series 2

May 19, 2012

X Marks the Shit

Jack Grahammovies, reviews, series 2, x-men1

?”You need to see X-Men First Class Jack, you’ll love it, I promise!”

Nope. Sorry.

Fassbender spends the movie auditioning to take over from Daniel Craig. Kevin Bacon excepted, none of the others can act at all.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is fidgeted with to the point of incomprehensibility. The Russians send missiles to Cuba despite a full US Naval blockade… because one general has been threatened… and this makes the entire politburo accede to nuclear suicide? Well, I guess that’s why their culture produces mutants that look like Satan.

It’s the usual reactionary farrago of lies.

The standard crap about how homo sapiens wiped out the Neanderthals is repeated yet again. It’s an obsession of pseudo-thoughtful pop-culture and it’s a lie. Nobody knows how homo sapiens and Neanderthal man interacted. There is no data. That the null hypothesis of capitalist culture is that homo sapiens went on a genocidal killing rampage tells you more about capitalism than about homo sapiens.

And the Nazi war criminal goes to work for the Russians, which is another lie. The ex-Nazis all went to work for the West. West Germany was run by ex-Nazis, a couple of cosmetic dissidents aside.

And, once again, evolution is depicted as teleological and going in ‘stages’ and quantum jumps, which is barely-disguised social darwinism. What makes this all the more revolting is the moralising about Magneto’s supposed evil… for doing something so scandalous as to defend himself when attacked! Oh, what a twisted bastard!

And what exactly is Raven/Mystique’s problem? So, her default setting is blue and scaly… so what? I’d have that as a default setting if I could make myself look however I wanted the rest of the time!

AND this film, which takes a moment here and there to jab at 60s-style sexism, takes every opportunity to get the female cast semi-naked! Fucking hypocrites.

Oh yeah, AND the only black character dies half way through the film – what a fucking shock! That hardly ever happens in movies!…

May 3, 2012

Fear Them

Jack Grahamblind and unreasoning rage, bullshit, corporations, fear her, manufacturing consent, olympics, robert banks stewart, series 2, social cleansing1

“Does this mean that the Olympic Dream is dead?
“There’s a mystery man… he’s picked up the flame… we have no idea who he is… he’s carrying the flame! Yes, he’s carrying the flame and no one wants to stop him.
“It’s more than a flame now, Bob. It’s more than heat and light. It’s hope. And it’s courage. And it’s love.”

– From the script of ‘Fear Her’.

Heartwarming, I’m sure. Absolutely certain to inculcate desirable attitudes in children. Watching that will have them all full of hope and courage and love as they quaff their isotonic drinks and get exercising, hoping to one day be standing to attention as their national anthem is played and a bit of metal is draped around their necks, secure in the knowledge that all is for the best in the best of all possible social and political cultures.

On the other hand…

On 19 May, the Olympic torch will begin its journey, accompanied by 52 police officers, due to fears that the torch may be ‘targeted by radicalised protest groups’ or dissident Irish republicans, since according to the Telegraph ‘ experts on the IRA are warning the torch relay is vulnerable to attack.’
Other threats include ‘public disorder’ – a possibility that was identified as a risk after last August’s riots by assistant police commissioner, Chris Allison, the national Olympic security co-ordinator.
To eliminate these threats, the military/police ‘ring of steel’ around the Olympics will be buttressed by security infrastructure that includes an £80 million, 11-mile, 5,000-volt electric fence around the Olympic Zone, and a range of new surveillance and monitoring technologies in London itself.
The largest peacetime security operation in British history cannot be simply attributed to paranoia and an overzealous desire to protect the public. On the one hand it reflects an overlap between homeland security and corporate profiteering that has become a feature of the post 9/11 world.
As the urban geographer Stephen Graham has observed, the Olympics are ‘the ultimate global security shop window through which states and corporations can advertise their latest high-tech wares to burgeoning global markets while making massive profits’.
The Games also represent a more general marketing opportunity for their corporate sponsors. In 2006 Parliament passed the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, which upgraded the level of brand protection to Olympic sponsors and made any unauthorised marketing or commercialism connected to the Olympics a potentially criminal offence.

And:

This highly profitable, publicly subsidised, sporting event always attracts the major, and wannabe major, cities of the world, using any and all methods to entice an unaccountable Olympic committee, each flexing their political muscle to ensure theirs is the next chosen location. The Olympics take billions of pounds, yen, dollars of their host countries’ tax revenue to build magnificent stadiums and housing facilities, militarise the city, trample civil liberties and construct elaborate installations with shelf lives of a few weeks.
London 2012, originally expected to cost £2.4bn, is now projected at £24bn, with contracts going to some of the world’s most egregious employers and global human rights violators.

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