Meet The Spartans - The Worst Film Ever Made?

I'm going to cut to the chase. Meet The Spartans is 78 minutes of complete and total, unmitigated shit. Quite how the writers (dreaded spoof-movie 'gurus' Friedberg and Seltzer) manage to achieve such levels of buttock-twinging awfulness is a mystery. If you want to experience the film without forking out the price of a cinema ticket, simply ask a friend to say "isn't 300 really gay" and "boobs" over and over again. Trust me, you'll save yourself much time, effort and cash. In fact, what am I saying? If you really want to replicate the experience of watching this film, ask your friend to hit your nut-sack with a tennis racket for 2 hours continuously - the only difference is that this experience would be slightly funnier.

I'm all in favour of spoofs and love a good boob-joke as much as the next man, but here there is nothing to induce even the faintest of wry smiles. Compared to the likes of Hotshots, Airplane! or Shaun of the Dead, classic spoofs all of them, this looks like a student film shot by a group of drunks who've all had humour labotomies. Sean Maguire (clearly cast due to his impressive back-catalogue of Grange Hill, Eastenders and Holby City) gives the worst comedic performance I've ever witnessed on celluloid, whilst Carmen Electra looks and acts every inch the desperate, leather-faced old slag that she is. Pop-culture references are shoe-horned in at every opportunity, and none of them hit the mark (or even come close for that matter).

If you do for some reason decide to inflict this film upon yourself, you'll leave the cinema in a state of quiet shock (I was glued to my seat by sheer exasperation until the final credit had rolled). And, oddly enough, you might well come to the conclusion that this film actually says more about the state of American culture than any Oscar-winner ever will.

Anthony Minghella - A Huge Loss To The World Of Entertainment

The news of Anthony Minghella's death came as a huge shock yesterday. He was a magnificent film director, whose hit-rate was almost unrivalled by his British contemporaries. Amongst these contemporaries, perhaps only Richard Curtis and Ridley Scott can lay claim to having as big an influence on the industry as Minghella did.

Considering his credits as a writer/director only stretch to 5 films, he had a remarkable career which spanned mediums, genres and collaborators. His breakthrough film Truly, Madly, Deeply displayed a rare understanding of the human psyche (particularly the female psyche), and his follow-up The English Patient needs no introduction. I studied this great adaptation at University, and considering the complexity of the source material it's a testament to his genius that Minghella was able to construct such a lucid narrative. Apparently his methodology involved reading the book several times through, putting it on a shelf and retreating into isolation to work up the screenplay from memory. This approach, to me, was ground-breaking, and proved that in order for an adaptation to be successful it must have a sense of detachment from it's source.

I never met Minghella but I did attend a seminar given by his brother Dominic quite recently. Dominic, like his brother, was warm, intelligent, funny and generous, and I hope we will see more of his work in the future. But either way, the hole left by his more famous sibling is huge, and his death is a loss to us all.

Review: 'Nothing to be Frightened Of' by Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes has long been a novelist preoccupied with death. Every one of his previous books has, I think, contained at least one section featuring ruminations on the inevitable dénouement to life, but never before has he devoted a whole book to the subject.

Nothing to be Frightened of is a book that will appeal mainly to long term Barnes fans. It is a return to the smorgasbord style – part essay, part epistolary debate, part philosophical disquisition, part literary homage that hallmarked his great 1984 novel Flaubert’s Parrot, and was reprised in his 1989 meditation on history, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. This book is hard to summarize, but the blurb writer has an impressive stab in one sentence: ‘among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard.’ That just about does it. It is something of a departure from Barnes’s previous novels and essays, a comedown from the lofty heights of intellectual detachment, as he gives the reader an insight into episodes from his own life, particularly his relations with his family, people he has written of very little in the past.

Not that we should read this as his autobiography mind. A scrupulous guarder of his privacy, Barnes is unlikely to rip the lid off and spill everything in a messy reveal all in one go. Rather, he reaches into the pot to reach out carefully chosen morsels, starting with an account of his maternal grandparents who were an arch conservative and communist respectively. He recalls how his grandfather used to let the young Julian and his brother watch while he wrang chicken’s necks in the garage. Here, the Barnes brothers’ memories diverge over the exact nature of the execution (was there a guillotine mechanism? Was there a bucket to catch the heads?), and a tense dualism between them is set for much of the book.

