Stars Wars Episode VIII: First Impressions

As has become customary for me I went to see the new Star wars movie, The Last Jedi, at a midnight screening. It was actually a part of a double-bill, with The Force Awakens showing first. It was good to see that film back on the big screen, getting immersed into the galaxy far, far away and reacquainting with the characters but it was really all about The Last Jedi.

Just hours after having seen it my head is still processing all that I saw - what I liked, what I didn't like - and unpacking that against how it all sits versus the other movies. My first over-riding impression was that this was a mostly good film, occasionally quite brilliant, but it had some problematic bits and pieces. The Force Awakens was accused of perhaps being too reliant on the template of A New Hope and unoriginal in where it took the Star Wars franchise - both fair points. The Last Jedi certainly rails against that; no such accusations can be layered here as this is a movie that isn't afraid to make some departures and new innovations.

Where The Force Awakens was a crowd-pleasing blast of a ride The Last Jedi is more challenging fare. Where The Force Awakens was very much cut from the same cloth as A New Hope, The Last Jedi has much more in common with The Empire Strikes Back. In fact that's probably the most succinct summary of it - The Last Jedi is to The Force Awakens what The Empire Strikes Back is to A New Hope.

SPOILERS from here on in. Not just mild ones. Huge ones. I'll work through in a general order of sequence my highlights and lowlights of the film.

Let's start with the start, and The Last Jedi kicks off with a terrific opening sequence. Poe Dameron is the lead character here, as he was at the start of The Force Awakens, launching a one-man fighter assault against an enormous First Order dreadnought.

The bittersweet victory tone is set in early here, with the rebel alliance suffering huge casualties as their bombing run is almost thwarted. I particularly liked this opening, and the use of bombers, because it brought the "Wars" back into Star Wars; getting us back to the feel that this is a proper war being fought across the galaxy. The plucky soldier (later revealed as a sister of a new character) who has a desperate last gasp attempt to get the big tube of bombs to unload on the target had equal measures of pathos with the excitement. It reminded me of Rogue One in that regard, which is no bad thing.

Big tick here for The Last Jedi. It's arguable the best action opening to any Star Wars movie (though to be fair most of them usually start with a slow preamble before the action kicks off). Only Revenge of the Sith has really launched directly into a big action set-piece right from the off. . .

. . . but The Last Jedi's was shorter, but way better because it had more heart and impact than the CGI-driven, boy's own adventure of the Episode III opening.

After this the movie splits for a good portion into two stories; the First Order pursuing the rebel fleet and Rey 'learning' from Luke. Here the film pulls a chronological shift, as we likely spend days with Rey on the Island with Luke whilst the story of Finn and Poe and Leia and the rest takes place over the course of less than a day.

As was indicated at the end of The Force Awakens with Luke's enforced banishment on the Island, just like how Yoda banished himself to the Dagobah system following his failure (more on which later), The Last Jedi found him to be a cantankerous and embittered figure. His throwing away of the lightsabre over his shoulder and milking the alien cows and glugging the milk was all played for laughs, which made for an uneasy balance with the evident turmoil of the character. At first I thought he was playing the curmudgeon, similar to how Yoda played at being an irritating nuisance when he first encountered Luke on Dagobah - but it transpired it wasn't a similar ruse.

Luke's series of lessons to Rey about becoming a Jedi were more interesting, and ushered in a more fairytale and dreamlike vibe. Again, this shared similarities with Empire Strikes Back in Yoda's grumpy training of Luke and his encounter in the strange cave. Rey's equivalent is a strange sequence of looking into an infinite mirror hoping to discover her parentage - it's cool, but lacks power.

The issue of Rey's parents was hanging over from the previous film, with the most obvious candidates suggesting she was either Luke's daughter, or Han and Leia's (another brother and sister, pairing Rey with Kylo). This movie doesn't absolutely resolve that matter. Kylo informs Rey that her parents were nobodies that just gave her away. Perhaps that's true. But it does feel strange that she is so imbued with the force so powerfully for an unimportant nobody from nothing parents. I expect there's a bigger revelation yet to be sprung.

Rey and Kylo's relationship was pivotal to the action here, with a new innovation for the Star Wars universe being ushered in through their ability to see and communicate with each other through the force. It's indicated by Snoke that he was the one who opened the lines of communication for them in this manner as part of his plan, which is likely true, though by the end of the movie - with Snoke out of the frame - this is something they are still both capable of doing. In a galaxy without the convenience of mobile phones this was a handy convention! I didn't have a problem with it - it felt like a natural extension to characters being able to feel each other across distances via the force.

Kylo Ren's backstory, and Luke's failure, was also delivered across a new convention for Star Wars; the use of flashback. We've had visions and sounds of the past and the future from time to time, but this was the first use of true flashback to show how it was that Luke considered destroying Kylo, if only for a second, to prevent the darkness he saw in him from emerging into a threat.

I think most Star Wars fans had generally figured that was the way of it. Kylo had been sent to be trained by Luke and the dark side in him grew, twisted him, and he turned against his master. Luke, in turn, exiled himself as a consequence of what he had done (or not done). That Luke had actually considered murdering the young Kylo was a more interesting addition - once again feeding into the tone of grey (i.e. nothing is strictly black or white) that permeates across the movie.

Overall Luke's training of Rey functioned more to examine the nature of how worthy the Jedi actually were, which was interesting. I liked the point Luke made, referring to Episodes 1 to 3, about how when the Jedi were in full flow they had blindly allowed Darth Sidious (a.k.a The Emperor) to rise up and all but wipe them out. It was a brief sentence or two that did more to retroactively fix the maligned prequels than the films themselves did. An essay for another time, but there's a good case that the prequels should really have delivered not just the story of Anakin becoming Darth Vader but the story of how the Jedi were flawed and arrogant and the architects of their own destruction.

One for another time.

The last bit of business for Luke - before the end - was in a neat little moment between him and R2-D2 (very underused, I thought) where the droid used Princess Leia's hologram from A New Hope to cajole him to not giving up. That was delightful. The surprise appearance of Yoda (certainly a surprise to me, as I actively avoided any rumours or gossip about the film beforehand) was also fun. He remained mischievous, still spouting grammatically-challenging, garbled wisdom and, wisely, the movie kept his appearance brief.

