Song You Have (Probably) Never Heard (But That Might Change Your Life) #1: Almost Prayed - The Weather Prophets

So, I have my favourite bands, and then I have the weird obsessions with artists that no one has listened to for the past fifty thousand years. One of my little obsessions are the Loft and the Weather Prophets, both formed by Peter Astor in the 80s (the Weather Prophets succeeded the Loft, their sound is extremely similar). They are a perfect blend of Smiths-like melancholy, cheerfully despondent twinkling guitars, catchy melodies, and touching lyrics. Their albums are ridiculously hard to track down, but much easier to find is the amazing compilation Creation Soup (the first 50 singles released on Creation Records), which features some of my absolute favourite little-known songs and artists.
Anyway, here's my personal love from the Weather Prophets, 'Almost Prayed'

Upbeat yet ridiculously sad, makes me want to dance and cry at the same time and then sit for hours reflecting on the ironies and pains of life. The imagery is just the right mix of poetic, urban, and outré. And that piano and the catchy refrain drive me absolutely insane! It would not be too much to say that this song changed the way I look at music; the combination of the almost-bubbly-60s-pop sound and incredible dejection of mood gave me a new perspective on the way music can function. Pretty sure that songs like this were integral in the developing of Britpop several years later.

Review: The Judge by Rebecca West

I was so impressed with Rebecca West's first novel, The Return of the Soldier, that I wasted no time getting another book by her. The Judge is her second novel, set in the 1920s and concerning the love story of a young Scottish suffragette, Ellen, and a wealthy English traveler, Richard. There are certain aspects of the novel that are completely unique and utterly captivating. There are also aspects that are disturbing and even obscurely disgusting.

I freely admit that what I look for in a work of literature more than 'literary value' or even character development is a certain style that is at once beautiful and transcendental, a certain tone that is sympathetic and touching, a certain mood or atmosphere of something fascinating. West's writing provides this in plenty, which is why, even when I was displeased by some features, I was still captivated. West's style leaves, for me, little to be desired. It is somewhat reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's (which is to me the most satisfying writing of all that I have yet found). There are striking stream-of-conscience passages, descriptions of nature in which the characters interact with their surroundings in powerful psychical journeys, brilliant characterization, an enormous variety of internal worlds as West flits from the mind of one person to another, from the heroic to the ignoble. The style is deeply poetic and evocative, tinting all of life with deep satisfaction and harmony that communicates itself to the reader. The (perhaps) main character, Ellen, I could relate to best, and the way West portrays her young consciousness exploding in alterations of joy, confusion, and despair is a true delight. She is a character portrayed so vividly that one would recognize her in a second if one met her, her personality and charm shine out irresistibly. West also describes most vibrantly of anyone I have ever read the changeability and rapidity of human emotion. The characters swerve vertiginously and endlessly between hate, love, disgust, sympathy (etc) towards each other; nothing is stable. Every emotion, no matter how deep, cannot be relied upon to be there a minute later.

The disagreeable parts of the novel (for me) are all concerned with sexuality. There is an insistence on portraying a woman as a miracle because she has the ability to bear children and an overwhelming concern with pregnancy, childbirth, and the fertile state of the female. The section concerning Richard's mother, Marion, digs so deeply into the realm of female sexuality and the female as reproductive agent that it becomes utterly disgusting, though the style never becomes crude or fails in its beauty. The subject matter is pursued in revolting and tiresome depth. Disturbingly, Ellen is not aware of the actual facts about sexual intercourse (a little strange as she is seventeen) and Richard does not seem to mind the idea of keeping her ignorant until the wedding night. This seems like a sentiment belonging several centuries earlier and verging on cruelty, as she is clearly afraid of this knowledge.