Barnes, the younger of the brothers, gives us the impression that he is an intuitive, novelist thinker who is interested in things such as whether human life has a narrative, what happens after our death (he contemplates a huge array of options), how to get value out of a life in an age where Darwin and Dawkins have pretty much done for the idea of God – his chosen path, is a devout appreciation, the religion of art as Flaubert called it, even to the extent where he downplays his blood relations and instead considers his genetic lineage as a line of great artists including Renard (a death haunted artist who features prominently in the book), Flaubert, and Stravinsky.

Perhaps this worship of art is a result of his tricky family relations. His older brother, Jonathan, is a remote, fiercely rational Aristotelian philosopher. He features at points throughout the book, hoisted in at carefully chosen moments to illustrate a cold, philosophical angle on life. In an early exchange Barnes recounts a discussion in the car on the way home from their mother’s funeral that turned into a stern grammatical debate on the music that should have been played at the service, and whether this construed an inadmissible ‘hypothetical want of the dead’. Some readers may find this medical gloved dissection of the event appealing in its precision, many more may find the reaction of the Barnes brothers, with their mother’s corpse not yet cold, rather sub zero on the emotional scale.

Barnes's pere and mere were a difficult couple too. His father was a quiet, reserved French teacher, frequently overruled by his domineering wife who was frequently damning of her sons’ literary talents ‘one son writes books I can read but can’t understand, the other writes books I can understand but can’t read’. Parts of the book focus on their respective declines and deaths, Barnes painfully watching as his father suffers a series of strokes, his mother reacting with stern admonishing towards his aphasia.

The deaths of his parents are the way into this book, the gate at the entrance, but most of the short sections feature great artists and their reactions to the inevitable. Philip Larkin, author of the great death angst poem Aubade, we learn would have died gibbering with fear in a Hull hospital were he not heavily sedated. Flaubert maintained stoical impassivity in the face of the void. Renard himself aimed to die a stylish, French death and eventually succumbed to standard emphysema. Barnes himself fears death constantly, waking up in the night pounding his pillow screaming NO, NO, NO at the injustice of it all. He says he expects his departure to be preceded by extreme pain, coupled with extreme frustration at the euphemistic, imprecise language used by those about him. A grammarian to the end.

Coupled with fear of death is fear of God, or rather, wistful unhappiness at the absence of God. ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss him,’ is the first sentence of the book. His brother finds this soppy, but Barnes can’t give up so easily. As with his 1986 novel Staring at the Sun he asks a number of questions concerning God - on Pascal’s wager: ‘What if it turns out that God exists but disapprovesof gambling’. He ponders the hypothetical fury of the resurrected atheist and posits a would you rather question (one of many in the book – would you rather be an atheist philosopher who finds a wonderful surprise after your death, or be right after all.

The scale of the philosophising in this book stretches from the solipsistic to the very large. In the worst passages of the book, Barnes engages in self indulgent games, wondering what the last ever reader of his books will be like, or how it would work if he were to die in the middle of writing the book, or a sentence, or a wo (not one of the high points of his normally erudite style). But he can also stretch his mind to contemplate the bigger picture. Towards the end he considers Martin Rees’s warning to us that humans are nothing in the scheme of things. By the sun’s demise, in 6bn years time, any creatures left will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Yes, as John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run, we’re all dead. So enjoy this witty and contemplative death volume while you can, and try not to worry about it too much.

By Fred Bosanquet

A 'Bonding' Experience At Club Pedestal

Andy Warhol tried to create a whole coterie of superstars, glamorous creations of stick-on eyelashes and sequins whispering like ghosts in the perfumed squalor of some downtown lower east side warehouse, grooving to choppy tunes like seasick sailors. Now I don't know for a fact what that whole scene was like, but I've glided on the third rail of deranged weekends enough in my life to be able to make an educated guess. Kind of reminds me of Club Pedestal, albeit in a more controlled way, like sexual deviancy for the beginner.

In the hipster hotbed of Old Street stands that staunch nineteen eighties reject the Aquarium. This venue has seen the demolition ball standing idly by for some time, always finding a reprieve and new hope so in those terms holding a marginal bdsm event within its Thatcherite hold feels quite right, it gives it that whole magisterial last ever night on earth feel. Club Pedestal is held once every three months, and is a gathering point for patrons of this lifestyle but in a safe consensual way. Only be warned, it's not to everybody's tastes. I have to admit I spent the first hour and a half openly bad mouthing hordes of leather clad men, writhing around on the floor and kissing the statuesque high heels of their mistresses, their faces simply frozen in ecstasy at the degradation - different strokes (pun intended) for different folks.