Back with the rebels and there was a startling shock that became a moment of slightly far-fetched elegance. I refer to Princess Leia's near-death. When Kylo Ren refused to fire at her ship that didn't stop the First Order from also firing and then Leia was on the control deck as it got blasted into space. Whoa! That moment genuinely shocked me. So early in the film, and with such a lack of fuss, it appeared Leia had just been wiped out.

But she wasn't. Despite being blasted into cold, inhospitable space she managed to float there for some time before waking back up and floating back to the safety of the ship. At first, when she was flying back, I thought we were watching her force ghost - having left her physical body - in action. Then when it wasn't that I thought it would transpire that she was housed in some kind of protective veil spacesuit. But that wasn't it either. It was basically left to be assumed that she used the will of the force to protect her from the vacuum of space, keep her alive and guide her back to the ship.

Hmmm. If it hadn't been so welcome that she survived, and so elegantly presented, I'd have perhaps been more aggrieved and willing to cry foul.

After this point Finn, Poe and a new character called Rose get involved in a plot to try and save the fleet through a plan to stop the First Order from tracking them. This is, far and away, the weakest aspect of the whole movie. The initial plan to find a codebreaker is delivered by Maz, via some bizarre cam following her around whilst she's involved in some battle in a place unknown (which did look exciting - I'd have liked to know more about what she had gotten herself into!). This codebreaker was located on a planet were the very rich used slaves to mine materials for weapons to sell to both the First Order and the Rebel Alliance.

There was a good idea here - again going back to that notion of grey - where the moral ambiguity of war is tapped into. Benicio del Toro appears as a character that's rather too fortuitously well-placed to further the plot to maintain belief. Yet he does bring the viewpoint that the whole war between good and evil is all part of the same venal machine that the likes of the very rich on this planet can profiteer from, and the best thing to do is to stay outside of it.

It's a powerful idea for Star Wars to introduce, but it's as fleetingly introduced as it is dispensed with. In the meantime new character Rose has to cram in her backstory of a childhood spent on this place, fostering a loathing of the super-rich, and we watch both her and Finn spend a short amount of time in a casino before they are captured and imprisoned. And then there's a breakout. And a chase where they ride the horse-like indigenous creatures of the planet in a charging escape and. . . Oh dear. As I was watching it, I was not sold on it. It felt ill-fitting.

Don't get me wrong, I think Star Wars is right to introduce new ideas and places and concepts, but this casino just felt a little bit too offbeat for the integrity of the universe. And the whole prison breakout chase, and the dumb manner by which Finn and Rose were captured in the first place, felt altogether too frivolous to the tone of the rest of the movie.

I could be wrong. The sports commentators in The Phantom Menace pod-race felt incongruous at first but I've since settled happily with them.

But then I recall the diner in Attack of the Clones that Obi-Wan visits and how I didn't like it the first time and I still dislike it now. It's just too close to our real world for the Star Wars universe to swallow. I don't think the casino in The Last Jedi is quite as bad as the diner but it's in the same zone. It's too incongruous. It pulls you out of the universe.

In a similar manner I think some of the language here also served to break immersion. There was, to my recall, use of the word "bloody", "ass" and "bastard". I am reasonably certain none of these words have ever been used in the Star Wars universe before. The only one that may have was "bloody", in the context used as an expression of negative emphasis, possibly in the Original Trilogy. I can't think of an actual instance of it, and certainly can't think of a time that "bastard" or "ass" were used.

It's not that I have a problem with bad language. I'm more known to turn the air blue than many. My issue is with how it fits in Star Wars lexicon, and when a word turns up that snaps me out of the universe and reminds me I'm watching a film of a script someone wrote it jars with me.

The good news it that once The Last Jedi gets away from this casino planet and the plot to get a codebreaker it shifts gears and hits its stride. There's a three-way climax of plans going wrong that works incredibly well; Finn and Rose are about to be executed, the rebel's escape vessels are getting picked off one-by-one, and Rey is in the clutches of Snoke and about to be killed by Kylo seemingly out to prove himself as truly evil.

It's perhaps the darkest hour of a Star Wars movie yet. It reminded me of Return of the Jedi, when Luke faces the Emperor who reveals that all that has happened was by his design and he and his friends are doomed. It's brilliant. And the reversal of fortune - with the lead rebel ship crashing at light speed into the enemy in a moment of silent, sparkling spectacle - alongside Kylo taking down his master (you know, like Vader did to the Emperor) ushers a showstopping fight between Rey and Kylo versus Snoke's skilled red guards.

Oh, but wait. What was that? Snoke got taken down?

Now this was a surprise!

In some ways, in hindsight, it makes sense to get Snoke out of the way. He is a villain that came out of nowhere, is merely a catalyst for getting Kylo Ren onto the dark side, and is not someone we are invested in. He's a plot mechanic, not a vital character component. The issue is that he appears to be incredibly powerful with the force and his intervention in getting to Kylo and undermining Luke is clearly a massive event that has had huge repercussions for the saga, and we know nothing about where he came from, how he did it, or why.

There's potentially a great big gap of character and plot that can be explored in the future through a spin-off, anthology story. Would not surprise me.

Anyway, back to that showstopping fight between Rey and Kylo fighting the red guards. It was a terrific fight. Stylishly presented against a plain red background, implementing slow-motion, and the fighting style leaned towards a middle-ground between the rapid, breakneck choreographed pace of the prequel duels to the more cumbersome, fencing-style fights of the original trilogy; aggressive and technical. The red guards' myriad weapons were entertaining, seeing Rey and Kylo on the same side (briefly) was a thrill, and that final move where Rey threw the lightsabre to Kylo and he switched it on point blank in his foe's face received a loud, positive reaction in the cinema.

I understand that this was the longest Star Wars movie to date (probably by minutes rather than a substantial length of time) so this last push to the end after such an exhausting, and brilliant, sequence was a tricky bridge. But it got there, and The Last Jedi still had some surprises left up its sleeve to the finish.

