Tag: Film and TV

It's Not Easy Being Green.

Posted on by Neal Asher

I caught part of a program last night filled with ageing hippies and the young open-faced naïve believers like you’ll find in new churches in Bible Belt America, but who in this case have been indoctrinated into the eco-church. It was called ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ and most of the program was about building houses with straw bales – the kind of thing you can do if you’ve plenty of time, money and space (since your wall will end up being a couple of feet thick), and is therefore probably only the province of the champagne eco-warrior who can afford to eat organic and probably drive a brand new Prius.

The hectoring eco-bullshit was bad enough but, having worked some of this stuff out myself, the financial figures were highly questionable. I have, for example, doubts that changing about five light-bulbs for the mercury version will save anyone £100 a year.

Having looked at buying a solar panel and then worked out the costs involved, I was interested to watch the bit about a woman who had a ‘green’ heating system installed in her house, including solar panels. In my case the panel would have cost £3,000+, and I worked out that the savings wouldn’t cover the interest at the time if I were to take that money and stick it in an ISA. I would just be making a loss on it, forever.

The entire cost of this woman’s ‘green’ system was £9,000, whereas a conventional system would have cost her £3,500. Apparently, since the system would save £500 a year, the difference of £5,500 would be paid off in 11 years. Now, I have to wonder just what kind of house is being run here that costs over £500 a year to heat – I’m guessing the kind of house owned only by the residents of TV-land. But that aside, haven’t these crusties heard of interest?

Take that £5,500 and stick it in an account and even today you’ll get over £100 back each year. A few years ago and that would have been £300+ and, supposing the British economy doesn’t crash and burn (or should I say continue to crash and burn), that’ll be the interest you’ll get in a few years time.

So, with cumulative interest, that 11 years can be extended to over 30 years, by which time you’ll doubtless be adding to it the cost of maintenance. And of course, if you had to borrow the money to pay for such a central heating system, the period would be even longer – probably the length of a working life time. These twats really need to try living in the real world.

Emma Thompson & Alistair McGowan

Posted on by Neal Asher

Emma Thompson and Alastair McGowan among those who have bought one-acre plot right at heart of proposed development. Land earmarked by Heathrow owner BAA to build a third runway has been bought by a group of celebrities, scientists, politicians and green campaigners in an attempt to severely delay the development. The new runway would make Heathrow Britain’s biggest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The stench of hypocrisy is enough to make one gag when ‘celebrities’ start spouting off about the environment. We must travel less, pump less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, really, we must all stay at home and watch television (preferably not a plasma screen since that uses so much energy, anyway, the EU will be banning the sale of them shortly). But what should we all watch?
How about Alistair McGowan Goes Wild with Rhinos? Obviously he and a large film crew jetted off to Kenya to film the program but, since it’s about conservation, that’s okay. Or what about, at this time of year, the various award ceremonies in Hollywood, you know, like the Golden Globes or the Oscars, like the ones Emma Thompson flew to Hollywood to collect? Maybe they’ll put on Alistair McGowan’s Posh & Beck’s Special, which he flew to Madrid to film, or and episode of Who Do You Think You Are, which he flew to India to film. Or surely there’s something with Emma Thompson in which she of course did no location filming. I mean she’s a good girl who works for African charities and of course wouldn’t consider flying out there with a film crew – that’d cause far too much environmental damage. And I’m sure she’ll be hang gliding to Los Angeles while she’s losing weight with Madonna’s fitness trainer.
The reality of what these hypocritical pricks are saying, in the cloistered world of Champagne socialism, is that YOU shouldn’t fly, YOU should reduce your carbon footprint. They, being glitterati smooching with our rulers, are obviously our betters, and can fly first class around the world in pursuit of their careers or whilst delivering their sanctimonious homilies.

Flood

Posted on by Neal Asher

Over the last two days we sat and watched a film in two parts called Flood, starring amongst others Robert Carlyle and David Suchet. The first half was good (everyone enjoys a disaster movie) but for the latest fashion of, “Let’s shake the camera about to make it appear more exciting,” then the second half lapsed into bathos through to plain daft at the end. Robert Carlyle gets all emotional with his ex-wife and his estranged father, Tom Courtenay, who in turn sacrifices himself at the end to save London in a piece of televisual silliness. Yeah, you’re going underwater into a room that will close off and trap you in there until the city is saved, well, take some more air bottles you prick. But I guess the thing that completely shafted the whole film for me was that, Courtenay, the hero who sacrifices himself, was a climate modeller: “I inserted your data into my model with the result that I, and only I, know that disaster is on the way.” Not particularly credible now we know how climate models don’t work. And not particularly credible that a climate modeller would be seen anywhere away from a computer or press conference and actually out in the ‘environment’.

Gov.com Bollocks

Posted on by Neal Asher

Television adverts are irritating at the best of times, but are now becoming doubly irritating as advertisers adopt government doctrine so that now double glazing will reduce your carbon footprint, margarine will stave off obesity and expensive yoghurt will stop your arteries clogging (whilst filling your plastic recycling bin with piss-little pots). But at least these advertisers are only trying to sell us something.

Worse are the endless begging adverts and health warnings paid for by our taxes funnelled to on-message charities like, for example, ASH, which received a total of £11,143 from the public and £320,400 from the government, or like Alcohol Concern, which received nothing from the public but over £400,000 from the Department of Health.

Worse still are the ones brought to us direct by gov.com. Presently we’re being bombarded every evening by the low fat healthy living message from the Morph’s Plasticene family. This message is delivered with such teeth-filing dumbed-down patronising nanny-state knows best subtlety I want to throw a brick through the screen. Apparently healthy people eat carrots and apples and dump burgers in the bin. Healthy people walk rather than use the ‘comfy car’ or the ‘more comfy bus’ (The message here of course that those who use the bus are less reprehensible than those who use a car).

