The Blacklist: Five Films I Hate That Everyone Else Loves

When I was a young lass with barely a handful of overreactions and needlessly capitalised opinions to call my own, I had a school teacher who offered me this sage advice when it came to debating: "Don't rant.  When you rant, we stop listening." Which - don't get me wrong - was all well and good within the confines of structured debating competitions largely dominated by chinless male adolescents whose sense of self-importance was directly proportional to how much they wished their voice would just drop already.*  But this is a blog, so sorry Mrs Edwards, I am going to rant my little digital socks off.

In summary, the following films are abominations and deserve to be fire-bombed out of existence.

The Jane Shakespeare Blacklist: Five Films I Utterly Loathe That Everyone Else Inexplicably Loves (and Obviously Contains Spoilers For Those Films)

Now look.  Most of the time, I get by ok despite being an emotionally neutered wasteland of a human being whose ability to respond appropriately to the adult world has been unalterably decimated by years of learning my life lessons from TV. I grew up reading books and then I went to university to read more books and realised that watching shitty children's films on the internet was much quicker and less effort. I feel more strongly about television about than I do about some actual human relationships (when I started watching Orange is the New Black, I genuinely think I was more psyched to spend time with my Netflix account than I was with my first boyfriend). What I'm saying is that I watch a lot of stuff, good and bad, so I don't usually judge others on their choices (in fact I detailed my love of crap TV here). However, there are a few films, just a few, that I loathe and every time I say I loathe them, someone looks at me like I just expressed indifference towards a Youtube video of an ocelot forming an unlikely friendship with a penguin.**  They're both small animals, I get why it's cute, I just...god, don't you people have anything better to do with your lives? You could be writing blogs justifying your deep-seated aggression towards humanity. Anyway, here they are.

5) Titanic

Now this is an obvious choice to kick things off and maybe kind of a cheat because actually there are a lot of people that don't love it. It's just that the people who love it really love it. And I hate those people. I've also never actually seen it all the way through. I just can't. Every time it comes on TV, I think, “This time, this time, I will respond to this film that makes people cry their innards out through their noses.” And every time I have to stop watching because I can feel bile rising in my throat at the first few strains of that Celine Dion wankfestival of over-literal interpretation of the concept of undying love. It brings out the absolute worst in me. It only takes a few minutes and I'm treating human tragedy like it's the funniest thing I've ever seen (cf also: Forrest Gump). Also obligatory mention of get on the fucking door.

4) The Lion King

This is potentially where I lose some friends.  But actually let's be clear.  I do not hate The Lion King.  But I am happily indifferent to The Lion King.  But the world, as always, will not let me be.  "How can you not like The Lion King?" they gasp, as though I have expressed a neutrality towards breathing oxygen, and that incredulity has pushed me dangerously towards hatred.  Easily, is the answer.  Bloody easily.  Anthropomorphism has never been my thing, not ever, and when I watched Bambi as a kid I asked my mum whether Bambi's mum had just been shot and she nodded sadly with soft, compassionate motherly eyes ready to leap to the rescue of my tender psyche and I said "oh ok" and went back to wondering what exactly his dad had been doing all that time.  Nature is not cuddly, it is red in tooth and claw, and it will thank you for showing some respect (I mean you Ang Lee). Also if I want to read Hamlet I will definitely just read Hamlet.  So let me be, in my joyless, loveless bubble.  I'm not telling you not to enjoy it but I will not pretend I enjoy it either.  I am the Andy Murray of film watching, refusing to smile, and winning at Twitter.

3) 500 Days of Summer

I have been told so many times by so many folk that I just didn't "get" this film.  No, you see, it is a deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, the magical quirky girl who pinwheels into the life of the male protagonist and heals his damaged first world soul, it is a warning against projecting unmanageable expectations onto someone.  Is what they say.  Well, no.  Is what I say.  Because a) if that were true, why is the last thing we see in the film Joseph Gordon Levitt hitting on an identical woman (Zooey Deschanel just wasn't the right Manic Pixie Dream Girl! Keep searching, entitled white boy, there's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl out there for you too!) and b) even if the film was pointing out the folly of their relationship, so what?  The idea that putting women on a pedestal ends badly is not a blinding revelation.  I think most of us do not need a film to tell us that you cannot build a lasting relationship on shared love of The Smiths.