Luke's arrival and face-off against Kylo Ren hung on a reveal that he wasn't, in fact, actually there but was instead projecting himself from back on the Island. It did make sense of some potential plot points (one which crossed my mind immediately was why didn't Luke tell the rebels about the back door he had let himself through - turned out he hadn't!). The biggest laugh the movie got in the audience I was in was when Luke was hammered with a barrage of hits from every gun the First Order had. . . and then the dust drifted away and there he stood, untouched, and did a little brush away on his shoulder as a response. Absolutely brilliant.

Luke's death at the end was poignant, looking at two suns as they were covered behind clouds. The interpretation was that he had given everything, all his power, to project the way he had and he was left utterly spent. I suppose it is very draining when you astrally project the ornamental dice from the Millenium Falcon! No, really, it's something that may get picked apart and discussed but, in general, I was surprised by it and I was sold on it. Luke passed on, and Rey is now the last Jedi.

I fully expect to see him again, Obi-Wan ghost style.

Things were relatively well set up for the final portion of this trilogy. Poe looks set to take over from Leia as leader of the resistance. Whether this is really the last time Leia will be on screen is an interesting one. Carrie Fisher has died so it would depend on if there was some footage of her filmed already that could be used to give her a goodbye, or if they went down the CGI route. If this really is the last time we see her then it's not the worst way to go, but it didn't quite feel momentous either. 

Finn is the only real main character that doesn't appear to have much more development in him. Towards the end of this movie when it looked like he was on course to die for the cause it did feel like it could really happen because it didn't seem like there was much more else left for him to do.

Just when it looks like The Last Jedi is about to end on the classic wide shot of our heroes the film adds a coda, in another break from Star Wars tradition, tacking on a little piece around a kid that is destined to form a part of the resistance and showing that there is still hope for a fightback that is surely to come in the next episode. I personally thought the end coda was a bit cheesy, and superfluous - the film would have functioned better without it. Yet this is a small quibble in what has been an overall top notch return; the sheer length of this essay speaks volumes about how much there has been to digest and absorb. I'll be going back for another look, for sure, but for here and now I just wanted to capture my immediate impression of the film. 

Next movie title: Star Wars Episode IX: The Rebellion Strikes Back.

OK, that was a guess. Actually I think it should be an 'Of The' title, like Return Of The Jedi or Revenge Of The Sith. We haven't had one of those this trilogy. Balance Of The Force, anyone?

Edgar's All Right

It's great, and uncommon, that something you thought was going to be good, that you hoped was going to be good, turns out to actually be good. Edgar Wright's latest film Baby Driver is exactly that.

I've been a fan of Edgar Wright before I even knew it. Back when he was directing the comedy Spaced I watched and enjoyed it repeatedly. Back then I was more drawn in because Simon Pegg was in it, whom I had seen in various other comedy shows (most memorably Big Train, where he always stood out). Looking back at Spaced you can see a lot of the editing tricks and directorial flourishes that are Edgar Wright's traits were there, in place, elevating the material. But, like I said, I didn't know who he was at the time.

Then along came Shaun Of The Dead.

This was a huge breakout movie for both Simon and Edgar, and whilst I did enjoy it I don't share the high-esteem and fondness for it that other people seem to do. I thought the final third, in particular, when the last of our heroes were holed up in the pub and the zombies closed in around them, lost it's way. The action felt off. There was too much talking when the action should have been taking things up a notch.

That famed sequence where the guys hit a zombie with snooker cues to 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen is considered a classic moment but, for whatever reason, that joke just didn't land with me. Still doesn't. It's indicative of how I felt about the final third of the film in general. I thought it got silliest when it ought to have dropped the comedy for a more intense finale. That was just me. Still, a cracking film, despite my mealy-mouthed views of the last act.

Edgar Wright's next film, Hot Fuzz, would do the opposite for me and absolutely come to life in its final third. Of the 'Cornetto trilogy' movies Hot Fuzz is my favourite.

I love this movie. It's got the comedy, it's got the action, it's got great characters, and did I mention that it's got the action? Taking the Hollywood buddy cop movie genre and translating it to a quaint, English town is a terrific idea that could have been an absolute mess in execution. But from the moment Simon Pegg's character has fly-kicked an old woman in the face and then trotted into town on horseback with a huge arsenal strapped to his person the movie delivers on its premise of being just as balls out action-packed despite the setting.

By this point Edgar Eright was on my radar. His style and editing and sense of humour was striking the perfect tone with me I was now an Edgar Wright fan. And his next movie, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, was probably my favourite of his ever (up until he went and made Baby Driver).

Despite not doing great business at the box office it's a movie that has since gone on to find prolonged cult life. I've re-watched it a couple of times and it still holds up. It has more in common with a good episode of The Simpsons in terms of gags-per-minute and pacing than most regular movies. It's like Edgar Wright unleashed his box of directorial tricks and threw them all into the mix. It definitely shows a step up into the bigger leagues of movie-making, and even if the box office returns didn't back him up, it showed that he could handle a bigger budget.

The last of the 'Cornetto trilogy' was The World's End which is easily the most accomplished of the three films. I also really liked it. 

I suspect the absolutely bonkers ending was what perhaps turned most people's thoughts to the idea that this was the weakest of the trilogy, but that would be to forget all of the amazing stuff that went before. The cleverly constructed opening prologue of the movie that so intricately paves the way for everything that will follow (foreshadowing is one of Edgar's recurring traits and great to pick up in repeat viewings). The way each pub along the crawl is a label of what occurs. The terrific music soundtrack, all of which feed the emotion or action in the scenes.

You can watch The World's End, and indeed many of Edgar's movies, and still discover new things you'd previously missed. That's one of the many reasons why I really like his films. The attention to detail. The love of the medium. The invention he brings.

So, yeah, I was a fan. No question. And then Edgar went in to a bit of a dark period. He had long-nurtured bringing Ant Man to the screen, and with the domination of Marvel's success he was given the opportunity to write and direct the film. The details of what happened during the production of that film aren't known to me, save to say that Edgar and the studio did not agree with the direction he wanted to take the film in and he reluctantly had to walk away whilst they took the script he had written and changed, and handed it over for someone else to make.