Another aspect that I find distasteful is the preoccupation with Freudian ideas. Of course, the novel was written in the early 20s, at the height of Freud's popularity. But it is actually repugnant to me to read someone of West's obvious depth and intelligence buying into his clumsy and preposterous ideas and trying to make them into something natural and beautiful. Marion's almost sexual feeling towards Richard, her tendency towards 'natural' subservience to males, Ellen's immature sexuality, the denial and/or avoiding of female desire unless directed towards procreation are frankly ridiculous. This entire psychological 'analysis' ruins the brooding, Gothic tone that the novel initially promises. It is notable that the only weak and anticlimactic section of The Return of the Soldier is when the title character gets his memories back by being reminded of his dead son, which was West's previous attempt to introduce rudimentary psychology into her writing.

In general, I could not put the book down due to its stunning language and style, its clear, sparkling characterization (especially of Ellen), its sympathetic view of all the characters, its emotional flexibility. In terms of writing, I found it highly satisfying and inspiring. However, this was not enough for me to forgive the ridiculous take on and preoccupation with female sexuality and clumsy psychological bullshit.

Review: The Avengers: Age of Ultron

I have long given up going to the theatre for any commercial dramas or comedies, but action movies are the one thing I will go see as a new release. I admit it, I shamelessly enjoy the excitement of seeing over-the-top (but not too far over) action on the huge screen and watching beautiful actors beat the shit out of each other. It's simple, it's direct, it's usually not cheesy or offensive, it might be a bit artless and predictable, but I don't often see people punching one another in the face in real life, so I can't put up with it for the excitement factor. And in the last few years, Marvel delivered some pretty great action movies, most notably The Avengers, Thor, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Despite Marvel's predictably horrible track record with sequels (the ever-multiplying Iron Man follow-ups and Thor 2), I had high hopes for this Avengers movie due to the first movie and last year's Winter Soldier. Alas, these hopes were cruelly dashed.

First of all, let me say what commercial American filmmakers will seemingly never learn: BIGGER IS NOT BETTER. Where did the idea come from that the more in-your-face CGI there is, the better the movie?? On the most basic level, excessive visual effects take time away from character development and desensitize the audience. With this movie, however, perhaps taking time away from character interaction is a good thing as the little we got of it was so atrociously written that I would probably have preferred to see more robots blowing things up. I have no idea why every single movie franchise feels the need to outdo the previous movie in terms of visual effects. How about just giving us a different story? What a groundbreaking idea, right? But of course, that would necessitate actual signs of mental activity on the part of the writers, something that is not detectable in this movie.

Now, obviously, I don't go out to see a superhero movie expecting Tarkovsky, but I do expect some stylishness and discretion in the use of visual effects. And the first Avengers movie certainly had class. Who can ever live up to the supervillain that Loki was? He was certainly not the most technologically advanced one, but, like heroin, he had a hell of a personality. Shakespearean actor Tom Hiddleston played him to perfection as revenge-obsessed Byronic hero gone off the rails, bringing some ice-cold British style to the table. The villain in Age of Ultron lacks personality to the extent that he doesn't even have a human incarnation. (Not that that has previously been a problem in the Marvel movies; Tony's operating system JARVIS had more personality than everyone in this movie combined, no wonder they got rid of him). To avoid any actual dialogue or interaction, about 90% of the movie is therefore pointless explosions, stunts, running, shooting, and fighting. Also telling is the fact that usually in a Marvel movie, only one city gets smashed up beyond recognition, while this time, it's three.

Okay, so, let's get to the rest of the characters. Even Tony (the most hilarious and sharp Marvel hero) is overly nobly motivated and dull. Witty quips at a serious minimum. Captain America is still in his element as the most boring superhero the world has never seen with a stick the size of a giant redwood stuck up his ass. He does an absolute zero of interesting things, but I didn't expect anything else. Bruce and Clint literally were not characters at all, for all the interest they present, they might as well have been replaced by robots and no one would have noticed. Thor says like one funny Thor-ish thing and that's at the very beginning. This is bad, but the worst is Natasha. The problems here are off the charts.