It is not a deconstruction of the trope because it does nothing to deconstruct the trope.  The story is still told from the viewpoint of the aforementioned lost boy who pursues a woman because she symbolises a meaningful existence and ultimately 'wins' her, despite her free-wheelin' ways and initial reluctance.  The fact that he loses her again means nothing for, as the film makes clear, he will do this again and again and again.  A deconstruction would tell her story, show her agency and inner life rather than just informing us that she totally has them, and focus on her choices because of what they mean for her, not as and when they affect him.  In the end, it still reinforces the stereotype that women's lives are plot points in men's stories.  No amount of non-linear storytelling and cutesy Expectations v Reality set pieces can disguise that.  It's hollow, it's twee, and it challenges nothing.  Mic drop.

2) Juno

It is not the miracle of central heating or the tender embrace of a lover that keeps me warm at night, it is my hatred of this film.  It nourishes my soul.  It gives me energy.  Why?  Because it's fucking annoying.  Basically.  But oh, such annoyance.  My intolerance of this film is nigh on Biblical.  The smug Dr Seuss dialogue, the lazy mumblecore performances, the appalling manner in which Michael Cera continues to exist, the vicious desperate straining towards being alternative (and yet at the same time so painfully afraid of offending anyone - no it's totally cool that you support abortion! It's just not for our did-we-mention-ADHD-but-not-in-a-way-that-is-ever-really-represented-as-anything-other-than-edearing-in-an-offbeat-way heroine!  Oh, and by the way, all abortion clinic picketers are also quirky and adorable!).  At no point does this film celebrate anything difficult or unusual or uncomfortable (spoilers: the baby ends up with sweetly middle class Jennifer Garner, bad Jason Bateman with his ephebophile tendencies is banished, and Ellen Page goes to the prom with Michael Cera, the poor, poor girl) and it pretends it does because it comes packaged in The Moldy Peaches***, ironic euphemisms for penises, and a fucking hamburger phone.  I really hate that fucking hamburger phone.

1) Love Actually

Ok, this is it.  The big one.  I don't want to overreact here but everyone involved in this film deserves to be put up against a wall and shot.  Even you Colin Firth.  Especially you, for trying to trade off against Darcy goodwill by jumping into a lake.  Every character in it is a borderline horrendous sociopath and every one of its hoard of dead-eyed paycheck-visualising actors has done a better performance than this at some other point in their careers, and for Kris Marshall, it was his mugshot when he was arrested for drunk driving.  This film goes out of its way to tell you that any option - literally any option - is better than just talking to a woman.  Hold up passive aggressive placards about how your entire existence has been destroyed by a woman having the temerity to marry someone else, learn to play the drums, buy a woman on the white slave trade market, decide you have no future together because she committed the heinous crime of electing to look after her brother instead of having sex with you, offer to have her ex boyfriends killed because they called her fat (because no woman of yours will bear the shame of being called fat) but for the sake of all that is holy, do not simply talk to her about your feelings, she will not respond to your simply and sincerely expressed feelings.

Oh Gentle Reader, I cannot truly express to you the depths of my antagonism towards this film.  I hate it with the gnawing, churning, all consuming darkness of a black hole, and were I possessed of ungodly  reality-altering powers, I would rip it out of existence itself and send it spitting and cursing back into the howling chasm from whence it came.  I hate the way, the truly tragic way, it takes actors that I like - Laura Linney! Andrew Lincoln!  forever to me to the most perfectly cast Edgar Linton there ever shall be, decent and strong-jawed and faithful! - and buckles them into this devil spawn of a roller coaster ride to hell.  Oh, I am sorry Linney, Lincoln, Firth, Ejiofor, Freeman and company (Not you, Knightley.  Never you.) but I cannot forgive your presence in this cynical money sink of a film (that does not - has never - really believed that love is, actually, all around but knows that you will believe it for long enough in your wine-addled Yuletide fugue of loneliness and existential despair to rent it off LoveFilm or add to the royalties by watching it on repeat) on the basis of previous and subsequent good form.