I imagine that must have been a daunting thing to do. In Hollywood, when you're given a big licence by a huge studio, if you decide to walk away from that there must have been concerns from him about what that might mean for his career. Fortunately, at time of writing, what Edgar Wright appears to have done is convert that setback into his biggest success yet: Baby Driver.

As I said right at the top, this was a film I was looking forward to purely because Edgar was making it. But then I heard about how he was making the movie on-set in time with musical tracks he had already figured out the sequences for in his mind. This was a heist movie that had a choreographer. Edgar's brilliant talent of editing and picking the right tune for the right scene felt like a potential winning combination before I had even seen a single frame of it. Then it turned out he was going for a much more serious approach, and he had assembled a cast with the likes of Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx (amongst many notable others).

As the film's release drew nearer the hype pitched up. Baby Driver was picking up crazy good reviews everywhere. My excitement built ever more. Yet that's the danger about getting really excited about something; rarely can a movie match the level of hype that can sometimes blow up around it. Amongst all the noise and fuss and praise a movie is swelled by, more often than not, it just turns out to be nothing more than a movie.

Baby Driver was more than that. Baby Driver was an experience.

There's millions of words all over the Internet extolling the brilliance of this film so there's little reason for me to add mine to the mix. I thought it was fantastic is the short version. The excellent music and wonderful matching of action to the rhythms and beats I was already expecting going in. I also anticipated it would be super-cool, and yes it was (not least of all in Ansel Elgort's eponymous Baby). What I didn't expect was that the film would be so nerve-shreddingly intense. That was a surprise to me. Somewhere around the halfway mark the film switches into a more serious gear and, the moment it does, it never takes its foot off the gas.

I'm pleased I've got a new favourite film, and I am also pleased that Edgar Wright managed to put the disaster of Ant-Man behind him and come up trumps. I suspect the success of Baby Driver has pushed him into a bigger league now. I don't know what he's got planned next but, whatever it is, I'll be interested and excited to see it.

I Love Manchester

22nd May 2017: At approximately 22:30 an explosion hits the Manchester Arena, a large concert venue. The timing of the bomb was designed to hit the mainly young, mainly female audience as they left the performance of the artist Ariana Grande.

The terrorist responsible committed suicide, blowing himself up, as the audience was leaving and heading in his direction. His intent was purely to inflict the maximum number of casualties in the most innocent and unsuspecting of victims you can imagine. Young girls. The youngest fatality that has been announced at time of writing was just eight-years old. How monstrous the act was is unspeakable and, of course, entirely the purpose of the terrorist.

I'm no expert in terrorism. I know as much as anyone else who pays attention to the news.

I'm no expert in ISIS, the motivation and radicalisation that drives these young men to extreme measures for their religious fundamentalist cause.

The only reason I write about this here, now, is because this attack took place in Manchester. That's the city I call home. I live in a town within Manchester. I work at a place perhaps less than 100 metres from the Arena where the terrorist attack took place. I grew up here. This one felt close.

I was at the Arena in Janary, watching a Marvel Superhero show. I took my wife and young son. It wasn't the first time I had been there. I've been to the Arena stacks of times. There's something chilling about the discovery of an attack in a place that you have frequented. That little notion of concern that informs you: it could have just as easily been me.

I didn't know if I was going to be allowed to get into work the morning after the attack. The option to work from home was available to me, but once I realised I could get to work - that there was enough of a functioning train and tram network accessible to me - I knew I had to go. It sounds stupid. I'm just one guy. Me showing up or not showing up, what difference did that make? But there was a part of me that wanted to get out there into the commute, out onto the streets of this city I have walked in all my life, just as a kind of private statement that I was not going to be cowed into sheltering at home.

Bizarrely this wasn't even the first City centre terrorist bomb attack that has occurred in my lifetime. The last time Manchester was attacked in this manner was in 1996, by the IRA. I was much younger then, but I still had a job in the city centre - a part-time job in a shoe shop. The 1996 attack happened on a Saturday. The 'decent' thing about the IRA was that they, at least, warned in advance of their intentions. I received a phone call before I was due to start work that day stating that there had been a bomb threat warning and that I had to wait for further instructions.

At some point later the bomb went off.

I received a phone call from my supervisor a little later telling me I didn't need to bother coming into work; the bomb had gone off! But a few days later I got to go and see the devastation that had been wreaked for myself. It beggared belief. The scale of the destruction.

But, like I said, at least the IRA didn't have the intention of taking as many lives as possible. Not like the events at the Manchester Arena. This is a different enemy, with a different motivation.

After the IRA bomb Manchester rebuilt itself. The city has never looked better. From the rubble came opportunity to rebuild with improvement, and so we received (eventually!) a more modern, aesthetically-pleasing city centre that flourished. And today, following the tragedy, I felt somewhat in tune with the city and the people; we would not be cowed.

The thing I can't really get my head around is how this plays out to the rest of the world. I recall the Paris attacks and understanding how big a deal it was, because I could see how much of an impact the atrocities there were rolling out across the news here and elsewhere. But seeing my hometown city on the news just felt strange. I got off the tram on my way to work and looked at the police tape cordoning off the area around the Arena and wondered, Is this the same level of big deal as the Paris attack was?

It may sound dumb, but it just feels different when you're in it. It doesn't feel as big. Like, during the day, I was in work and the news came out that something had happened in the shopping centre close to where I worked and the place had been evacuated. There were rumours of gunshots. Rumours of arrests. And meanwhile I was in work, able to look out of the window at where reporters were setting up, straightening their ties before delivering their piece to camera, and it felt curiously understated.

Weird.

My six-year-old son is aware enough of the world to hear about the events that had happened today, and something this close to home was bound to catch his attention. How do you explain such a thing? I told it to him as simply as I could. The terrorist, he was just one bad man. And what was important to notice was how everyone rallied together to help after what had happened. Because the good people outweigh the bad. That's the truth this City holds to, and it's the only truth that stands in the face of terrorism and says: You will not win.

I'm proud of how my City has responded after this attack. I loved Manchester yesterday. Today I love it just a little bit more.

Chest Pain Worry

Today at work I had a couple of minutes where I genuinely believed I may faint or suffer some form of heart attack at my desk. It was amazingly surreal and terrifying all at once.