I'm not a big fan of Scarlett Johansson. She's good in action films and was nicely wistful and confused in Lost in Translation, but overall, she's quite wooden and heavy-handed. But the Black Widow was awesome. She manipulated everyone, beat the shit out of everyone, and was basically the most emotionally invulnerable, cool, ruthless Avenger. And now, suddenly, she develops a ridiculous attachment to Bruce Banner, is flirting in the most over-the-top 30s movie dialogue, crying all over the place because she can’t have children, and basically allowing herself to be captured without a fight. Clearly, the Natasha we know and love has somewhere along the way been replaced by a useless Barbie doll. She becomes some kind of damsel in distress that the Hulk picks up in the most stereotypical ‘monster from 50s horror movie carrying hot girl’ manner and brings to safety. Most offensively, there is a scene where she tells Bruce about being sterilized when being trained as an assassin. During her flashback of being wheeled into the operating room, she looks up at the nurses and they have no mouths. To me, this is clearly saying that she feels that her 'voice' is being taken away from her. So women can only express themselves through having a baby? And Natasha is useless because she is not a walking womb? From a badass bitch, she suddenly becomes weak and inferior, a liability, someone to be excluded from the battle because she has failed in a woman's main purpose: reproduction. I cannot believe that something this blatantly sexist was put into the film. It's well-known that Marvel fans have been wanting more character development and background on the Black Widow, but not this.

Poster for Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Age of Ultron gives us a revamp of this very image starring the Hulk and Black Widow.

Her dialogue with Bruce was perhaps the worst-written thing ever, it makes hardcore porn look like a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Before they even kiss they are suddenly talking about living together and kids. Someone please educate the writers in how humans communicate! The party scene was like absolutely no party that I have ever seen or imagined, no one can possibly have that amount of forced and stilted conversation. The 'look at something, say half of a witty comment, do something flashy and action-y, finish the comment' formula was used in this movie at least half a million times and is getting old fast. Whoever wrote the screenplay should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the void.

I do have to give some credit where credit is due, one of the best scenes was when the Scarlet Witch (I didn't even start on the genetically altered Ukranian twins because their characters were also totally devoid of personality) messed with Thor's head and he saw a vision of all the Avengers dead. The slow camera pan over the dead, waxen bodies slumped or sprawled in death is reminiscent of a Gustave Moreau painting of supernatural doom and is satisfyingly chilling. Honestly, I think that those few seconds were the best of the whole 2+ hours.

Gustave Moreau - The Suitors.

There were so many ways it could have gone right. At first, I was rejoicing because of a hope that we were about the get a superhero version of Frankenstein starring Tony as Victor and Ultron as the monster. But no, that obviously psychologically fruitful scenario clearly did not appeal to the writers. Tony barely shows any remorse at fucking up on an epic scale. Also, deus ex machina is usually just an expression, but in this case, it is literally a thing as Vision suddenly emerges from the 'cradle' that was supposed to make a humanoid body for Ultron but was somehow altered by Thor. This was completely insulting to the audience. There is no way, seeing that living-tissue-producing machine, that we could possibly imagine it going anywhere good.

I'm probably just bitter because there were so many times that Marvel did it right. Okay, have aliens and robots fighting and shit blowing up everywhere. But give me the moment when Tony is tortured by remorse for his career of producing deadly weapons, when Loki lets go and falls into a void because he cannot have the love he deserves, when Steve stops fighting the Winter Soldier because Bucky is his best friend, that's what I paid my money to see. Oh, and also, I could have done with seeing so much less of Elizabeth Olson's breasts. So much less.

I'm sure people have seen this already, but here's the SNL skit about how Marvel refuses to give the Black Widow her own movie. SNL aren't my favourite, but they do a really great job of pointing out that Marvel (and for that matter, popular American movie studios in general) have no idea (like, absolute zero) of how to deal with a female character.