Greg Saxton

The Avengers - Review

Jesus fucking Christ, it’s insanely good.

I could actually leave it at that. Coming out of the cinema this afternoon with my jaw on the floor and my pants thoroughly wet, I was tingling more than a little bit from the sheer excitement of what I’d just seen.

We all know these characters now. We know where they’ve come from and we know why they’re here. And that’s fantastic, because it means that we can get right to it. The Avengers is a strange one, because it is simultaneously the first episode in a series of films and also the sequel/culmination to five others. Which, again, is great. Because the characters can share at least some of the audience’s knowledge; they’ve heard about each other, they’ve watched each other on the news, and now they’re getting to see each other all in the same room. Just like we are.

One of the rules of thumb of comic book heroes is that, when they first meet, they have to fight. And whilst we want to see them teaming up and kicking the shit out of some bad guys, we’re just as eager to see them kicking the shit out of each other. I mean, who wouldn’t love to see Batman and Superman go head-to-head on the big screen? It’s just good fun. And we get good fun in droves. Thor fights Iron Man, then Captain America gets involved, then Hulk attacks Black Widow, then Black Widow cripples Hawkeye, then Hulk twats Thor. Excellent!

So! We’ve got the egotistical, narcissistic Tony Stark, the brave and noble Captain America, the straight-talking Thor and the humble, kind of sweet Bruce Banner. And, really, we should chalk The Avengers up as a win just for not falling apart at the seams. Here we have four characters that, between them, have carried five solo films. And, inevitably, some of them get a little more screen time than others. But on the whole, Joss Whedon does a thoroughly admirable job of keeping it all together when it could quite easily collapse under its own superweight. The script is paced beautifully and there is never a slow moment. There is always something going on to keep you in. Honestly, I did not take my eyes of that screen. I didn’t even do my usual thing of lowering my 3D glasses to see the difference (four years of 3D cinema and I still do it). Although we get a lot of laughs from Tony Stark constantly ripping into Captain America (even when they’re helping each other out), for me it was the relationship between Stark and Bruce Banner that I found the most intriguing. They bond over their shared passion for, and understanding of, advanced science, which the other heroes struggle to follow. They quickly establish a mutual respect, and Banner doesn’t even mind when Tony occasionally prods him with a sharp stick to try and get him angry. But a genuinely beautiful moment occurs when Iron Man, battered and paralysed, comes plummeting down through the atmosphere. For a moment we all forget that a third Iron Man has been commissioned, and we are on the edge of our seats praying for a miracle. And suddenly the Hulk springs into shot, grabs Iron Man in the air and cradles him in the crook of his arm as the green giant crashes into buildings and smashes into the ground. And trust me, even the Hulk must have felt that landing.

As for the 3D, well, if you’re seeing it in 2D then you’re not really missing much. But it did look quite nice. The only real complaint I have is more a question. And this is it: when will directors learn that a shaky camera and 3D do not mix? There were certainly fewer sicky scenes than in previous movies (I’m talking about you, Clash Of The Titans) but there were still those moments where everything went handheld and the world blurred like a nightclub after your fourteenth jagerbomb. I know that it was shot in 2D and rendered in post-production, but I just think that, with live action at least, we’re not quite there yet.

My adrenaline was pumping throughout this movie. I’m not a Marvel fan. In fact, I’m not a comic book fan in general. The only ones I’ve read have been The Dark Knight Returns and the Knightfall series, both of which are termed ‘graphic novels’ (to make them sound less childish). But I was grinning from start to finish. The dialogue was sharp, the action was on fire and not a second of screen time was wasted. Despite (or maybe because of) the hype that’s surrounded this release, I went into the cinema expecting to be (even a little) disappointed. But I wasn’t. I just wasn’t. Forty-nine years after they first appeared in comic books, The Avengers have made it to the silver screen. And what an entrance! What an entrance.

The Dark Knight Rises had better be something pretty special.

