Hmm, What Should I Read? Real Advice on Choosing a Book

As we’ve seen, going to the cinema is usually a waste of time these days. Much better to put your feet up and read a good book. However, a book is a considerably greater investment of time than a film, often requiring days or even weeks to get through, and with so many genres to choose from these days picking the right book can be a difficult, even stressful task. Here, then, are some tips to help you choose the right book. To ensure you don’t squander many hours on unrewarding reading simply avoid all of the following:

Anything written by a woman.

Practically every book written by a woman can be summarised in four words: he didn’t understand her. There are some books that don’t conform to this formula, Frankenstein, Harry Potter, some books by Agatha Christie, but these aren’t really worth reading either. Even in genre fiction female authors generally stick to the same theme, e.g. sci-fi: he didn’t understand her, because he was from Alpha Centauri and she was from Opsillon 5, horror: he didn’t understand her because she was a vampire, crime: he didn’t understand her so she killed him, etc. Of course, if you actually are a woman it’s quite conceivable that this theme will appeal to you.

Anything that’s the winner of a wanky ‘literary’ award like the Booker Prize.

If you really want to impress some intellectual halfwits and read such crap prepare to be utterly bored for what will seem like years (and in fact probably will be considering how easy such books are to put down) and be no wiser at the end of it.

Anything with dragons on the cover.

It’s not always true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. If there are dragons on a book cover there will be dragons in the book and only an idiot wants to read a book with dragons in it.

Anything by J. R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien made up entire languages and extended histories for his Middle Earth fantasies! What a twerp. Considering how tedious the man’s life must have been to actually devote a large portion of it to such pointless details it’s unsurprising the books aren’t much fun either, full of endless descriptions and pompous dialogue. They probably have dragons on the cover too.

Why Not Just Stick a Barrel Over Your Head For Two Hours?

I notice today that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about to hit cinemas. On the other side of the Atlantic it's probably done so already. On the bright side, I suppose, at least if they scrape the barrel any further they’re bound to break through into clean air. How desperate for ideas can film studios possibly be? To actually pump tens of millions of dollars and thousands of man hours into an idea that wouldn’t excite me enough to turn the telly on if it was broadcast let alone actually go out to the cinema and pay real money to see? I’d rather give the money to charity and stick a barrel over my head for two hours since I’d be seeing the exact same thing.

Considering the amount of pointless remakes of TV series, cartoons and films in the last few years you’d think by chance alone a few would be decent. But I can’t think of any. Most are simply vehicles for CGI effects, which is somewhat bewildering when you think about it; considering the vast literature of science fiction, horror, action and other genres that we now have the technology to cinematise why do filmmakers spend vast resources on silly crap that was probably only commissioned because of budget and technical restrictions in the first place? I know the answer is obvious: that remakes are a safe bet with familiar characters and a ready made audience and are just the right intellectual level for your average movie going moron. Still, considering that the original fans are usually the ones who hate the remake most, and that the remakes never get any critical acclaim and never do much more than average at the box office either, is it really worth it when all those thousands of hours spent creating CGI effects could have gone into making some really amazing scifi epic from any number of authors or screenwriters. I mean, there are six billion people on the planet for Christ’s sake! Some of them must be able to come up with an idea for a good movie.

How about this; a movie director gets so bored with movie studios asking him to do crappy remakes he murders the studio bosses and makes a film about it. As a (not very) witty twist the movie bombs but a remake is a huge success.

Crap as this idea is, it’s still better than 99% of the films released in the last ten years.

300 Reasons Not to Watch This Rubbish

From the makers of Sin City, a film spoken of in hushed tones by critics and punters alike, a film that after thirty seconds I was literally screaming at my friends to turn off as the pompous, appallingly over-stylised and pretentious drivel was having the same effect as the US military’s new vomit weapons, comes another graphic-novel-inspired thing they show in cinemas.

With 300 however, I actually managed a full minute and a half (or however long the trailer lasted) of the exact same symptoms. Perhaps the small size of the player in my browser lessened the effect of the hideously stylised CGI. Even the non CGI visuals are ghastly, using that dated over-saturated look that advertisers like to depict black children in hot countries with to sell mobile phones or savings accounts. Piles of gut wrenchingly awful slow-motion (I mean is this actually in the film? I thought film makers had stamped out this hideously naff effect) and turgid soft metal make it seem more like a music video than a film. I suspect this may not have been unintentional but then why not just show it on MTV rather than wasting cinema screening time?

And when will filmmakers realise that CGI effects are just ugly. You don’t hear about people asking for their portrait in CGI. It just looks bad. Sure you can create lots of action sequences that would cost a fortune to actually film but they never really look convincing let alone artistic. Both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Star Wars prequels are more like cartoons than films, with battle sequences evoking as much visceral thrill as an elaborate game of skittles. I mean, when a character can surf down the trunk of a giant elephant as it crashes to the ground it’s hard to feel any real vicarious thrills in the way that, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, evoked. I’m presuming 300 at least doesn’t have anything quite so ridiculous as this but apparently the film is very violent.

Duh. Of course! Film morons are bound to love it. It’s ‘shockingly’ violent, hence credible (think Scorsese, Tarantino, Peckinpah etc.). What I don’t get is why the idiots who thank that violence = quality don’t make a feature length Tom & Jerry compilation and put that at the top of their best film lists. Of course, they would need to intersperse the violence with periods of relentless boredom, a la Raging Bull, Taxi Driver etc, and lots of macho bravado, perhaps Tom peeing and scratching the furniture, thus making it a study of ‘machismo’ or something. Tossers.

I don’t even need to see this film to know that it’s dreadful. There shouldn’t even be any need to write film reviews when it’s patently obvious that 99% of films released these days are a complete waste of time. Sod the cinema. Get a book from the library and give the money to a charity instead. Idiots.