Over the past couple of days I've had a pain in my chest. It didn't seem like much. I self-diagnosed it as some kind of muscular pain rather than a specific heart condition. I mean, I'm a fairly fit and healthy man. I'm on the verge of 39-years-old but I can run 5-6 km in less than 30 minutes. I'm not obese. I have never smoked. And sure, I drink, more than I should, and probably I don't eat anywhere near as well as I ought to, but still - no one's perfect.

I've never, aside from one blip when I was a child that turned out to be nothing, spent a single night in hospital.

So I've got a pain in my chest that feels sharper when I breathe in, filling my lungs, and I figure that surely this is some form of muscular pain and it'll go away in a few days and that will be the end of it. I'm too fit and healthy for it to possibly be anything else, and that was the end of it.

Only that's not the end of it. And in the back of my mind, at the start of the week, there's this gnawing concern - only quiet, only subtle - saying that this doesn't feel quite right.

Yesterday, walking to the train station after work, and I arrive there sweating, slightly nauseous. I figure it's been a warm day but, because of the rain, I've had to wear a coat and so that has caused me to get hotter than comfortable. Never-the-less, when I get home my shirt and undershirt are more than just damp, they're wet and heavy.

I thought nothing of it. Later in the evening I had a quick blast on the exercise bike in the house. 10 minute burst, Did over 4k. I was sweating again, breathing hard, and there was no pain in my chest. Like you'd expect pain in your heart if you exercised hard if you were on the verge of a heart attack, right? I know I went on the bike for that quick blast like I was conducting a little test. I felt like I had passed it.

I was OK, I told myself. It's no biggie.

3 o clock in the morning I wake up in bed. My chest hurts. My sleepy brain cuts through the mild alarm to figure it's just something about the way I've been lying, my posture exacerbating the muscular problem I have diagnosed myself with. Only whilst I'm lying there, in my bed, my left arm is tingling.

If you've ever found yourself lying awake at 4 in the morning with worry you'll know that this is the time of day when your rational, comforting sense gives way to fears and concerns that flourish. I am lying in bed, next to my sleeping wife, genuinely worried I'm enduring some prologue to a heart attack. Thoughts about leaving my wife and my son behind, after my death, they play out.

4 o clock in the morning is an absolutely mental time of day to warp your worries into horrors.

I somehow pacify myself that I am being crazy. I know that being awake in the early hours of the morning forges these scary notions and I was resolutely not going to give in to them. I slept again. Woke up. Got ready. Went to work. And that brings us pretty much with me at my desk.

That mild pain in my chest and the slight dullness in my arm, it's still there. It's around 11 o clock in the morning, just before lunch, and sitting at my desk I casually look at Google on my phone and type in 'chest pain left arm numb'.

What I read scared the shit out of me. So many of the symptoms - like the nausea, sweating, the tingling and prickling sensations, the swelling pain across the front of the chest - all of that gets called out as seriously symptomatic of something. Words like 'pulmonary embolism' and 'aortic dissection' or just good old 'angina' jump out. The message is clear; don't wait, get to a doctor and get it checked. It might be nothing. It could be something.

And sitting at my desk my whole body just starts tingling, going numb. I'm not exaggerating anything. Honestly, it's not like me to give in to this. I've always considered myself stronger than that. Better. My wife, she's the hypochondriac, the stresshead. She's in and out of the hospital with all kinds of things. But not me. I'm the healthy one. But there I am going numb in my arms and legs, and my head is getting light. 

Oh shit, I am thinking. I'm starting to panic that I am right there going to faint, for sure. I've never fainted. And right in that moment I believe it's absolutely going to happen. I'm surrendered to the certainty. I feel like I must have turned a whiter shade of pale, should anyone have cared to look at me and notice how stricken I had suddenly become.

Of course I didn't say anything to anyone. Bizarrely I was also worried about the sheer embarrassment and fuss that would be generated from collapsing at my desk. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I took deep breaths, tried to compose myself, and then after a minute I went to the bathroom and took off my shirt and splashed cold water on my face and paced and told myself over and over, Get a grip, you're not having a heart attack.

I calmed down. I was got annoyed with myself for being so weak.

Now here I am typing this. I made it home from work. The chest pain is still there, slightly more eased I think, and I am still telling myself that it's muscular. Has to be. And yet this also makes me think that if it's really just that then there, at my desk today, I suffered a panic attack. Me? Panic attacks? Come on!

But if it wasn't a panic attack then it was a real, mild warning signal of some issue with my heart that I can only hope to God isn't really there.

My plan is to see how it is tomorrow. If it feels like it's getting better, easing further, then great. I'll carry on keeping up with the exercise. Monitor myself, my feelings, and hey maybe I'll take a pass on drinking quite as much as I generally do.

And if this is the last entry of this blog, well, you can rest assured that that was absolutely a shitty idea and things did not go well and, really, the only advice I'd have to offer is: you ever find yourself feeling anything like I have described about today then don't be a fucking idiot like me; go and get yourself checked out.

Resident Evil 4 - An Appreciation

In this post I am going to be bestowing praise on a revisit of the classic game Resident Evil 4. I have recently been playing this again on PS4, thanks to the remastered version of it that has been released, and it has reminded me of all that I remembered was fantastic, and the sheer wealth of all that I had forgotten that was amazing about it.

My first experience of playing the game was actually on Wii, which was by no means the first platform the game had appeared on. Indeed, when I cautiously bought the game for the Wii I was aware that it was an old title and it made me wonder if I was investing my money in an absolute duffer. However, as the Wii was my only main console I was somewhat starved of serious, hardcore games.

I hadn't yet purchased a PS3 at the time (though I knew a friend who had) and I was deeply envious of Dead Space that he had recently shown me at his house. Little did I realise that by buying Resident Evil 4 I was buying the game that had completely influenced Dead Space and was, in many ways, far superior.

But, at first, knowing nothing about the game, I loaded Resident Evil 4 and gripped onto my Wiimote and Control Stick, and waited to see if this game was going to be as big a pile of shit as I feared.