A couple of short, non-rhyming things

Coffee Shop

How much would it cost to go and sit together with the greats? To trade language over absinthe and a bottle of wine to share?
Or maybe a Puerto Rican bar would be more appropriate, sweating out my British temperament with a glass of rum and lime for taste, local beer to make it last.
Nowhere in Europe does night time quite like Rome, or maybe Paris or Naxos or Manchester, with a 3am stroll along the canal, wondering where it all went wrong but kind of glad it did.
Are we the last of the old romantics, sitting in coffee bars café bars listening to sad sweet music and writing down thoughts?
The plate is clean of crumbs and the froth of my drink crusts to the bottom of my cup but it’s raining outside.

Small Town Blues

I spent six months inside staring out the window at the rain listening to Bron-Yr-Aur. But now the summer’s coming and it’s light again and it doesn’t rain as much I force myself out of my flat and when I get outside I realise there’s nowhere else to go and the small town blues hit me so I end up wandering the town centre’s main street (there’s only one!)
The train to the big cities doesn’t leave for months but when it does then I can get lost and drink in underground bars and jazz clubs instead of exploring housing estates and old overgrown railway lines beneath bridges because that’s all we’ve got to go on.
Straining to see over the hills.
Holy memories are now unholy realities and the air smells of bonfire smoke.

‘Drive’ - Oh hell yeah!

I’m not a reviewer. I’m CERTAINLY not a critic. I can barely even call myself a blogger because, well, I’ve usually got better outlets for thoughts and feelings and all the other arty shit that I like. But I have just seen Drive. And, at the risk of sounding like a teenage girl… oh my god!

If you could take the essence of great sex and inject it into the veins of a movie, you would get Drive. From its Cocktail-esque pink opening credits and 80s-inspired synthpop soundtrack (look up College feat. Electric Youth’s A Real Hero on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean) to Ryan Gosling grinding his Mustang engine through the shimmering nights and dusty days of 21st Century LA, the entire film oozes (a very American) cool. And I don’t mean that parenthesised interjection to be disparaging. It works. My god, it works!

I’m not going to go through the whole movie because that would trivialise the whole thing and would be a massive waste of everybody’s time. I am, however, going to comment on Ryan Gosling’s character The Driver. The fact that he is even called ‘The Driver’ in the credits emphasises the point: this guy is a total enigma. Although we spend almost 98 minutes with The Driver (he’s in virtually every scene) we don’t get to know anything about his past except for a snippet of information leaked by his boss. But here we are simply told that he turned up at the garage one day, five or six years ago, and asked for a job. And he’s been there ever since. Sure, he works part time as a stunt driver in movies and moonlights as a getaway driver for low-level thugs, but that’s just the vehicle (no pun). We know nothing about him! I also need to get my hands on a copy of the screenplay, because, if you were to write up all his spoken lines into one continuous paragraph, I bet you’d have no more than an A4 page. And that’s the pull of his character. We’re intrigued, we’re curious; we want to know why he’s here and why he’s doing this. Has he just escaped from something? Is he trying to get somewhere? Is he in some sort of spiritual limbo? Did he just fall from the sky?

These days, I struggle to watch a film simply for the pleasure of it. Years ago, when I first started acting, live theatre was ruined for me. I couldn’t see a production; I could see a lighting cue or an actor adding elements of a costume backstage or a character’s through line of action. And now I see a movie as a screenplay, a script on paper as opposed to a packaged product. When you work in that industry you can’t help it. It’s your job to see it that way. So, for me, Gosling’s character became an annoyance. I couldn’t figure out his motivation, I didn’t truly know why he was doing what he was doing. Until the end. And this is where I have to give a