And the turtlenecks.  Dear weeping Jesus on a two-wheeled canoe, the fucking turtlenecks.


*I was actually really good at debate.  I once did a public speaking contest where they invented a prize to give me because I had written my speech the day before and not followed any of the rules about structure or having an actual argument but was apparently "utterly charming". But I am fucking charming, so you know.
**Actually that does sound fucking adorable.
***Who I liked before this film, goddammit.


A/N: Bonus Extra Episode of a TV Show I Hate That Everyone Else Loves, Incidentally Also Written by Richard Curtis: Vincent and the Doctor (Doctor Who, Series 5, Episode 10)

Snow Patrol is just the tip of the appallingly twee iceberg here.  No one - no one - can straight-facedly call someone "my friend" in continuous prose and not sound like a twat.  Just - just go and watch it again, and this time listen to the dialogue.  Consider the incredible crassness of the metaphor of Vincent van Gogh being haunted by an "invisible monster" (DEPRESSION THE REAL MONSTER IS DEPRESSION).  And ask yourself whether you actually thought it was good, or whether you just felt like you should because Matt Smith and Bill Nighy compared their bow ties.

(IT'S ABOUT DEPRESSION.)

5 Reasons Why You Should Be Really Fucking Psyched About The Avengers Film: Video Blog

And now for something completely different.

Just for a change (and because even typing is apparently too much effort now), I've decided to try something new and do a video blog. Possibly this is because I've been watching too much Nostalgia Critic and fallen into the dangerous trap of going "Pshaw! How hard can it be?", possibly because I am simply a dangerous egomaniac with far too many opinions. Who can say?

Either way, I apologise for the crappy picture quality, crappy sound quality and crappy editing. It's my first day.

Enjoy.

The F Word and The R Word

If you have ever met me, even for the briefest of brief encounters, I have probably mentioned feminism, being a feminist or women's rights in some form. I make no bones about it. I'm a feminist and I'm proud of being a feminist.

I also think that everyone who doesn't actively oppose gender equality is a feminist. If you think that men and women are equal, then you're a feminist. Now, few terms are more loaded than "feminist" and few single words have had so much written about what exactly they mean, so I'll try and keep my two cents brief. As an English student, I tend to approach things from the point of view of what I can analyse in the way of semantics and phrasing because I feel that's where I'm best qualified to comment. It's also because I think the way we make our arguments and the words we use to express our views are hugely important and often indicative of the biases that shape them. For example, I try and discourage my sister from using the word "gay" as a derogatory term - I know she isn't homophobic, but the appropriation of the word as a negative descriptor certainly began that way. A better example might be David Cameron's repeated recent use of the hilarious* Michael Winner catchphrase "Calm down dear" to a female MP during PMQ. That the phrase is a well-known line from an advert is irrelevant (and it's not like Michael Winner is a poster boy for gender equality anyway) - it is a phrase that would not roll off the tongue of a man who sees an equal opponent, rather than a female opponent.

In fact, our current government seems to have something of a history of gaffes regarding public statement concerning women. We had the Minister of Universities and Science David Willetts' remarks that feminism was the primary cause of unemployment for working class males and lack of social mobility. I expressed some strongly-worded discomfiture over this and was told by several people that I was making a fuss over nothing and he wasn't being sexist, just stating a fact. I found it very telling that Willetts didn't cite 'a growing percentage of women in the workplace' or even 'greater opportunities for women'. Whilst hardly better, they would certainly be closer to 'stating a fact'; it would be untrue to say that a growing number of women in the workplace won't have consequences elsewhere (although I still disagreed with the point Willetts was making - social mobility is surely the responsibility of the education system, which is the responsibility of the government). Instead, Willetts specifically blamed 'feminism', implying a negative causal relationship between the women's rights movement and unemployment. The words you choose - they matter.