I was impressed from the start, with the opening movie giving proceedings a feel of a cinematic adventure (pure b-movie standard, naturally, but the game practically revels in its ridiculousness). And not before too long the game delivers its first masterstroke: after a minor skirmish with a few hostile natives to warm you up and get you into the controls, you casually walk into the local village and from there the game locks you in to a battle with hordes of baddies appearing from all angles, chasing you wherever you may run.

Think you can escape by running into a house and pushing cupboards up against the doors and windows? Think again. A roaring whirr of a chainsaw introduces the first terrifying and memorable villain; the chainsaw ganado.

This opening battle is superb, You hide in a house you trigger the chainsaw baddie. You try and climb the bell tower and the villagers light a fire and smoke you out. Your best bet, though not clear at the time, is to save your ammo and your life by just running and running around until the bell rings and the villagers disappear. But the sheer variety of all that can happen, of the different strategies you can undertake to try and survive, are an expert introduction to the game.

From this point on it's like the game is an embarrassment of killer moments. Re-playing it again I would manage to get out of one area into the next only to be immediately reminded of what stressful but tremendous bit awaited me.

Go to the lake and battle against the giant creature under the water in your boat. Survive the church and rescue the girl to find yourself trapped in a cabin and having to defend downstairs and upstairs as the many entry points are breached. From there you're in an arena locked in combat with a huge troll.

And the game isn't easy! The controls make life difficult; you can't aim and shoot and move at the same time. On harder difficulties especially you need to try and get headshots and then step in for physical attacks to conserve ammo. Onward you'll go to battle into the castle and face hordes of enemies brandishing scythes and shields and bloody sniper crossbows. . .

The memorable moments just keep coming, Who can forget the first time they took a step down into the prison and had to face the blind enemy with huge claws. His only weakspot was on his back. So you had to quietly step away from him, shoot a bell to attract his attention and then blast him in the back. 

My wife played the game on my recommendation. I distinctly remember making myself a drink in the kitchen when she was playing this section of the game on her own, chattering to herself "I don't like this, I don't like this" whilst she tried to keep her nerve and get through it.

The sheer embarrassment of riches continues. There's the castle garden maze. . .

. . . filled with savage dogs, constantly growling unseen behind the hedges, waiting to jump out at you. And then there's a foray down into the sewers where you face off against giant bugs that are near-invisible. Move softly, and keep your eyes peeled, and you might just make out the steam of their breath and be able to sniper shot them before you walk into their trap. Later you'll fight more bugs, flying bugs.

These buzz horribly as they get closer and you frantically scan above and around you, trying to work out where they are coming from before it's too late. And there always just seems to be slightly more of them than you think is fair. Pumping shotgun bullets away, round after round, and as you survive you're already worried that you've wasted too many bullets and left yourself underprepared for whatever is coming next.

And let's forget there is that bit of the game where you have to control Ashley, the damsel in distress, during which sequences you don't have a weapon of any kind at all.

Those moments are somewhat stressful. Though perhaps not quite as stressful as having to deal with the Regenerator baddies (in which you need to use a heat-scope on your sniper rifle to pick out the weak spots as it shuffles towards you, making the most hideous slurping-hiss murmur).

Or how about that bit where, out of fucking nowhere, you end up locked in a suspended cage with an overpowered beast scuttling after you whilst you try and find and hit the right buttons to open the door that you then have to get through before the timer runs out all whilst being ambushed at random intervals.

In my replay of it I have found it just as stressful, if not more so. First time around there was the thrill of discovery and excitement about what lay around the corner. Playing it when you know what's coming (though, crucially, can't quite remember it well enough to recall the best strategy for survival) has instilled just a constant sense of dread. It's like an ordeal. But a fun, rewarding ordeal.

Like taking a high-powered magnum, saving all my bullets because I know what's coming, and absolutely annihilating this annoying little shit in a few well-placed shots to his giant monstrous eyeball.

Top tip: When it comes to fighting Krauser, keep your gun holstered and use your knife.

Just. . . trust me. I remembered learning this all those years ago when I played on Wii. I remembered it again for PS4. It turns an overwhelming boss encounter into a situation where you turn the tables and get your own back without wasting a single bullet of precious ammo.

Resident Evil 4 is a classic. No question. It packs more ideas and set piece moments into its 10-15 hour game time (if you're slow and methodical like me, that'll be even longer for one go through) than pretty much any other game I can think of. Many other games may pitch an entire level around one killer sequence, happy to pad out the rest with filler exploration and basic battles - Resident Evil 4 doesn't like to go more than one room or area before it springs its next well-planned, deviously torturous problem for you to either negotiate or, you know, die in.

If we were to use a musical metaphor then if most action-adventure games are like albums then Resident Evil 4 is more like a greatest hits collection.

I'm not going to tell you that Resident Evil 4 is the greatest game of all time, It's not. Indeed, most games will eventually be usurped at one time or another. My favourite games ever have changed as I have grown up with new generations of hardware and new games taking advantage of ever-increasing sophistication. Super Mario Kart and Street Fighter II on the SNES were, for sure, the best games there had ever been. And then along came, say, Final Fantasy VII (and VIII and IX!). After Resident Evil 4 there was, say, an Uncharted 2 to trump it in all ways as a cinematic action-adventure (except for scares and dread).

No, you have to allow games acknowledgement for their time and place as well as their quality. Resident Evil 4 was an out and out pioneer at the time of release and it has inspired and continues to inspire generations of games ever since. But, frankly, even now in 2017 - a staggering 12 years after its first release - this game holds up, It still plays well. It still draws you in. And it will work your nerves.

Play it. Survive it.

Car Share Outtakes

Recently I have been asked, at work, as part of an 'away day' (where a team gets together outside of the office to gather and do things that aren't their day-to-day work to improve morale or some such shit), to share my favourite Youtube clip.

The idea of the game is that everyone in the team will share their favourite Youtube clips anonymously and then we can all try and guess who selected the clips.

Whether or not people will be able to identify me from the clip I am putting forward is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned. I'm just thrilled at the chance to get people stuck in a room having to watch the clip I am suggesting to see how they react.

The clip I am putting forward is of a collection of outtakes from a British TV series called Car Share. You don't need to have seen the show to enjoy the clip, I don't think. It's a simple show about two people who travel in the same car to and from work and how they get along. Yet the outtakes are a sequence where they have an annoying passenger (played by Reece Shearsmith, who is a personal favourite of mine for other work he has done) who is singing along to a tune on the radio.