**!!SPOILER ALERT!!**

As he drives away the music fades in. It is A Real Hero (seriously, YouTube it. It’s gorgeous). And everything started to click. You have proved to be, a real human being, and a real hero. I’m not sure if it was just me having what alcoholics call a ‘moment of clarity’, but he started to make sense. I began to imagine that he’d done this exact thing a thousand times before and would probably do it a thousand times again. There’s a sense of renata (I’m not trying to be pompous using a Latin phrase [maybe a little], it’s just a cryptic plug for a movie I’m writing, released next year) about him. For me, he was in some sort of spiritual limbo. This was what he did. I don’t want to get completely Batman or anything, but he suddenly appeared to me as some sort of vigilant guardian. Irene (Cary Mulligan) needed him and that’s why he was there. Once it was over he left. He couldn’t have her, even though he wanted her, because she didn’t need him any more. And that put a beautiful spin on a story that was already whirling like a drunken haze.

Of course, I will always contend that absolutely nothing in life has any inherent meaning other than what you give it. This was my interpretation, my individual eureka moment. The other people in the cinema may have had their own, utterly different impressions. Actually I hope they did. But whatever modus operandi you give this guy, Drive is an awesome movie, an appalling (but not unexpected) Oscar snub and will certainly be finding its way into my DVD collection very soon. Because I can’t afford Blu-Ray.

Stream of Consciousness

Had a stream of consciousness earlier. Here it is. Read it fast.

“Hark!” said the butcher’s boy carrying his sausages into the cobbled streets on the floor where the blood mixed with the excrement it dropped down into the sewer. Oh no! There’s the Penguin he’s making plans against the Batman flying in the air up against the moon, moon light shining down upon the earth like a search light on a prison deck. Deck chair on a boat in the Mediterranean is it the Battle of Actium or is it just a Saga cruise? Cannonballs cannonballs cannonballs in Roman times or was it just arrows? Robin Hood Men in Tights or the one with that guy that no-one likes, Alan Rikman played the bad guy he’s got lightning coming out of his nose! It struck a tree in autumn time that already had buds on that’s strange I hope the frost doesn’t get them or there’ll be nothing left for the bees. Bees bees bee’s knees charmed to meet you I’m so sure I tip my top hat but then my cane fell on the floor what ho! On theatre night it’s such a delight to get a box seat so we can look around. Sod the play I care about society! My little binoculars say “Be quite now the mayor’s about to speak, it’s Christmas Day!”

The Unobtainable

(As ever, written for performance)

The Unobtainable! Is always so appealing,
And I don’t understand this feeling
That rushes to the head every time you rear yours.
Now I don’t want to get bogged down in metaphor
And stagnant thoughts,
But it’s like a thunderbolt or a tidal wave
Or many thousand sirens in the gloom.

And the purpose of your magnet glances
And cryptic comments and stolen chances
Are a mystery to me!
Why can’t you leave me be?
I’ll go crazy of my own accord,
I don’t need your support!
It’s happened before,
And back then there was nothing to fall for.

And The Unobtainable is always there.

A Thought On Writing

Thursday 24th November 2011 – 00:43

Tonight I went to see The Rum Diary. It was an excellent film, thoroughly enjoyable. But that’s not the point of this writing. I’m not here to critique.
There was a section in the film where he (Paul Kemp) is talking about not being able to find his voice. He says he doesn’t know how to write as him. And this was rather a poignant moment. Not only because, with hindsight, we know how he developed his Gonzo style and that he did, indeed, discover how to write as himself. But also because I think it must ring true for a lot of writers. It’s a question (worry) I approached when I was writing How I Went Insane and it’s something I still haven’t resolved two years later. In my insecure moments (which is most of the time) I often wonder whether I’ve yet managed to find a distinctive style or whether what I’m doing is just the end result of throwing a load of influences into a melting pot and stirring for a while until I’ve got something that looks new like limestone but if you look closely you can see the compounded fossils and rocks that constitute the whole. And I know that’s sort of defining postmodernism in a roundabout way, but postmodernism has become a terrible get-out and needs to die so I’d rather not settle with that. Perhaps a new stimulus is needed? I know I can’t write whilst drunk, I’ve tried it before and I end up either scrawling over the page, missing the keys, or passing out. So alcohol is out the question, at least for creative purposes. All it does is get me into trouble. Perhaps some new drug? Something to distort the mind for a while, get it going again. Or maybe a new experience, a culture shock, something like that. We can’t write in isolation, I don’t care what anybody claims. To create we have to be exposed so we can feed off ideas, extremes and vibrancy and vice and passion and emotion, we have to see what insane heights Man get attain and to what lows he is willing or, on occasion, unwilling to go. If we don’t witness these things, if we don’t immerse ourselves in them, let them fill us until we choke and then hurl them onto the page in a fit of urgent furious frenzy, shouting out the window, spitting at the Bastards, then we will wallow in a thick swamp of slothful romantic comedies and Ben Stiller movies and lacklustre poetry and theatre that was original in the 1980s until we drown, too fat to fight back like the last leaders of Rome, fleeing as fast as their swollen ankles would carry them from the tribal hordes that so rightfully cut them down.

