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Just to add to that last post that I know prayer is about more than asking for stuff, but at the moment that’s mostly what it is for me. (except maybe the tongues, but as I said that’s a whole other post, and a big one)

Thought I’d get this down whilst it’s still fresh in my mind. A thought I shared with M. last night.

Having written down my Big List of Stuff I Still Believe (which actually isn’t all that big but hey.. big in importance) the obvious next question is “so what? what am I going to do about it?” (M. suggested I look into Quakerism and though it’s one the back burner it’s an idea that appeals)

See one of the things about the List is realising I no longer believe a lot of stuff that I did before. Yet there are some things about that old faith that I miss. Not just the certainty of it and the all-inclusive nature of its explanations. It did somehow seem to provide me with a sense of inner strength to draw on. A lot of the things I find difficult in day-to-day life aren’t that big a deal really. And yet, for one reason or another I am a person who finds himself intimidated by some fairly everyday tasks. In the past I was much better at dealing with this I think. Some of that was having friends to turn to, both to talk to and give practical help. But part of it was that I used to pray about whatever was bothering me.

But since I stopped going to church I also stopped praying. It’s seemed wrong somehow, inconsistent. I was railing against God and telling myself I no longer believed in him. To interrupt that to ask for help cos I was nervous about a dentist’s appointment seemed daft and a bit disrespectful. Now however, I’ve come to a point of writing the List which is also a way of saying that I do still believe stuff even if it isn’t all neatly worked out and isn’t the same as what I had before. So now it’s not so out of the question to pray, except…

Except that I too easily slip into prayer. It was after all a habit I’d had for a vey long time. Like riding a bike etc. Not that that itself is a problem, but it means that when I pray I’m automatically thinking of faith and God the way I used to. Not even thinking, it’s an emotional thing. And yet now I want to pray, but the God I want to pray to is different. So emotionally it’s a bit weird.

But I am doing it anyway.

And speaking in tongues. (that’s a whole other blog post probably)

Remind me that I need to do some reviews at some point. I’ve got at least three I could do – all strangely enough based on comparisons.

They are

– Why Just Like Heaven is better than Ghost

– Zathura – Jumanji in space

– A tale of two Fever Pitches (US v UK)

Just Like Heaven I saw a while back and James King (standing in for Mark Kermode on his podcast) compared it to Ghost but citing Ghost as the better film. Hmm. Not in my book.

Zathura I went to see last night because I wanted to get out of the house for a while and it was the only half-way decent film on that hadn’t already started. And it was decent too. (but more of that in the actual review)

Today on a whim I picked up ‘The Perfect Catch’ on DVD, which is the UK title of the film which in the US was ‘Fever Pitch’. Obviously they couldn’t call it that in the UK when there had already been a film of that name, based on the same book. I watched it post gas-man and it was fun and there’s definitely a paragraph or two to be written in the differences between the two versions.

So that’s my manifesto. If I haven’t written those reviews by the end of the week call me a slacker and a fool.

I spent most of yesterday and a good part of today tidying and cleaning my flat so that I didn’t die of shame when the guy came to do the yearly check on the gas heaters.

Actually, some of it was necessary. He needs to check the outside vent and for the heater in my bedroom that means going into the garden, which means I had to

– clear the ivy from the vent, window and door frame
– clear the kitchen of empty wine bottles and generally clean up (I also washed the floor)

just so that he could actually do the job. Similarly in the lounge I tidied up the various stuff on the floor, hoovered and removed the stacks of old newspapers from the porch. (Incidentally this meant a big win for recycling this weekend)

It wasn’t practical to really clean the bathroom so I just made sure the door was shut. Also, I confess, some of my ‘tidying’ involved merely moving stuff temporarily under the stairs.

Part of what makes my flat look messy is that it’s really too small for me. You could also argue that I keep too much stuff and need to learn to ditch stuff I don’t need, but even so it’s too small.

It’s also untidy because I don’t have people around and sadly I don’t go to this effort for myself. But then again, as I’ve said to M. perhaps I don’t have people around because it’s so untidy. Egg-chicken. Chicken-egg.