The outtakes are basically Reece singing outrageously along to the tune and the two stars of the show, Peter Kay and Sian Gibson, left struggling to keep their composure and not crack up laughing. Obviouly, as these are outtakes, they utterly fail.

Just watch the clip, then you'll see what I mean.

Peter Kay's Car Share Outtakes

There's just so much about it I like. Those moments where Reece clearly knows what he's doing and is deliberately trying to get them to laugh are my favourite. At just over the 1 minute mark you can see this, with him looking at Peter and seeing he's making him laugh and then innocently saying, "What?" as though he doesn't know why he's ruining the take. He then starts tapping them both on the shoulder as he's singing, just trying to get them to break character.

I like the way he perverts the words of 'dance-floor' into 'dance flap', and somehow manages to force in the sentence "rape my ass" at the 1' 50 mark (note how he immediately looks to see Peter Kay crack up and then settles back in the seat, his work done). Peter Kay near-bursting with laughter, "I can't fucking cope".

It's just glorious.

Here we go now, here we go now. . . Here come the hotstepper. . .

EU and Me

I've just returned from a trip to Germany. My family and I stayed with another German family we are friends with, in a town called Freiburg. The interesting thing about the geography of Freiburg is that it is located close to the borders of both France and Switzerland. Indeed, there's a spot close to the Black Forest where you can look out to the horizon at both France and Switzerland in the same eyeline view whilst standing in Germany.

During the trip there were moments that made me feel sad about how my country, the UK, had managed to engineer itself into Brexit. We are now, at time of writing, a country decided upon a course of action that will extricate us from the European Union. We're leaving Europe. The country , my country, was called upon to vote and after months of misinformation and pledges that didn't have a valid underlining of truth. . .

. . . and a campaign built on generating a sense that the UK, this precious little island of ours, was under threat by foreign invaders, 52% of the country determined that leaving was the best course of action. Actually, that's not true. It wasn't 52% of the country - it was just 52% of the people that voted. There was somewhere in the region of 30% of the population who didn't, or couldn't, vote. 

The remarks about that vote have long been voiced and picked apart and argued over; that it was mainly the old that voted to Leave and are determining the future for the young that wanted to Remain; that the vote was based on a campaign where truth was scarce and rhetoric was everywhere. The PM who arranged for the vote, David Cameron, resigned once the Leave vote was won. The chief co-ordinators of the Leave campaign - Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage - have faded from any form of political sway. 

It was like boisterous revellers barged into the house, staged an unwelcome and unsavoury party, and then left in the morning, hungover and wearied, leaving a mess for the rest of us to pick up.

Driving into Freiburg I saw there was a large, wooden building. It looked new. I asked my German friend what it was and she explained that it was a place that had been quickly pulled together for refugees to stay. There were a number of other similar buildings in the town. I looked at that building - just a simple, relatively cheap gesture - that spoke of what was the only decent thing to do for people that were escaping horrors and terror. I felt shame for my own country, a country that had predicated an entire departure from Europe on the basis of refugees being this verminous blight threatening to pour in through the continent. 

The predominant English mentality towards refugees, generated through a vile free press that likes to plaster the front pages with the demonising of these people, are that refugees should not be our problem. Refugees are depicted as rats, threatening our jobs and safety. 

I felt shame that this was the country I was from.

Look, don't get me wrong. I'm not here painting the rest of Europe as some glorious, holding hands, singing together haven of harmony. There are countries similarly beset by right-wing politics and loathing of refugees. Even my German host complained that the seemingly idyllic town of Freiburg where she was lived was, frankly, boring. Europe isn't perfect. But, in my opinion, we were better off in it and being a part of it than cutting ourselves off.

For one day of the trip my host gave me use of her car so I could take my family for a drive through Germany and over the border into France. We visited Strasbourg and Colmar. We drove freely across the border, despite (with our typical British sense of prudence) carrying our passports with us in case we were stopped and checked. I mean, surely we would be stopped and checked! Yet of course we were not. And we were free to drive into another country, another town, where they spoke a different language and had different customs and cultures.

Aside from one pissed-off French waiter in Colmar, I found every foreigner encountered to be congenial, polite and friendly.

Spending time with my young son, explaining to him about the place we were in, trying to teach him the basics of French and German, and I could think of nothing worse than closing his mind off to this wider world beyond our British mindset. I want my son to want to be a part of a wider world and to embrace different people, different ideas, different cultures. I want him to experience them and consider them and then make his own mind up about whether it is better or worse, good or bad. 

The German family we stayed with had a daughter of a similar age to my son. She, naturally, spoke and understood far better English than my son did of German (just another of those facets of the English; we don't generally bother to learn other languages except for in school and, once we're out, we're done with it). So they couldn't communicate, particularly. But it didn't matter. They played happily together. Football in the garden. Connect 4 on the iPad. Other games they conjured between themselves that set them off running and giggling for reasons I didn't know. It was lovely. I was proud of him.



I don't want my son to shackle himself with the siege mentality of the UK. We are a nation so sure of our superiority to the entire European Union we decided we were better off out of it. It's embarrassing. It's shameful.

I can't believe it's really happening.

When we were driving into Colmar we crossed a bridge that had flags from all manner of nations fluttering proudly along it. The Union Jack was there, a flag amongst those other nations. I looked at it and wondered how long it would stay there. And even then, at that moment, it already felt like an artifact that didn't belong - and would be one day left behind.

The Walking Dead Season 7 Finale

If you don't watch The Walking Dead, or if you do watch The Walking Dead but haven't seen Season 7, and in particular the finale, it's best you get out of here. I'm going to be talking about it, and spoiling it merrily.

So we're all clear up front, I have not been happy with how Season 7 of the show has played out. I'm aware I'm not alone in this, although reading a few reviews here and there and speaking with some friends, people seem to look more favourably upon the Season 7 finale than I do.