Then came the above David Cameron Winnergate Scandal. Believe it or not, I was not amongst those screaming in instant outrage for Cameron to step down, although I do think he should have apologised and next time I hope he thinks twice about how he addresses a fellow MP. It merely confirmed my suspicions that, in many respects, Cameron and his government are nowhere near as progressive as we are led to believe. Eton Boy who moves in mainly male circles addresses a woman in a patronising way. And the Titanic sunk. More at 11. But again - the words. They matter.

The most recent of such incidents is Ken Clarke (the Justice Minister) who, in a radio interview, committed (as I see it) two different faux pas. Firstly, he confused statutory rape with date rape, saying "That includes date rape, 17-year-olds having intercourse with 15-year-olds." To clarify: statutory rape is where one or both partners are under 16. Date rape is a much more nebulous term, where a woman is sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, although not always someone she's dating - a friend, a co-worker, a teacher. It is thought to be the most prevalent form of rape and also the most unreported, especially on college and university campuses. The vast majority of rapes (84%, according to recent statistics) are committed by someone the victim knows, putting them either in the 'date rape' category or the 'domestic rape' category (rape by a spouse or partner). Now, whilst one would expect the Justice Minister to know the difference, I also know that Ken Clarke was a serving QC so I expect he does, in fact, know and simply got confused. To err is human, etc. No need for anyone to resign here.

However, he then went on to make a much more serious implication with his choice of language, stating, "A serious rape, with violence and an unwilling woman, the tariff is much longer than that [of statutory rape]." Asked whether he thought "date rape" counted as "serious rape", he said, "Date rape can be as serious as the worst rapes, but date rapes, in my very old experience of being in trials, vary extraordinarily one from another and in the end the judge has to decide on the circumstances." Clarke is making a clear distinction between different forms of rape: some is "serious rape", therefore other forms of rape aren't. The very phrase is an oxymoron - we would never say "serious murder" because it's ingrained into us that the consequence of murder (death) is bad. So why don't we feel the same about rape? Perhaps because as a society we have not fully grasped that rape is not a crime of passion or lust - rape has nothing to do with sex at all, in fact - rape is crime of violence. It is about humiliating and degrading the victim and proving the attacker has power over them. I believe this is true of all rape, of all forced intercourse, all intercourse without the consent of either party. I don't think there are any date rape victims out there now who would thank Clarke for implying that their harrowing experience is lesser than someone else's harrowing experience because of where it took place and who did it. And when we consider that date rape is the most prevalent form of rape, that every day women are raped by people they know, these comments become even more unacceptable.

I acknowledge that Clarke was making his suggestions about lesser sentences for rapists pleading guilty as a way of increasing conviction rates but it's a seriously skewed vision of how to do so. We badly need reform in the way rape trials are conducted, with the victim's sexual histories and wardrobe choices frequently dwelt upon. We need to create a climate in which rape is universally condemned, in which victims are entirely free from blame and feel safe to come forward and report their attackers, secure that they will be believed and the rapist rightfully punished. Rape is the only crime where it's acceptable to blame the victim, partially or wholly, for what has happened to them and if you think 'no-one thinks that any more', let me assure you, this attitude is still alive and well, often in the very law enforcement services that are supposed to protect the victims. So much of this starts with the language we use. Get rid of the term 'date rape'; it's vague and misleading and encourages the idea that the victim was somehow complicit with the attacker. Don't talk about "serious rape" as only one form of rape; this country doesn't take the most prevalent form of rape seriously enough already. The words. They matter. Obviously, this is a huge and complex issue and one I will attempt to cover in more depth soon, regarding the upcoming Oxford SlutWalk (hugely in favour, by the way).