Now, for a brief moment, it’s clean enough for the gas-man, which is also clean enough for good friends. It’s not good enough for less-close friends, acquaintances or family members. And of course there’s an even higher standard – it’s nowhere near clean enough for the landlord. It’s really his place at the end of the day, and look how bad I’ve let it get. That scares me actually. What will he say when he sees it?

So because of the way I live, the standards I have and who I chose to let come around, after a significant amount of effort cleaning up, by choosing carefully what’s allowed to be seen and by hiding a lot – I can get to the point where it’s good enough to let a total stranger or a good friend in. But not the landlord.

It’s like this flat is a metaphor for my life.

I’ve been putting off this entry for a while, cos it’s difficult to write, but having changed the name of the blog a while back to reflect where I’m at faith-wise it’s odd not to have written about it at all. So I shall try to write this down. I think it will be helpful for me.

I’ll try my best not to turn it into autobiography but some background would be useful. I was raised in what I’d call a fairly dry evangelical methodist church. I remember making a conscious decision to make the faith my own. Later when I went away to study, I went to various charismatic churches. I ended up at a New Frontiers church in Newcastle where I was for six or seven years. However I became disillusioned and also burnt out and stopped going to church. I stopped praying and no longer considered myself a Christian. However in the back of my mind I think I always thought I’d “go back” eventually.

In many ways the first step towards that was joining Ship of Fools and reading and posting there. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I think I found that my views had changed, were changing. So it was no longer just a question of getting over disappointment and disillusionment but of asking what I (still) believed.

I guess one starting point, certainly a key in why I left the church to begin with, is in not overriding my experience with the ‘absolute truth’ of the bible. And though it wasn’t a feature so much of my Christian background that same principle would now apply equally to Church Tradition. Any external standard that gets to overrule the evidence of my or others experience is suspect to me. So for example, I used to believe that to have gay sex was wrong, but ultimately my only reason for saying so was what it said in the bible. Today I say that it’s no more right or wrong than hetero-sex in that it can be an expression of love or it can be abuse – or any of hundreds of other things. The problem with saying something is wrong purely based on some absolute standard that can’t be questioned is that it short-cuts the learning process. You are unable to learn from your experiences if certain conclusions have to be ruled out (or in) before you start.

What I find is from that one standard a lot of what I used to believe falls away because I can no longer say, I believe this because this is what the bible says (or because it’s what the Church historically has believed). Without such an objective source I’m left without much certainty and when it comes to God and stuff you need revelation. So I thought it might be useful to write down what I still believe.

What I Believe

– I believe that there is something more to life than can be apprehended with our senses.

– I also believe that there is some sort of conscious force for good in the universe which is what I’ll call God. Whether God is the Christian God or not, I don’t know. Whether he’s the creator, all-powerful, all-knowing I don’t know.

– I believe that experiencing some sort of connection with God can be a good thing.

– I also believe that having a higher purpose can be a good thing.

– I’m not sure what I think about Jesus. He was at least a very radical man who shook up the religious establishment of his day. Whether I follow his teachings or see him as God, I’m not so sure.

That’s about all I can think of. Not much is it? Also in light of the last point especially perhaps I should be looking at other faiths but somehow, I can’t quite let go of Christianity because it’s where I came from. It’s where I learned a lot of stuff, had a lot of experiences and still have friends. It’s where I learnt that there is a ‘spiritual world’ for want of a better term. Maybe it’s foolish but for the time being I can’t see myself throwing it in to look at Bhuddism or something.

Let’s see if we can do this more quickly.

Just Friends

I’ve just watched Just Friends which is a rom-com (naturally) about a fat guy who falls for a girl in high school who sees him as just a friend. 10 years later he’s slim (it was that special kind of movie fat that’s easy to lose), successful and cynical. He’s become someone who’s careful never to get stuck in the ‘friend zone’ which means that he basically uses women. He then meets up with his high school flame again…

Since, as we know, good rom-coms are hard to find was there anything more than just optimism in my choice to watch it? Well no. For a start it stars Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart, two actors who are very likeable (individually at least, whether they have chemistry is another matter). I’d liked Reynolds from “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” and Amy Smart from films like Road Trip. Neither of which by the way was high-brow comedy so I had no expectations. Also Just Friends was directed by Roger Kumble who made Cruel Intentions (though to be fair he also made Cruel Intentions 2). So whilst my expectations weren’t up to the skies I did have reason to believe I’d enjoy it.