…

I’ll post when I’ve got something to say. Right now there’s stuff going on, but it’s either of no worth (most of it) or I haven’t copyrighted it yet (some of it). Sorry legions of fans.

Although I will say that today I bought a onesie. It’s black with white bones on the front to make you look like a skeleton. And it’s for Hallowe’en on Monday. But it’s comfy and warm so I reckon I’ll keep wearing it through the winter. Onesie. Fuck yeah.

Cut-Up 2

Texts used:
Various speeches by Margaret Thatcher between1979-1991
Some stuff that just spills out

The Minister for Airey and Interruption sat down with Her Majesty of Britain, his proposed responsibilities unceasingly repeated by the citizens but always in error, their belief in discord in particular brought new words into their vocabulary. Words such as “chibba” which was exclaimed by the undersexed male population whenever they came across an attractive girl. “Chibba! Chibba! Chibba!” The citizens were constantly having sex with each other, but the men’s libidos often ran out of control, a direct result, claimed Dr Assisi (descendent of Francis), of the constant dumping of unwanted agricultural surplus stocks from Germany. The German Chancellor, a sweating man with rubber skin, denied this, calling to the good will of mutual visions and understanding because without the disadvantages that must be incurred by the lower echelons of society, there could be no survival of the established ideals of his partners and benefactors. Upon hearing this, the citizens in the square below took off their clothes and welcomed what sexual successes they could achieve on such an occasion. Meanwhile, the Minister for Airey and Interruption had left Her Majesty of Britain, declaring her to be “a frigid bitch” after he’d put his hand up her dress and been firmly rebuked. Returning to his entourage, a supermarket queue of boasting Romanians (reluctant to leave the darkness of their Eastern economy) and Alan Walters (strangely dead, a statistic by 2063), he declared his support for Palestine and its Soviet brother Israel to whom so far the world had shown nought but hostility but who he believed, with some negotiation, could seek the favourable establishment of an impenetrable border against the people of the nations of Understanding and Benevolence. With his intentions broadcast the Minister was sucked into the crowd of naked citizens and disappeared so his entourage left.

Experiment in Intentionally Re-Ordered Cut-Up Writing

Texts used:
Essay by N. R. Rockler “Friends, Judaism, and the Holiday Armadillo: Mapping a Rhetoric of Postidentity Politics”
My response to the above
George Washington Inaugural Address 1789
Martin Van Buren Inaugural Address 1837
George W. Bush Inaugural Address 2001

The value of the 1836 Arguments of Pleasure Act was demonstrated by the ignobal figures of the Gentile Representation Committee. Wielding guns and portable analogue television sets their leader declared that they were bad children unworthy of challenge by God and their nation’s abandonment by defences engaged the weakness of the liberal American conscience while resolving with enemies to agree to promise not to love, reward or reform and the history we build will be one of strength, arrogance, compassionate horrors and betrayal carved in the rock of the Carpathians. And such being the impressions of institutional obedience these government reflections charged the human aides first distinguished of themselves into accomplished affairs with entire communities of foreign executives.