Yet Another Slow Year

Having watched the Oscars on Sunday, I thought it right to mention some of the also-rans I have seen over the last twelve months. After all, art is something to be cherished and admired and praised regardless of its mediocrity or inability to compose a coherent, plausible story.

Interstellar
I could discuss the merits and failings of this film at length, but I'll save you time and get to the crux of the matter: it's not Battlestar Galactica. For all the acclaim Nolan receives, he failed to produce a piece of art as sophisticated as the 2003 remake of the classic sci-fi series. His imitative cinematography is impressive, but no more impressive than the innovative style of BSG's immanent battle scenes. BSG's characters are fuller and never trail off on an academic-styled conversation of the immortality of love like Anne Hathaway does. Galactica goes beyond asking how humanity will survive, instead putting humanity on the brink of extinction and asking why we should be spared annihilation. It has a plausible reason for humanity's exodus into the stars, rather than a bogus food shortage. Speaking of which, why did all the militaries of the world disappear in Christopher Nolan's vision of the future? In times of a food shortage, the military is the very last thing that would disappear. If you found Interstellar a work of genius, I strongly recommend you watch Battlestar Galactica on Netflix. But please be careful that your impressionable mind doesn't crack under the pressure of better-written story lines, dialogue, and characters. Then go look the words 'genius' and 'hyperbole' up in the dictionary.

Not the original series though.

The Imitation Game
Whatever you may think of the inaccurate depiction of Alan Turing, you were surely excited by the after-credits scene, where we get a glimpse of Stephen Hawking's origin story in The Theory of Everything. Universal Pictures, in response to the strides made by Marvel and DC in the superhero genre, are bringing all the secular, scientific heroes of the internet, in one epic film. Turing and Hawking are joined by Reddit favourites, including Nikola Tesla, Richard Dawkins, Karl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, and — of course — Neil deGrasse Tyson. Having borne witness to the plague of scientifically illiterate comments on YouTube, our heroes endeavour to prove, once and for all, that God doesn't exist, employing empirical methodology, cool gadgets, Parkour, fist fights, and explosions.

Unbroken
Angelina Jolie's third directorial outing is a tale of commitment and inner strength in the face of adversity. Our protagonist, Mutsushiro 'the Bird' Watanabe, never errs from his duty to beat the living shit out of enemy POWs. Even when the US drops a nuclear bomb on one of their cities, the Japanese, and the Bird, refuse to desist in their efforts humiliating and crushing the will of their captives. The tension increases as the war is coming to the end, and the Bird's efforts are making slow progress. Just as victory is within his grasp, Japan surrenders, hammered into submission at the dawn of the nuclear age. We are left without an epilogue for the heroic Watanabe, but one assumes he forgave his Allied enemies for being so stubborn bunch of maggots.

Lucy
Beginning with the (completely erroneous) premise that humans only use 10% of their brain, Luc Besson's sci-fi story explores the prospect of a woman whose brain rockets well-beyond normal capacity, thanks to an experimental chemical. As her brain usage soars, her ability to assimilate knowledge dramatically increases, and soon she can speak all languages, understand and improve scientific theories, and master many forms of martial arts. Within a short time, she develops telekinesis, and is eventually able to warp matter as quickly as she can imagine it. When her brain usage passes the 90% percent mark, she transcends all restrictions of reality, and her final form is beyond comprehension. There is an alternative version of this film where Lucy, at 11% usage of her brain, realises how utterly exhausting and destructive it would be to be to use your brain at anything approaching 100%. At 18%, she starts to feel really dehydrated and has to drink lots of water for the rest of the film.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 
Only one arrow is fired by Jennifer Lawrence in the entire film. The rest is her getting progressively more upset by attack ads, starring her wussy love interest. It is an excellent portrayal of  how some intelligent, able, and good-looking people mysteriously fall for people from much lower leagues. Unfortunately, it fails to show us why this utterly bizarre phenomenon happens, and in truth, it's not as good as the Arrow TV series, which has the Green Arrow fire multiple arrows in every episode. If you hunger for some real bow and arrow action — and I certainly don't blame you if you do — then tune into Arrow on FX and watch them babies fly.