Now I'm all for equality between the sexes, hell if I was a chick I would have burned my bra long ago, grew my armpit-hair and displayed my Amelia Earhart tattoo with pride as I slipped a chubby arm over my slim girlfriend (because I would be a lesbian off course). And I am an ardent admirer of the female form, particularly ones poured into tight pvc like a second skin (which there were obviously lots off at the club), but seeing them parade guys on leashes like pets and then using their mouths as ashtrays was a tad unusual for a working class kid from south London. It resembled a scene from Dante's seventh circle of hell but in reverse, as scores of people were writhing around on the floor flapping like dying fish but moaning in pleasure, literally a carpet of flesh. I would heartily recommend this place for our female readers though, how empowering it must be to have guys flocking at your feet begging you to allow them the honour of licking the dirt from the soles of your shoes - the ultimate girls night out I would say. And for the fellas, well all I can say was the women were as intoxicating as sin, floating on worshipful gazes and on the butterfly flap of sexual energy.

The parade thickened around 11pm and the club started groaning from the almost lopsided frenzy of its patrons, as the heat fell from the DJ like hot butter (nice mixture of tunes, everything from industial dance to goth) and the jerky epileptic lights started seeping beyond optics to the very cortexes of everybody grazing in pastures of lust around the club, I found myself digging the entertainment. I mean you may go into this thinking of it as an exclusive scene, closed off and mistrustful of strangers, like a redneck with a shotgun on his porch, but the openly friendly manner of everybody took me unawares. Sure I did get accused of showing one particular "mistress" disrespect, but I'm not involved in this scene, and as such obviously find it hard to know their rules. But as an (almost) passive observer I enjoyed myself (drinks are a little expensive though).

I'm not here to knock anybody's lifestyle, perhaps my own eyes were opened by the manner of more marginal lifestyles juxtaposed within the reams of reality, a point glaringly illustrated to me when, deep in conversation with a serving Afghan squaddie, while being told about the claustrophobic realities of war, he suddenly stopped, looked at his watch then proceeded to turn white as a ghost. "Oh no" he said "I'm late for my mistress, and she needs her foot stool!" With that this war hero ran off to crouch at the feet of his mistress for the next hour.

By Charles Malakos

For more info on Club Pedestal, visit www.clubpedestal.com

Two Harry Potter Films For The Price Of One

News that the final Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) will be split into two films should come as no surprise. The 'official' reason given is that the book (over 600 pages in length) is simply too long to pack into a single film. Daniel Radcliffe rather bafflingly suggests that the number of sub-plots in previous books made them easier to adapt into single narratives. "The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots" he recently told the Los Angeles Times, "it's one driving, pounding story from the word go."

Now, are we really supposed to swallow this line that it's merely their passionate affiliation to the story that has 'forced' Warner Bros. to make two films where there could've been one? Is it not clear that this is simply a way of milking a few final millions out of this most generous of cash-cows? The BBC, diplomatic as ever, provides this as a gentle afterthought, suggesting the boost in profits will be an "added benefit" of the two-film strategy. This feels a bit like the film world equivalent of the Iraq war - sold to the public as a noble crusade but in fact this is nothing more that a quest for box-office oil.

Ok, so that might be putting it a little strongly, but I hope you see my point.

What On Earth Was McGregor Thinking??

Review: Eagle vs Shark

You can see this film in one of two ways; either it's a shameless rip-off of Napoleon Dynamite, or the most originial New Zealand comedy ever made (granted, it's probably the only New Zealand comedy ever made). Personally, I think it would be harsh to accuse this film of overt plagarism - after all, it was most likely conceived of before nerd-god Dynamite was released onto the public conscience. So, leaving that issue aside, what you're left with is a charming, slow-burn off-beat rom-com with stacks of great moments strung together with a weak, if functional plotline.

As the lovers-to-be, Loren Horsley as Lily and Jemaine Clement (of Flight of the Conchords fame) as Jarrod both do a great job. Their physicality is excellent, meaning that often it's the moments of silent comedy which pack a greater punch than the scripted gags. The chemistry between the two may be slightly questionable, but by the end you've been convinced that, however bizarre Lily's obsession with Jarrod may be, at least it appears, by her own cookie standards, genuine. Rom-coms usually always take advantage of the rule whereby from the moment the lovers first set eyes on each other, the audience must just blindly assume that they are meant to be, however implausible it may seem to the rational mind. Eagle vs Shark certainly takes this to the extreme, as from the very first scene Lily appears to have an almost pyschotic obsession with the largely awkward and unlikeable Jarrod.