To come full circle, I'd like to return to the word "feminist". As I stated initially, I believe that anyone who believes in gender equality (i.e. most people) is a feminist. For me, it's not a political position but a description of my beliefs. The word has fallen prey to identity politics and negative stereotyping - so many women disassociate themselves from the word because it brings to mind the image of the man-hating, bra-burning, strident, humourless cartoon feminist. I have to say, I've never met a feminist who even remotely resembles this description. I'm sure they exist, just as any group built around beliefs has its extremists. I'm pretty sure no-one reading this would subscribe to the old 'all Muslims are terrorists' line, or even 'all animal rights activists are violent', yet somehow feminism winds up as the movement being defined by its most unstable members. And I do use the word unstable advisedly: I have read the arguments of women unable to get past their hatred, who claim all male-instigated sex is rape or that all men should be raped to give them 'a taste of their own medicine' and it appalls me. Progress never came from hatred, and the vast majority of people understand this.

I usually try and consider my language very carefully when debating gender and other political issues. Nothing makes my heart sink quicker than a well-intentioned feminist/socialist/lefty knee-jerk reaction, ranting about how "omg men all just suck!" and "Typical bloody Tory demeaning women!" and (this one is real) how we should "put Dave Willetts up on a podium and throw rocks at him". At the end of the day, ranting might be fun but it doesn't help. In fact, it just makes it easier for people to dismiss you as an ignorant brat looking for an excuse to complain and believe me, I've learnt this the hard way. So in general, I try and keep a lid on my rage and use measured language and tight arguments that address all areas of the issue. Of course, a lot of the time I fail but I am only human, and a 20 year old human at that who studies English, not politics or gender studies or economics. And do I wish I could get mad? Sure. But that's a rant for another time.

I believe in a dialogue between the sexes. I believe that we'll start being proud of describing ourselves as feminists when it feels inclusive, when both genders start to examine what it means to be male or female in the 21st century. After all, if we're going to reconstruct our expectations of what it means to be a woman, we need to readjust our expectations of what it means to be a man accordingly. I don't think we can ever live in a truly gender-neutral society (gender differences are to be celebrated, variety being the spice of life an' all) but I do believe it is possible to rid ourselves of gender prejudices. My personal feminist philosophy is that there is room for both the thinkers and the doers. We can take direct action (try and get real social inequalities dealt with - such as the way rape trials are conducted) and we can work on educating ourselves and our children, trying to change attitudes (opening up dialogues and debate).

For me, saying "I'm a feminist" is like saying "I have brown hair". It's just a description, a shorthand. The movement has become divisive and factionalised over the years, as with any complicated or sensitive cause, and it's easy to forget the very essence of feminism: that women and men are equal, and deserve equal rights and opportunities. It's also about choice - wanting to live in a world where a man or a woman can choose to have a career, choose to raise a family, choose to walk on the moon and there's no societal pressure or stigma attached to their choice. If all the people who have ever said "well, I believe in equal rights but I'm not a feminist" stood up and proudly declared "I am a feminist", we could bring the movement back to these two basic tenets and restore the word's positive political power. "Feminism" not only describes my beliefs but the will to do something about them.

So own the word "feminist" and be proud of it whoever you are because, in the end, it's really only a by-word for the beliefs you likely already hold. I'd even go so far as to say that, in the end, feminism is only common sense. And if you're not ready to order your 'This is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt quite yet, then at least consider the mantra I've been repeating this whole time: the words you use when discussing gender, class, race, politics matter hugely. Choose them wisely.

*Sarcasm.

A Day of Complaints

A/N: This was written on the day of the Royal Wedding but, alas, has not been exposed to public scorn until today. I am still a bit ill though, so forgive me.

...

As I write this, I'm lying in bed suffering from stomach flu, which is what the doctor called it, or A Hideous Wasting Disease, which is what I am calling it. Literally, I am pretty sure it would be no exaggeration to say that I am sicker than anyone has ever been, ever, in the world. Literally.