Expendables 3 
Given the age of the actors involved, this is a massive wasted opportunity which won't come around again. Wesley Snipes's real-life tax fraud misadventures would have made an excellent story for this film. Imagine the Expendables coming to rally behind Snipes, who is being pursued around the globe by a ruthless IRS agent, played by Michael Ironside. A martial arts expert, Ironside would threaten to tax Snipes's ass. Instead of this fine idea, we got another predictably dull outing. Why can't Hollywood just listen to the ideas in my head? How many times do I have to rewrite Man of Steel or Star Trek: Into Darkness in recurring daydreams? To Hell with you, Hollywood! I was even in town for two days last year. Why can't you recognise talent when it falls at you doorstep?

Histoire de la Sexualité

"Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three," wrote Phillip Larkin,"between the end of the 'Chatterley' ban and the Beatles' first LP." And Sadomasochism began in 2012 with the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, a book as grey and pedestrian as the footpath. Nothing quite demarcates you as a bore like a Fifty Shades reference. Alluding to the novel is now a byword for "I'm a person of limited horizons. I consider myself a liberated person, yet I waited for a popular book to legitimise an aspect of my sexuality. In addition to this, I rarely venture outside the very obvious." The success of this book has brought me to the conclusion that half the population of the English speaking world was birthed fully grown and articulate around the end of 2011 from giant spores, such is their level of apparent ignorance. SMBD has been around far longer than Fifty Shades, and erotica novels have been around for centuries. One imagines that those who have been S&M practitioners for a longtime must have felt aggrieved at the popularisation of less conventional sexual practices. If anything was given birth by the book, it was the dominatrix hipster, bemoaning how she was doling out sexual punishment long before it was widely accepted and appreciated.

With this in mind, I feel it my duty to write a history of sex, explaining how people have been having different varieties of sex for centuries. And who better to write it, than me, from the wealth of information stored at the top of my head? "You?! Know about sex?!", I hear you ask incredulously. "Do I know about sex?", I retort rhetorically, nudging my friend in the rips and repeating the question. Ha! Do I know about sex? This is me we're talking about. I know all about sex. I've even had it. Many times. We're talking naked women in the bed. We're talking interlocking genitalia. We're talking the million dollar blowjob, grade-A pussy, and wild romps that get the neighbours talking. We're talking scandalous, shameless behaviour and an escalating competitiveness with your friends and rivals that results in doing really unenjoyable things just so you can say you did it. We're talking a threesome with two absolute mingers, leaving out that last detail when regaling your friends with your sexploits. We're talking the Devil's threesome and crying in front the mirror the next day, wondering who you are anymore. We're talking too much fibre in your diet, resulting in having to resist going to the bathroom until you're desperate, so you don't take too long and she doesn't know what you're doing in there. When I walk down the street, people recognise me as a man who has sex. If you asked any stranger about me, they'd agree that I most probably have had sex. "That man is so 'sex', he could be a gigolo.", is what they would say. We're talking boobs, man. Leering, groping - the works. We're talking foreplay and stuff. Pah! Do I know about sex…

If you're still not convinced, then I guess there's no persuading you. Perhaps some people like the feeling of their softened brain dribbling out their ears when they read appalling prose and cringe-inducing dialogue. Perhaps some people (mistakingly) believe that being a billionaire makes you interesting. Please do keep alluding to your sex life as though it makes you a more interesting person, and by all means, assume that your sexuality is the secret true of your being. I will have to accept your contributions to the mediocrity and dullness of the world.  The sad reality is that society is cruel, and there are some forms of human cruelty that don't have a safe word.

"Ha! For a moment there, I thought I was in 50 Shades of Grey."