So what went wrong? (as you can probably tell something did). Well, let’s recap on something that I’ve called ‘The Star Wars Effect’. There’s a theory that Star Wars is responsible for big dumb special-effects-led action movies. It came along, looked like nothing before it and was a huge success. Then, so the theory goes, began a tradition of the blockbuster – focussing as we said on big action, with big flashy visuals and impressive special effects. Now what’s interesting about this is that Star Wars itself is neither as big nor as dumb as those that followed. It also had other qualities – some decent performances (Harrison Ford in particular) and a very strong, if cliched (or mythic?), story – which weren’t necessarily copied by the successors.

Well if there’s any truth in this I want to suggest a similar effect following American Pie. It wasn’t the first gross-out comedy but it was the first film I remember that brought that style of comedy to the teen rom-com. But what it also did was balance that delicately with characters you care about and real heart. So even though you have a guy sticking his dick in a pie you still end up liking the guy and not just laughing at him.

But now it seems like all rom-coms with a vaguely young cast have to have that broad comedy. Just Friends is one such movie. It’s not actually as gross as American Pie, nor is it as warm-hearted. Perhaps because they’re playing to Reynolds’ strengths, which includes a gift for wry cynicism, his character is funny but unlikeable for much of the film. I won’t say there were no laughs at all but there’s was a lot of unfunny slapstick. It left me wishing for a version of this film that would’ve been made before American Pie. With, you know, some of the subtlety left in.

Oh well, at least it was better than Cool Money – 5/10

Recently I signed up to one of those online DVD rental sites. I got the first month free and even after that I pay a fixed amount to get as many DVDs as I can watch and return in a reasonable time (practically speaking that’s probably about 10-15.month max). Nevertheless with a deal like this one tends to feel that the price of any individual DVD is negligible.

Which I mention in an attempt, if it were needed, to excuse my renting of the movie Cool Money. Not that I really need to excuse it because I am a Buffy fan after all and Cool Money stars James Marsters aka Spike and the curiosity value should be enough justification. Maybe it’s that this movie is so embarrassingly bad that I feel I need an excuse.

But anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I did watch it – twice so far – and what follows is my review of same.

Cool Money is a story about a jewel thief named Bobby Comfort who gets out of jail and meets Sammy Nalo, ex-hitman with a murky past, who has an idea for robbing various New York hotels. After some persuasion they team up and the film follows their mixed success in a number of these robberies. It kinda wants to be a low-budget Ocean’s Eleven – Cool Money is a crap title but then I guess Comfort’s Three (there’s a 3rd member of the regular gang) isn’t much better I guess 😉

My first impression of Cool Money is that it’s a low budget movie and it shows. I suspected that it was straight-to-DVD but have since learned it was made-for-TV and presumably only got a DVD release because the die-hard JM fans will probably buy/rent it. After watching it for the first time my feeling was that there was a lack of talent in virtually all areas – in the writing the dialogue is cliched and the story confused and meandering, in the acting the two central performances aside we go from mediocre to downright comical, the direction is lack-lustre, the shots are boring and predictable, the music is either bland or annoying. Yet, having said all that, when watching it a second time I did notice some glimmers – a nice bit of dialogue here, an interesting camera angle there, the occasional piece of music that actually supported the mood of the scene rather than destroy it – but they were glimmers and not enough ultimately to rescue the movie.

As I say the movie’s strongest asset was the two central performances. James, and the other lead John Cassini made a valiant effort with what they have but the script doesn’t give them much to work with. James in particular – who I’ve always thought was a good actor not a great one (he makes up for a lot with his considerable charisma) – creates a character that you care about and root for. Whilst I thought Cassini wasn’t quite as good there was some chemistry between the two and you did believe there was an uneasy friendship underlying the more pragmatic partners in crime relationship. Something I’d have liked to have seen explored more.