In addition to the stomach pains and head that feels like it's been run over at least three times, there is really very little to do in my bed of pain other than watch Batman Begins, write embittered Facebook statuses and spill milky tea on my bedsheets. So, in a bid to distract myself from the circumstances, I'd like to address two things that seem to be dominating my consciousness over the last 24 hours: the Royal Wedding and the last Harry Potter film.

The level of vocal anticipation and support for both of these things genuinely astounds me. Yes, I sound like a culture snob, and that's probably because I am one. A rather arbitrary snob, it's true, one who intellectualises Doctor Who and analyses what went wrong with the original Batman film franchise with as much attention as one might pay to the oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa, but a snob nonetheless. And why not, I say. It's not like the general public are worth listening to. I firmly believe that the general public should never be allowed to decide anything. The general public watches Top Gear. Or, in the immortal words of Peep Show's Super Hans, “People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people.”*

Because people (many people) spent hours today standing outside for a glimpse of the wedding of people they didn't know and probably, if they really think about it, don't care about. I hear Bob and Sue in Taunton Heath are getting married. Aw, good for them. Now back to my life, I have stuff to do. In a sane world it would be the same thing when we hear that Will and Kate in Westminster are getting married too. In fact, it would be worse because Will and Kate in Westminster are getting married and we've given them thousands and thousands of pounds of our money to do it with. In the end, that's the only reason for me saying anything at all about this wedding. If I was really apathetic, I just wouldn't bother, other than to make sure everyone else knew how apathetic I was maybe. But we're a country in economic crisis and we're giving money to people already several hundred times richer than most of us ever hope to be, all so they can make a nice day of it. They say it raises morale and all that but really, I know my morale would be raised considerably more by the news that Will and Kate had decided on a small, private ceremony with family and friends and donated the extra cash to buy a new fleet of ambulances. By the way, this is no condemnation of the couple personally – I'm sure they're perfectly nice and I wish them every happiness in their marriage – but I just don't see a need for their special day to be conducted with such excessive pomp, other than tradition. And tradition alone is never a good enough reason for doing something.

And then there's the personal irritation that my Facebook page has been turned into a roiling mass of gooey approbation, even from usually sensible types and suddenly everyone's future happiness depends upon knowing what Kate Middleton's dress looks like. (I will say though, it is bloody beautiful and my thought pattern after seeing it went something like this: ooh, want it, sigh, can't afford it, eh, probably won't get married anyway). Sitting at home sick, I have seen today every possible permutation of a Royal Wedding related Facebook status that there is, from the “OH MY GEEE she looks BOOTIFUL, WillnKate 4eva!” and “fingers crossed for McQueen!” gushing to “wahey Pippa Middleton's pips”, “still one prince left” ribaldry. My favourite thing about today was the video clip of the verger cartwheeling down the aisle in Westminster Abbey after everyone else had gone home. At least he looked like he was having proper fun.

And so onto my second gripe of the day: Harry Potter. The trailer for the final film instalment has just been released and the internet/Facebook seems to be busy wetting itself in delight. It really surprises me how many people like these films – how many fans like these films. And believe me, I'm a fan. I queued up at midnight to get my hands on the sixth and seventh instalments of the series. I made a t-shirt. I can tell you the ingredients of a Polyjuice Potion and name at least three Quidditch teams. I am a fully paid up Harry Potter geek. Possibly this may account for my antipathy towards the films but I'm usually pretty rational about the feasibility of making adaptations live up to their source material (that they seldom do is hardly breaking news). But the books are so...English. And the films are so...American. I don't care that you've got the cream of the British acting crop plainly struggling not to roll their eyes and cry “I trained at RADA, you know!” every time they have to have say “Yes, he's plainly been struck by the Fidgety Widgety Curse”, those films have no soul.