But still, in a film where almost every character appears to be autistic (and I don't say this with any spurious intent), this kind of structural analysis is perhaps futile.

Mannix Street Preachers

The Albany, Deptford, London, 25th January 2008

I find myself in an uncaring corner of South London musing over poetry. I'm pretty conflicted with this as a form, I mean how art thou art blah blah blah, dead art form right? Sure, sceptics all around internet land are screaming into their herbal teas "yeah but what about Byron, the first rock star, or Wilfred Owen and his harrowing war stories?" Yeah, yeah, i heard it all before, and flouncing around with baggy shirt sleeves shagging your sister (deranged rock 'n roller I'll admit) or getting your head blown off by the "hun", tragic as it is doesn't make it an artform. I've read Byron, and let's face it he was no Thom Yorke, he didn't twiddle frequencies of overnourished angst within me, or find a pressure valve of release causing me to float backstroke on swampy warm seas of treacle (must have been stoned or drunk when I first heard kid a).

Anyway, Deptford, cold Wednesday night. I'm stood in a spit and sawdust boozer, minus the spit and sawdust. At least the chalky smoky atmosphere is still intact, particularly as I see most of the patrons are eschewing the smoking ban and exhaling happily to the yellowed ceiling. I'm here with an artist friend of mine who is literally coming in his pants as he recounts all the names on the bill - I forget them as soon as I hear them. A pofaced wizard Gandalph wannabe is flouncing around spreading good luck spells and cough germs far into the sweaty pub, he sees me spill my drink and rattles around me offering good karma incantations. I kindly explain to him that I'm making a collection of bad karma and am looking for one final big score. Fortunately before he can speak again we are motioned to our seats by a huge blast of atonal jazz.

The first spoken word act on is my old friend Gandalf, whispering away in a sexless Welsh accent some poem about the drudgery of the workplace. My god this guy is killing me, it reminds me of the time as an overeager 19 year old I found myself joining the socialist workers party. This reject from Arthur Scargill's ball busters conscripted me, painting a picture of fighting and looting, continually smashing his knuckles into his hand for extra emphasis. Yes, thought I, a chance to shine a light into this monochrone world, disrupt the status quo. I didn't know what they were fighting for, but it sure would piss people off. So I went to this first meeting full of bile and piss and redenned forehead, only to be greeted by the sight of this army of fabled change, which consisted of a middle aged woman with the most rotten teeth I have ever beheld (which she insisted on constantly flashing to me), a short-sighted university dropout who believed in female dominance and enjoyed a fine line of cardigans which were apparently knitted with no anatomical knowledge whatsoever by Mrs rotten teeth, Mr smash fist in hand and myself, a 19 year old kid who really only ever wanted to get laid and steal your car.

This Gandalf guy was making me have the same feelings. Nevertheless, dear reader, for you I stayed, rummaging through seaside postcard sauciness, poems about cats and vet bills, the goalkeeper Pat Jennings (cool guy, cool poem) and perhaps the coup de grace, some guy wearing an alien face mask while intoning haikus.

Intermission came and went, as I found myself pissing out the scotch and pear cider chasers I'd found myself dabbling in. Now even I had heard of John Clarke, probably London's central mover and groover within this scene, hell I'm surprised they haven't printed up 'I'm with John Clarke' t-shirts yet, that's how central the guy is. Anyway he took the stage, shaking his long hair, wizened and frozen white with age, but his words spat out like mini dervishes, cascading through the talentless and barren room like a machine gun in the hands of a fire and brimstone piss artist his poems cut in shards. But like a fine bottle of whiskey, it ended too soon, and the man took a bow, walked off the stage, and seemed frail and spent. Later, drinking together, I asked him if this was a dead art form? "Nah" he answered, "words outlive us all. I mean after all, they outlived Byron."

By Charles Malakos

Review: Juno

If you can imagine a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine, then you've got Juno. Written by rising star Diablo Cody and directed by Thankyou For Smoking's Jason Reitman, this is the kind of pseudo-indie comedy which has become very popular in Hollywood recently. The brilliance of films such as this and Sideways, the film which arguably started the trend, is that the central character is so well constructed and sympathetic that by the end of the film the entire audience wants to grab them out of the screen and take them home.

This is certainly the case with the titular Juno Macguff, played with relentless charm by Ellen Page. She's a teenager in a 'condition' which has now become familiar for the under-twenties - she's pregnant. But, refreshingly, the film does not condemn her. Instead, it places us firmly by her side throughout the entire process, showing us how much more mature she is than her fellow jocks and cheerleaders, and how such an event can actually bring people closer rather than driving them apart. In a typical narrative Juno would be thrown out the house, have to give birth to the child in difficult conditions but then find that the love she has for her newborn galvanises her to start a new life elsewhere. Not here. I won't give any plot-spoilers but suffice to say most of your expectations are likely to be wrong-footed.