I’ve said this movie fails in most areas but if I had to say what the biggest problem is I’d say it was the story-arc or rather noticeable lack of one. If the story was strong I think we’d forgive a lot of the other shortcomings. Basically the story you have is that Comfort teams up with Nalo, pull off a series of robberies and then because they’re almost caught, stop. There’s no real journey that the characters go on. So what you have is one-thing-happening-after-another-and-then-stop rather than beginning, middle and end. Perhaps because of this the film’s 90 minutes really drag.

There are in fact a lot of story threads in there
– Bobby’s relationship with his wife who wants him to go straight but likes what the money brings
– his relationship with Sammy who comes from a tougher, mob, criminal background
– his rivalry with a cousin in the police both for his wife’s affections and in terms of being caught.
– and various other bits that look like they’re going to be significant but are only details of the various robberies.

Perhaps if the central story was more well-defined than these could be interesting sub-plots but as it is they feel like pointless meanderings. Worse than pointless they’re frustrating when you actually become interested in following some new character’s story only to have it cut short because it was only ever, in effect, background colour to the main plot.

It’s kind of a mess. I suspect the reason for this was those fateful words ‘based on a true story’ However I think some one really needed to sit down and figure out what the spine of the story was, picking one of the threads above perhaps, and re-write basing everything around that, being ruthlessly indifferent to factual accuracy. I think I’d reduce the number of both robberies and characters. Less robberies to focus the story more and less characters because in such a low-budget film finding good actors was clearly a challenge even for the major roles. A few less embarrassingly bad performances would have been no bad thing.

As for the story I’d have chosen the element that I think works best, and also plays to the strengths you have (i.e. JM and JC’s acting), which is the relationship between the two main thieves. At the beginning of the movie Comfort doesn’t know Nalo at all. He’s persuaded to work with him but even though it brings success it’s clear that he doesn’t know how much to trust him but he starts to despite himself, and even begins to like him. At the end Nalo’s past threatens to re-surface and there was potential for Comfort discovering just how different he and Nalo are – Nalo’s come from an altogether nastier and harsher world and I think Comfort discovering that that’s who Nalo is once he’s already come to like and respect the guy could have provided some interesting conflict.

As things stand that theme’s in there but it’s a little buried and mixed in with the other stuff.

I couldn’t recommend this to anyone other than a hardcore JM fan or someone who wants to see it for curiosity value. Or perhaps as a study of what not to do in a low-budget movie.

2/10 – mostly for JM’s performance and the glimmers.

I’ve decided to do some writing today.

I’ll be blogging, writing a movie review, contributing to SoF and newsgroups and maybe even working on my short story.

Remember that defining moment thingy? The one about thinking “I could do that!”? Well I had that again today. Today I came across this which is a new book of movie parodies written as very abbreviated summaries like this.

My reactions were mixed. Firstly I simply enjoyed the humour. Secondly I thought “good on her”. Thirdly, I admit, there was a twinge of jealousy – based on the feeling of “I could do that!”

And I’m not just saying that. I did do that. On a much smaller scale perhaps, but a very similar thing. When I first became a fan (as opposed to merely a regular watcher) of Buffy but before I (re-)discovered usenet I used to go to the BBC Cult website message-boards (they don’t exist in the same form now but the site is here). By the time the BBC were half-way through season 4 someone, a new viewer, asked about what they’d missed. So I gave a summary of 3 1/2 seasons of the show. Oh, but did I mention that the old message-boards had a limit of 100 words?

Still don’t believe me? Here’s a mini-mini version of the same kind of thing.

Of course that’s very short and Ms Cleolinda does a full movie script each time. But it seems to me that it’s not that hard (actually I think there’s something inherently funny about over-compressing that gives you a headstart) and so, as usual, I think the big difference between us, between someone who’s made a success of something I’ve done as a passing fancy and myself, is that she’s worked harder at it.

Funny that eh?

Conversation with M. this weekend:

Me: you’ll go to hell because of me.
M.: I don’t believe in hell
Me: ok, well you’ll spend longer in purgatory then
M.: I don’t believe in purgatory either
Me: Ok, erm, so what do you believe in that’s bad?
M.: (thoughtful pause) you!

I can live with that! 😀