The books are not pretty books. There are few Tolkien-esque passages of dramatic description. What we are offered is something very humble, in its essence: the adolescence of a typically emotionally stunted teenage boy, going through school as an average achiever, and the school just happens to be one for wizards. And the boy just happens to be the saviour of the society he exists in. If it sounds like I'm being facetious, I'm really not. The books are largely written from Harry's point of view and Harry is a humble person. Every time he defeats evil, he shrugs and goes “Well, I dunno, it just sort of did it and I had help anyway.” Hogwarts is not a majestic fantasy world, it is an eccentric one, in the best tradition of British eccentricity. It's all about rubbing along together and overcoming differences to give the baddies a jolly good seeing to. (There were far more double entendres in that sentence than I intended.) It's also sort of about how anyone can be a hero: Harry was marked out as a child for a role he doesn't seem to have any special abilities for, he just rises to the challenge and that makes him admirable. It is this ordinariness and this humbleness that the films can't quite get their collective celluloid heads around and this understated teenage heroism doesn't sit well with the Dark And Edgy tone the films try to paste onto it.

Again, it should be no surprise that a huge, money spinning franchise is more interested in blowing things up and dramatic spectacle than finely crafted character development, it's just that when they do attempt the whole characterisation thing it seems (in my opinion) to go so horribly, horribly wrong. Oh, I do try not to rant about Emma Watson. I do try. And really, I think I've made a breakthrough in recent times because I've freely admitted that she is very beautiful and probably a very nice person if you know her. I've conceded that the woeful characterisation is probably not her fault. But the combination of her record-breakingly weak acting and that horrible, horrible mutant version of my eleven-year-old self's heroine is frankly unforgivable. I and dozens of others like me (including J.K. Rowling herself, she's said) were mini-Hermiones: dowdy, know-it-all social misfits who managed to find a few good friends if we were lucky. We weren't feisty or cool and we weren't girly or giggly. Here, at last, was our patron saint. So it pained me greatly to watch the films slowly turn that delightful bushy-haired little prig into both a feisty girl and a girly girl with little evidence of the fierce, library-devouring intellect that supposedly burned beneath. There are other, less glaring offenders. The entirety of Harry's parents' generation has been cast with actors in their sixties, rather than their thirties – very good actors but actors who were probably too old to read the books to their kids, had minimal contact with the source material and so are just doing whatever the hell comes into their heads, *cough*Gary Oldman*cough cough*David Thewlis. But now we're getting into the realm of “But it's not like that!” arguments, which are never enough on their own, so I'll wrap things up.

Ultimately, I just don't think the spirit of the books can ever be represented well on film. The fact is, film is a visual medium and there is something remarkably non-visual about those books. They're told from Harry's POV and Harry is not the most observant creature: in seven years, we never once get descriptions of his best friends beyond their basic hair colour/height/one other defining feature. He does not look at the world around him and record it in fine detail, so finding an aesthetic to fit to the Harry Potter universe is a riddle without an answer, and I like it like that. Every kid who grew up loving those books did so because it was incredibly vivid and inventive on its terms, yet possible to fit inside your own imagination and do wonderful things with. That's why I never warmed to the films anyway, and it surprises me that more fans don't feel the same way.

And to put the cherry on the fluey, weddingy, Pottery cake, Temple of Doom is on the television, possibly the least good (we do not speak of Crystal Skull) of the Indiana Jones films, a film that can be summarised as Look, Look, Sexy Indiana Jones, Sexy Harrison Ford, So Sweaty, Mmm Yeah, Work It Doctor, RACIST INDIANS, Sexy, Shirtless, Brainwashed, Homicidal Indy, RACIST INDIANS, eyes-o'-madness blonde lady screams. Again. (And to cap it all, I just switched over to the other side and Keira Knightley pout-vehicle and general atrocity 2005 Pride and Prejudice is on. Oh yes, I'm a fan of the 1995 one.) Not my day, really.

Actually, just seen on the news that Prince William chose what was, essentially, a posh version of fridge cake to go alongside the proper wedding cake. Suddenly find him much more endearing. Fridge cake is great.

Also just seen pictures of Beatrice and Eugenie. Shine on, you crazy diamonds, shine on.

*If you can't tell, all that was written with tongue firmly in cheek. Well, a bit.