Special mention must go to the supporting cast, particularly Michael Cera and Allison Janney who turn in superb performances. Cera plays Paulie Bleeker, Juno's ever-understanding teenage friend and father of her child. His support never wavers, and serves to highlight the fact that age is no guarantee of maturity (Mark, the 30-something adoptive Dad-to-be is a child by comparison). And as Juno's stepmother Bren, Janney manages to subvert the step-stereotype and show us that this family, however dysfunctional society may label it from the outside, actually has more love at it's core than any of those deemed 'functional'.

In our recent EntsNews survey, asking which film deserved to win best film at the Oscars, Juno came top by a country mile, winning 42% of the vote. Although personally I still think There Will Be Blood was the more deserving winner, it's certainly easy to see why this film has cast such a spell over those who have experienced it.

Budding Short Story Writers Read This!

I've just been glancing my eye over a website called 'Transmission', which publishes a tri-annual magazine primarily stocked with short stories. Whilst not a paying publication, if you're keen to get your stories in print a magazine like this can provide the ideal way to do it. The current theme is Europe, and having just returned from a trip to Bulgaria myself I'm tempted to have a shot! So get writing and good luck.

Click here to visit the Transmission website.

Review: How To Lose Friends And Alienate People/ The Sound Of No Hands Clapping

I've always been a fan of 'loser-lit'. Call it schadenfreude, but from Mr Pooter to Adrian Mole, reading about the inadequacies of others makes me feel all warm inside. So with this in mind, Toby Young's books about his failure to make it as both a glossy magazine editor (in How To Lose Friends) and a Hollywood scriptwriter (in The Sound Of No Hands Clapping) represent something of a holy grail.

In HTLFAAP (as it shall henceforth be known), Young recounts his years spent trying to 'hack it' in New York, following an invitation to work at Vanity Fair by it's somewhat naive editor Graydon Carter. Carter clearly sees something of himself in Young (pictured), but what he doesn't count on is the 30-something journalist's combination of naked ambition and interminable self-sabotage. After committing faux-pas such as embarrassing Carter at public events and making the grave mistake of asking Nathan Lane about his sexuality (my favourite anecdote), Young manages to lose his job, his status and his dignity in one fell swoop.

Of course, the irony of HTLFAAP is that Young has now reached the levels of fame and acclaim he so desired when he set out to New York. In The Sound Of No Hands Clapping (TSONHC), he writes about the effect the success of the first novel has on him, and admits that one of the prime motivations for writing it was to prove his capabilities to Graydon Carter. And he certainly manages that. The story, although not always wholly cohesive, is engrossing and as with most 'stick it to the man'-type books it reminds you of the reason you hate the establishment, the media and the world of celebrity. Of course, you knew this already, but reading about it from an insider's perspective gives you a real feeling of 'living with the enemy' that is utterly compulsive. The Graydon Carters of this world are not bad people, they just exist in a framework that seems utterly removed from any kind of ethical normality. It's a world where in order to climb the ladder, you have to be a snake.

For sheer readability, I actually preffered TSONHC (I do hope these acronyms aren't getting too confusing!). It certainly has more laugh-out-loud moments and has an added emotional depth thanks to Young's pitch-perfect description of the trials of fatherhood. He is very much an everyman, and like John O'Farrell managed in The Best A Man Can Get, defines the quandries faced by all 'modern men' without an over-reliance on pyschobabble. As Young is courted by Hollywood, it seems his dreams are within touching distance, but as ever the proverbial banana skin is on hand to ensure he remains 'one of us'. While it's not entirely clear this time round what has caused him to be frozen out, the implication is that as a screenwriter he simply doesn't cut the mustard. As a journalist however, Young is in a league of his own, helped largely by his uncomparable levels of self-awareness.

One small criticism is that his constant repetition of the phrase 'needless to say' makes him sound a bit like Alan Partridge at times - which is surprising considering that in the acknowledgements he actually thanks a friend of his for pointing out the number of times he uses it!

With a film version of How To Lose Friends (starring Simon Pegg) due out later in the year, now is as good a time as any to familarise yourself with these books - if only so you can snootily say "well of course the book was better" as you leave the cinema.

Click here to buy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Click here to buy The Sound of No Hands Clapping