shame, you might want to think twice, though on the other hand it may leave you both feeling incredibly lucky in comparison to the film’s leads. The film reunites the actor Michael Fassbender with director Steve McQueen – an award winning combination with Hunger, and potentially, with Shame.

The film opens with Brandon Sullivan (Fassbender) naked in his apartment, ignoring a phone call from his sister, whilst we get flashback glimpses of his recent sex with a hooker. Next we see him on a train making piercing eye contact with an attractive fellow rider. She seems in no doubt as to the intention of his gaze, becomes visibly aroused and encourages his stare. He then follows her onto to the platform at her stop, but he loses her. We are beginning to get an idea of the driving forces in Brandon’s life. He likes the ladies, has no problem in attracting them it seems, but also pays for sex. But Brandon is no sleaze; he has a respectable job, dresses smartly, and does not hit on women in the shameless way that his married boss does. We discover that his work computer’s hard drive is packed with pornographic material; his home laptop is used for this purpose too.

So far, so normal, you might say, sounds like a lot of men I know, so what? But Brandon’s “normality” is called into question when his flaky sister turns up to stay. They seem to keep encountering each other in the nude, and her invasion of his privacy prevents him from his routines of sexual encounters and pornography. In one scene his sister is loudly heard to be in the throes of foreplay in Brandon’s bed with a man, and a tortured looking Brandon flees the apartment to pound the streets of New York. Brandon’s sister, Sissy, (Carey Mulligan) is younger than him, rather vulnerable and without roots it seems. She has a talent for singing, and bodily scars that hint at a past full of trauma. Is she bringing this trouble and trauma to Brandon’s controlled and rather isolated life, we wonder?

At times they seem like typical siblings, tender or teasing, but Brandon is never able to open up to Sissy, and is often unwelcoming and even hostile to her. The film gives us clues to the cause of Brandon’s inability to connect emotionally with women, and his constant need for sexual encounters. In one tortuous extended montage his quest for sexual encounters becomes reckless and desperate leading to his own shame and degradation. We wonder whether the likable yet tortured Brandon will ever escape his cycle of addiction.

Fassbender is in every scene of the movie, and is quite mesmerising, his face registering a variety of emotions, but his words never giving much away. The film is invasive of Brandon’s face and body; we see everything, his most intimate moments, yet he reveals so little with his own words or emotions we must piece together his story for ourselves with the evidence McQueen provides. It is a brave and utterly raw performance by the brilliant Fassbender that is frequently painful to watch. Mulligan is also good, Sissy’s vulnerability more visible than her brother’s. McQueen’s direction often feels clinical and cold, perhaps reflecting Brandon’s controlled, imprisoned life; there is little here to raise the spirits or warm the soul, yet Brandon and his sister still get to us, we feel for them and feel the pain of their story, wishing better for them. Maybe not a great choice for date night, but certainly a good choice if you want to see acting at its best, a sympathetic portrayal of addiction, with suggestions of what might cause such addictions, and the all too human story that sometimes bad shit happens to good people.

Stop all the cocks....or should that be clocks? Nah, I’ll stick with the former... Poetry ads on telly*

Essential headwear for poetry ad voice-over artistes

It seemed to start with the Cathedral City advert showing warm and comforting scenes of British life accompanied by poetry voiced by the warm, salt-of the earth, “real” tones of Pete Postlethwaite. Nothing necessarily wrong with this ad, it had some of the warmth and “realness” that the brand wanted to get across, but there's something a little irritating and patronising about the glib poetry offering slices of British lives, like they think the brilliance of Larkin and Alan Bennett can just be hashed out in an advertising office to shift slabs of cows’ congealed mammary juice.
 

And then they seemed to be everywhere like a rash, carbon-copies of the Cathedral City ad, featuring "gritty" northern voice-overs ('cause Northerners - anyone North of Watford -  are "real"and quirky and  have the common touch according to TV types. Southerners by the same distinction are either terribly posh, cockneys or, on rarer occasions, quirky South-Western Bristolians or Cornish - the Northerners of the South), rousing or folksy music over supposedly heart-warming images of British lives and quirky, lovable Brits, like slices of Mike Leigh films.



Next was McDonalds’ even more irritating poetry advert, again voiced by a “real” sounding Northerner, David Morrissey, proselytizing about how McDonalds is for everyone with the repeated line about how everyone “was just passing by”. The ad tries to tell us how everyone loves a Maccy D’s, from the road labourers to the sweet old folks, but it feels like an exercise by marketing strategists pigeon-holing us into socio-ecomonic groups – “Oh here’s what we call ‘the grey players’ – old folks who’ve remortgaged their homes to subsidise their gambling habits. A trip to McDonalds is quick break from the bookies... This group here is what we refer to as the Defeated Dads – divorced, struggling to meet child support payments and the mortgage for the house they no longer live in. They live in a bedsit and take the kids to McDonalds as there’s no room at home” . And there’s a slightly superior edge to Morrissey’s tone that gives the message, “We all pretend we’re too posh for Maccy D’s, but really we love it, but if we’re seen in there we say we were ‘just passing by’” . Yeah you, that’s right you posh frothy-coffee drinking twat, you’re not too posh for Maccy D’s, go on, hide in the corner and wrap your lips round a Big Mac.  And they’re at it again in a way in their latest ad, as your average Joe recites lines from On the Street Where You Live – a love song turned into a love letter to McDonalds, whilst Audrey Hepburn spins in her grave. 

Winalot's at it as well, albeit with limited rhyming in that every line ends in "a lot". (If you recall from English lessons, poems that don't rhyme at all or as well as the ones we grew up with are seen as da more sophisticated and clever ones, innit?) . And the rest of the poem ad cliche's are there, admittedly done in a tongue in cheek way - rousing music, shots of  diverse groups of people in British slice of life settings, or being quirky and eccentrically British. Ah, makes you feel proud to be a Brit.

Latest to jump on the poetry bandwagon is Magnet. Their ad is basically Cathedral City without the cheese. Pointless poetry, just empty, meaningless words that are supposed to be imbued with the high-culture and classiness that poetry implies, tempered with the earthy, “in touch with the working man” northern accented voice over to balance out the poshness of poetry that may alienate the plebs.

Oh, and how could we forget? Bringing up the rear is good old Iceland with our old friend Stacey Solomon. The distinguishing feature of this ad has to be the blatant targeting of their market, not for Poshos is Iceland, as demonstrated in the eloquent line “Why fork out at Chez Nobby’s for their fancy bread?” Ooh, yes we don’t want none of that fancy bread, just bleached, nutritionally deficient white-sliced please, Iceland. Or a stick of frozen garlic bread if we’re really pushing the boat out. What other poetry ad clichés does the Iceland ad tick? Poem? Check. Northern voice over? Check. Whimsical, folksy instrumental music? Check. Not even thinly veiled patronising of the “common people” ? Check! Full house! ...Is that the sound of a barrel being scraped? 

Eh up, cock! It's gritty northern types. (The much missed brilliant Jack & Vera Duckworth)

*That’s telly as in tellay – pronounced in Northern, salt-of-the-earth, man of the people, common touch way: “What’s on't  tellay, Mam?” “Oh some posho reading a poem.” “Quick flick to Family Fortunes or summat.”