Then, this morning I discover two full-page spreads of this dreck in two national newspapers. Obviously the budget for ramming home gov.com statist tripe will be the last to be cut as the country goes into financial meltdown. I mean, gov.com has £75 million to throw at this, but only just managed to scrape enough together for drugs to stop people going blind.

They just won’t stop, will they? They just won’t be satisfied until we are all good little low-carbon carrot-eating robots obedient to nanny state for every minute of our lives.

Australia

Posted on by Neal Asher

Shall I compare thee to a block of granite? Film viewing on Tuesdays being discounted at the cinema in Freeport Braintree, me and the wife headed down there to watch a film that seemed to have potential, to be followed by some food in a nearby Mexican restaurant. We watched Australia, though I have to admit there were periods when I wasn’t watching, having closed my eyes in the hope of drifting off to sleep. What a load of boring cliched tripe. Yeah, it was about as interesting as watching a block of granite, there seemed an equivalent amount of active chemistry involved too, however, Australia differed by having a story substantially less interesting than that of a block of granite. Is it Nicole Kidman? I can’t seem to remember any enoyable films in which she has appeared, but I can remember plenty of dreadful ones, like Cold Mountain, Atonement and Moulin Rouge.

And the beef in my fajita was tough too.

Okay, I got Atonement wrong, that was that Keira Knightley. As Bob pointed out I was so fucking bored I forgot who was in the damned thing.

Sci-Fi-London Interview

Posted on by Neal Asher

Well, there’s a video interview with me up on the Sci-Fi-London site now, which will later be added to the list of interview on their .tv site. I haven’t yet watched it myself but Caroline tells me it’s OK – not too many ums and ers.

SCI-FI-LONDON was lucky enough to meet Neal Asher at his Essex home to talk about his latest book, The Gabble & Other Stories, about writing and about 15 years of the Polity universe, David Fincher, Heavy Metal and the internet as a distraction from real work.

Now, I really really must get out of Christmas mode and do some of that real work.

Atonement

Posted on by Neal Asher

Having opted out of Sky because we’re not here enough for it to be value for money, we’ve been spending money saved on DVDs. Last night we sat down to watch one of them and, both of us liking films about World War II, we chose Atonement. I have to say that it was only by dint of some whisky and homebrew beer that I managed to retain the will to live. This film was like what some academic writers do to history when they manage to turn an interesting subject into something dry as dust boring. Caroline told me to give it time, but when her eyes started to glaze over I knew it had had time enough. I wonder, is the McEwan book as bad as this, because apparently the film is faithful to it. I wouldn’t be surprised, since this is Booker literarty-farty territory. If you’re looking for a romping good war story go and buy Enemy at the Gates, however, if you’re looking for a soporific…

Spooks 6 Continued.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Ah, I made a large error in my previous post about Spooks Series 6 in that I thought I’d reached the end at eight episodes. Perhaps that was hopeful thinking. Anyway, there were two more episodes which we sat down to watch last night. Maybe there was a chance of the series redeeming itself here, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

I was right; it was utterly contrived dreck.

Let’s go with the first disc: an IRA bomber has come to exact vengeance upon our heros. He intends to detonate a car bomb in a busy part of London. He instructs the spooks to position themselves around the car, at which point he will give them time to drive away the public before detonating it and killing the spooks. Of course, if they don’t come he will kill civilians and then detonate further bombs until the spooks comply by sacrificing themselves. Damn me Al Qaeda and all the rest should try this method. I mean the tube bombers could have taken out MI5 and MI6 all in one hit.

The second disc was as bad. Two highly-trained spooks, a man and a woman, are captured by a couple of guys who intend to torture them. These two spooks placidly allow themselves to be locked in a room together prior to torture commencing. They are not bound, they are not injured and the torturers use just the one door to enter the room. Whilst in the room the female spook asks the male spook to snap her neck because she doesn’t want to be tortured. I guess it never occurred to either of them to try attacking their captors. Yes, the torturers are armed with handguns, but isn’t the possibility of getting shot better than a) the certainty of a broken neck and b) unremitting torture? Are MI5 fucking pacifist now?

Sci-Fi-London

Posted on by Neal Asher

Ah well, I’ve just done a video interview for Robert Grant of Sci-Fi-London. He’ll (hopefully) be editing out my ums and ers to put it up sometime anon. Not sure if I’ll look at it myself. I’ve hated audio interviews I’ve done because I tend to gabble, lose track of what I was saying and generally don’t ‘perform’ all that well. In the end, if I’d wanted to be a performer, I wouldn’t have retreated to my bedroom all those years ago and started writing weird stories. That’s the thing about this writing lark, it’s not all about celebrity and being amusing and intelligent in front of an audience, it’s about an utterly introvert pursuit in which you don’ talk to people for hours on end.

Messiah

Posted on by Neal Asher

Ah, nicely gory stuff and a very enjoyable read, though some of the Bible quotes, though vaguely relevant to the story, rambled on a bit too long. We didn’t need a replay of the Crucifixion – the only relevant bit in that was Judas hanging himself. And I’m not even sure we needed that. I laugh at people who believe in the sky pixie and wouldn’t have the Bible in my house other than for woodburner fuel, but even I knew that. Interesting ending too. I’m not entirely sure the first TV production of it ended that way – can’t see how it could with Messiah’s II & III to follow. No, surely Ken Stott didn’t get busy with the hammer and nails, did he?