I Want to Flee the Sinking Ship Britannia

I haven’t made headway on anything this week, and I’m stuck away from everything important for at least another day or two. I am a hamster on a treadmill, forever rushing yet getting nowhere fast. The universe has a completely perverted sense of humor, and these reminders that anything I attempt will be met with equal and opposite resistance are starting to be extremely irritating.

Not only am I minus transport which I was counting on, nearly everyone I need to talk to is MIA – which, under any other circumstances, wouldn’t be an issue, but when I’m throwing every penny I have at attempting to get things done… Frustrating as mass disappearances are, and being yachtless is, of slightly more concern is how much money each setback costs me. I’m terrified of having to use my card all the time (and, y’know, thanks to whoever emptied out all the cash machines – great thinking there) as it doesn’t feel like real money. I use the card without thinking, and as I barely look at statements I have no idea how much I’ve spent this month already.

The reason that I prefer cash, as in physical money, is that I can work out – from what remains – how much I’m allowed to spend in the remainder of the month without feeling guilty. At this rate I have zero knowledge of where I stand on that front. And no, don’t even bother saying “you can check your balance online,” as the banks have seen to it that their websites are so horribly broken that doing anything on them is absolute torture. Having to input security codes every three minutes might be fun and exciting for some, but its a bloody chore, and that’s with the “remember me” button selected.

One of the major problems with me being left to my own devices, with all meetings seemingly canceled on me, is that I have time to browse. This is dangerous. Today (Saturday) alone I have seen three modern firsts crying out for someone to care for them, and there’s a fairly substantial number of weird paranormal books from the seventies and eighties calling out to me. Under other circumstances I would already have buckled, but keeping at least some semblance of a budget has to come first. A couple of old magazines were all I dared purchase (only eight quid apiece), and even that has given me the guilts.

Whenever things get this annoying, and hoo-boy things are so annoying right now, I get to wondering how Britain must look to the rest of the world. When we broke away from Europe did we officially change the country’s slogan to “ambitious but rubbish?” Everywhere seems to be closed up, even when I’ve specifically booked an appointment… I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to bloody well swim to mainland Europe. Maybe that’s the reason for my compulsive exercising – I’ve already subconsciously decided on a plan of action, or something.

There’s so much melodrama around at the moment that actual, proper drama is far preferable. While I appreciate that people have a natural instinct to panic, emptying out shelves from shops, nabbing all the money from cash machines, and generally going full Prepper on the world, there really isn’t a massive chance of any individual catching Captain Trips. You are more likely to get hit by a bus, or fall down a flight of stairs, or be poisoned by your underpants, or… IDK, be murdered by an Elvis impersonator or something.

Focusing on some hypothetical danger isn’t the best use of anyone’s energy, and only by continuing to follow routine can we get through this madness with as little interruption as possible.

But no. People want to flail and moan, and act as if the sky is falling.

I was going to list everything I still needed to pick up, but as I made my way through endless requirements it became more depressing than anything else. On my travels I discovered a little art shop, one of those independent ones the kind of which used to be everywhere, and it had an absolutely gorgeous little wooden box full of sable brushes on sale. I very nearly splashed out three hundred quid on it, my card tantalizingly close to hand, before I remembered that the plan was to get a camera before anything else. If it is still there the next time I pass through this way I’m going to treat myself.

The specific camera is still an unknown. I want a Red, but dropping twenty grand on an unknown quantity is fucking scary. It many not be much to some, but this is a lot to spend for me at the moment. It isn’t so much money which is playing on my mind, but rather image quality – the first thing I want to do when everything I need is in the can is to find a small cinema somewhere to see all my raw footage on a large screen, then proceed from there. Not knowing exactly what to expect from various makes and models is a massive leap into the unknown, but I can’t go back to using video. Seriously, anything but video… I’ll use one of those Fisher-Price toy cameras before resorting to video.

While I could live with something that looked okay, I want footage slightly better than a run-of-the-mill budget flick. Knowing how to shoot in the desert is going to be the biggest challenge. I’m comfortable with cameras, I’m sorta, kinda, mostly comfortable with designing the look of everything, and… Well, lighting and sound are pretty much black arts. Those that know such things are wizards, and must be given the proper respect. I’ll get hexed otherwise.

Mentioning this, some lighting technician is probably fingering their gris gris bag, staring at the screen, going “say what, motherfucker?”

My head is totes going to end up looking like Beetlejuice at the end of that film. I promise to not mock subtle and dangerous majiks.

I’ve seen another dozen or so films which were released when I was in my little funk, hiding from the world. Goddamn, cinema has gone to shit. I’ve found a total of six great films released over the last few years, where I expected to (maybe) be able to list off a few dozen. There’s an overwhelming sense of familiarity to most of the acclaimed films, with a few being so irredeemably bad that it is almost beyond belief that they managed to garner enough popularity to break even, never mind turn a profit. This makes me fearful that there isn’t room for intelligent, artful films in the current marketplace, but I’m hoping that there is still a space for things which are artfully constructed.

Are didactic speeches becoming a thing? There’s nothing wrong with films imparting lessons, but to drag everything to a halt so that someone can pontificate is ridiculous. Scriptwriting (across multiple genres) has fallen so low in my estimation that I soon expect to see Tellytubbies revived for the big screen by Guy Ritchie – I thought things couldn’t get any worse than Hobbs & Shaw, but I was overly optimistic. This is extremely depressing. You do know that there are lessons hidden in Peckinpah films, right? The narrative doesn’t come to a screeching stop so that you can be told them – you have to work a little harder for the take-away – and they serve to inform character, location, and their place in history.

The single worst atrocity against cinema has to be the opening scene to the Charlie’s Angels reboot, in which Kristen Stewart delivers a speech which goes on… and on… and on… And by the time it is over I’ve already given up the will to live. Yes, the clever little line about threat assessment is well-placed, but everything before it is so speechy that it doesn’t sound like sentences any human would say. Ever. The individual words aren’t bad, and the sentiment is great, but it sets up nothing, goes nowhere, and exists merely to exist.

Maybe there’s hope for Tommy Wiseau after all, if this is the quality of the competition…

And I’m going to have to reassess my criticism of Uwe Boll. Isn’t that a scary thought?