I've been a fan of the show from the start. It's only this season that has even slightly tested my resolve in being able to defend it and stick with it. I didn't mind Season 2's slow-pace at Hershel's Farm, or the episodic nature of the journey to Terminus. And furthermore, the first episode of Season 7 - as in the above image - where Negan's punishment to Rick's group saw off Abraham and then, in a genuine jaw-dropper of a twist, also ended Glenn. . . Yeah. Take the glory, The Walking Dead, because you delivered a home run.

For that first episode alone they earned the grace of my patience, even when the very next episode forced me to swallow the ridiculous Ezekiel and his tiger.

I tried. I really tried. But right up to the very end, in the finale, when this self-confessed actor was still playing his part and spouting ludicrous vernacular during a gunfight, I could no longer sustain my patience. Let's have it right. He's fucking stupid. He makes the show laughable. All sense of grit and realism goes out of the window the moment he shows up.

And whilst I'm here, how the fuck did Shiva the Tiger know which were the Saviours to attack and which were the Alexadrians to not pounce upon and eat the face off of?

Anyway.

The Walking Dead also delivered unto us the utterly dumb as shit dump people, lead by this Jadis woman.

Now here was another character, and group, that strained credibility of the show beyond breaking point. That these people have formed an isolated group surviving in a giant dump is tricky enough to fathom. That they have, in the few years since the zombie apocalypse, become a weird Mad Max style cult that has generated their own insular way of speaking and ritual practices is absolutely not being sold to me.

No way. No fucking way.

These are people that are still able to retain memory of the internet. Of what Coke tastes like. These are people that were ordinary, regular folk that watched Friends. And you're telling me they've all swayed over into this weird bullshit in just a few years? Nope. No. Not having it.

On balance this group was responsible for the only element of surprise that garnered a reaction from me during the finale with their double-cross of Rick's group. It was the best moment of the episode. I liked that it had been hinted at, in the previous episode, where Negan mentioned that he knew Rick was up to something because a little bird had told him. Jadis being that little bird was a kick of a twist, mainly because everyone was so hurriedly trying to forget she existed in the show we completely overlooked her.

Still, stupid King Ezekiel and whackjob from another genre Jadis weren't the real problem I had with The Walking Dead finale. The real problem I had was that, after all this interminable waiting the entire season had made us viewers sit through, the show thought it was just fine to make us sit and wait and linger some more.

To be clear, from the moment Negan battered Abraham and Glenn and reduced Rick to a gibbering wreck, we've been waiting for him to get his balls back and deliver some payback. And The Walking Dead spent the entire first 8 episodes before the mid-season break getting Rick back to the point where he'd actually decided enough was enough and they were going to have to fight back.

Or, actually, 'rise up' as all the promotional materials were heralding the second half of the season.

Well we fucking waited and watched whilst Rick went off to various places to obtain guns to give away to form an army, and every now and then that revolutionary journey was abandoned to give us some stories about other characters. Some of the episodes were good. Some were a bit flat. But none of them gave us what we were most interested in.

I, as a fan, kept my patience. The show was going to get there. It was going to keep up the foreplay all the way to the last episode, but rest assured it was going to deliver the fucking goods.

And then it didn't.

What was most frustrating was that all the elements were in play. They just elected to fuck them all up. Let's take what happened with Sasha as a clear example. In the finale we were left initially confused as we saw her lying down, confined in darkness, listening to an iPod and not looking particularly 100% OK.

We would be treated to scenes of Sasha in this manner repeatedly during the episode, and these scenes would give way to various sequences - most notably Sasha and Abraham in a flashback memory on the fateful day Abraham was killed, and Sasha and Maggie talking. Whether you buy into Sasha and Abraham as a couple is almost irrelevant (for the record I bought into them getting together and finding a soul mate of sorts - but the grand romance The Walking Dead has tried to retrospectively paint it as just wasn't justified on the show).

We got these flashback scenes, and the headshot of Sasha in the confined space with the sound of a vehicle, so often that we could pretty much already piece together what had happened before they eventually showed her taking the poison that would kill her, courtesy of Eugene.

But these interminable interruptions to the action were just another way of the show dragging its heels and messing up the flow. Imagine it another way. Imagine they let the whole thing play out in order. So we see Rick and the gang getting ready at Alexandria. Then we cut to Sasha agreeing to Negan's plan. We watch her get in the coffin, and then we see her take the poison. Then we're with her as she drifts in an out of consciousness, seeing Abraham and Maggie in memory, before she closes her eyes and dies.

Now, when Negan gets to Alexandria and wheels out the coffin and is talking about Sasha suddenly we, as an audience, are in on something no one else knows. We know she's dead. We know all his talk about Sasha is about to get shot to shit. This is pure dramatic tension. This is the classic trick of showing an audience a loaded gun in Act I for it to be used in Act III.

With the Season 7 finale The Walking Dead just fucked all that old-school shit like drama and tension aside in favour of frustratingly lyrical dream sequence interruptions. By the time the action then did eventually start it was a confused mess of bullshit. All the Alexandrians that were fully-armed and set to go down fighting somehow got rounded up by Negan's people who were somehow all inside the town. And then there was that shitty fake out of Michonne screaming to her death even though we fucking knew she wasn't ever dead. (This show pulled that same shit when it tried to make us think Rick was dead instead of the worst CGI deer ever just a couple of episodes ago!)

No one notices a fucking great big tiger rocking up. Bullets are sprayed everywhere and no one of any consequence gets hit. Carol and Maggie and Morgan all show up but that raises more of a shrug than anything. The dump people run off via smoke grenade screen, hopefully to never be seen again. And by the end of the sorry spectacle Negan and his people are untouched and ready to wage war against Rick.

Oh. Right.

 

It's just I thought I spent the whole of fucking Season 7 building up to war? You know, "rise up" and all that shit? And basically the show stuck up a Negan-shaped middle finger in my direction and said I can fucking wait until next year.

Not only did this finale not have the goods, it didn't even have the decency to non-deliver it with any excitement or thrill.

I've read earlier that Greg Nicotero, one of the key showrunners, has stated that they will not change the manner in which they are making and presenting the story and the show just because of how people react. I suspect that's absolute bollocks. Falling ratings and vocal backlash do tend to generate reaction. I just hope, next season, we're looking back at Season 7 as a poor blip the show learned and recovered from.