I also learnt that as much as I would prefer not to have any strong feelings about any of the contestants, Bo Bruce does annoy me with her 80′s Dido act. That horrible little rat taily/Princess Di hairdo is a wet dream by a gay man in South Carolina in 1985. Which I just don’t want to be involved in. I’d also prefer not to have any strong feelings about the coaches, but sadly those group numbers they do cause the kind of feelings in my bowels that can only be calmed by Soviet-era Immodium. It’s like none of them have ever been on a stage before. And as for Jessie J – her limelight grabbing and desperate attention seeking is enough to make anyone concede that Freud might have had a point. But yay! I don’t have any strong feelings about Rastamouse (presumably this also applies to the rest of the nation, as the producers don’t actually allow him out in front of the audience.) Holly Titsoot would be bearable if it weren’t for the air of mumsy middle-age that hangs around her, and the uncomfortable way she has of gazing out of the TV apparently fixated on a spot just behind and to the left of my head. I’ve checked, there’s nothing there.

The big problem with The Voice is that it is on at 7pm on a Saturday in May. Whereas the nation is settling down for a cosy night in at the same time in November, in May it has barely got in from the shops, where it has been buying an optimistic barbeque that can also convert into an Ark. Which in my case means not really getting any face time with the TV till The Bridge is on at 9. The Bridge is just like The Voice, except for being a literally and metaphorically dark drama about politics and violence in Sweden and Denmark, in Swedish and Danish, without Sir Tom Jones and with more casual sex.

It’s set in Copenhagen and Malmo. Anyone who has been to Copenhagen (Denmark) with RyanAir will be familiar with Malmo (Sweden) because that is, of course, where you actually fly to. Completely another country.

The casual sex is straight out of a Swedish 70′s commune porno. In fact, along with the prevalence of mutton chop facial adornments, flared trousers, shoulder length hair for men and florid carpets, it’s hard when they say ‘Swedish/Danish co-production’ not to suspect the Swedish contribution was some cunningly edited reels they had left over from 1979.

Much of the casual sex is had by the leading Swedish policeperson, Saga. (The Swedes pronounce this ‘Sorga’, the Danes pronounce it like a company providing cost-effective services to the over 50s.) Saga goes around being blunt with people, taking her clothes off gratuitously, looking hot, having sex with the leading Danish policeperson’s 18 year old son, not being bothered with niceties, wearing leather trousers and being completely focused on the job. This apparently makes her character ‘on the spectrum’; in Daniel Craig’s case it made him Bond.

Unlike some other European detective dramas (I’m looking at you, Wallander, and that Italian bloke) The Bridge, with its head-on entanglement in contemporary Scandi society, does provoke the viewer into wondering how much they’re missing or, conversely, reading into it by not being familiar with, not so much the language (‘Come in’ in Danish appears to be ‘Coom in’) as the context. Anyhow, we’ve all now learnt that the Danish police are really brutal, because not only did they beat someone to death but Saga said it, so it must be true.

If The Bridge has too much sex, violence and darkness for your liking then good news, because its exact antithesis is on Sky Atlantic at the same time. ‘Smash!’, billed rather simplistically as ‘Glee for Grownups’, is the story of putting on a musical about Marilyn Monroe. It stars Debra Messing, who for once has decided to act with her whole body, rather than just her chin and hair. Also in it is Jack ‘Mastercard’ Davenport, sporting a Hugh Grant spikeyhaired sexover and playing a British 40-something Cambridge-educated hotshot director/choreographer called, inexplicably, Derek Wills. Really? Did no-one tell the writers that Spinal Tap wasn’t real? Or was the part originally planned to be a 60-something town councillor from Bakewell?

As fluffily enjoyable as ‘Smash!’ is, the writing is a little too on the nose and to the point for a TV audience used to the navel-gazing vagaries and meaningful jibberish of Dawson’s Creek and The West Wing. There are layers of plot, signposted by someone whose previous job was making the ‘Land Here’ signage for semi-blind astronauts, but there are no visible signs of the layers that go to make up a convincing show universe.

Also, one of the characters is Colin Sweeney, the unconvicted murderer and sexual adventurer on The Good Wife. Which is weird. This week on TGW was vintage and conceivably a turning point as Alicia evilly played off a rival firm against Lockhart Gardner in order to get a pay rise so she could afford to buy back the house she lived in when she was just Mr Big’s wife. Evil Good Alicia! “They all change,” sniffed Lockhart, before popping out in search of some hot Bryan Brown ass.

BB is the latest in a long list of high calibre guests stars, including Eddie Izzard, Matthew Perry and Michael J Fox as Alicia’s courtroom nemesis. But the best guest stars are those that become part of the in joke of the TGW universe, which doesn’t take itself too seriously. One character, Frank Michael Thomas, used to be an actor who played a lawyer on TV and subsequently became an actual lawyer (after a Latin American dictator became confused and appointed him to represent him in an oil rights battle). Thomas is played by Fred Dalton Thompson, who played a States Attorney in Law and Order and subsequently became a senator. Then an actor again. And when the show’s creators were looking for an actor to play the husband of the good wife, the Mr Big whose appetites brought Alicia’s world crashing down, they went to Chris Noth. And no-one got called Derek Wills.

This week its the ‘Smelling What’s Selling’ task, where the aim is to buy as much as possible for £150 from an Essex warehouse, flog it, and reinvest the proceeds. There was some confusion amongst last year’s business brains whether stock carried at the end of the day was an asset or a liability, so Lord Sugartits, evidently resigned to the fact he’s dealing with people with brains the size of ladybirds, spells out that stock is an asset.

Jade is team leader for Phoenix and says “It’s all about solutions, not problems.” Now, if she knows about solutions, then perhaps she could explain what is going on with that van marked “Badger Cleaning Solutions” at the end of my road. Because frankly, that really does sound like more of a problem than a solution.

Nick (no, not that one) heads up Sterling. He anticipates no problems with his team, except potentially Ricky Martin. It’s those hips. As they are in Essex, the team immediately load up on fake tan. It might even be fake fake tan - Piz Boing, or maybe Swiz Buin. Nick Hewer likes their strategy, which by replenishing time has been encapsulated into the almost poetic “more fake tan, as much as you can.”

Jade’s strategy is pile it chaotically and find you’re unable to sell it cheap enough to compete with the real market sellers of Pitsea. Adam the market trader is, unsurprisingly, good at selling on a market stall. Adam’s bio has Virgin Galactic on it! Yes, that’s the company he wishes he’d thought of but somehow instead went into bananas and cauliflower. Apparently he also organises the turning on of the local Christmas lights. Have a look at it on the BBC site. It is the worst bio ever, and will cheer you up no end (unless, of course, you applied for The Apprentice and didn’t get on it and are wondering how you got beaten by an aubergine-flogger whose claim to fame is getting Kandi Rain round to flick a switch.)

Azar’s strategy is to reinforce how Jade has no strategy by asking her to run through the strategy every time he gets her on the phone. It’s not a great strategy, because, if Phoenix lose, he’s first in the board room as far as Jade is concerned.

Chuntering to themselves “more fake tan, as fast as we can,” Ricky the Wrestler and Steve the Contender (whose market pitch is not selling as well as Sterling’s mall group) find themselves stuck in traffic, leaving the selling team without stock for 2 hours.

Meanwhile the Phoenix group in the Romford mall find themselves on a winning streak with toy insects. At £3 a pop the selling team are making a good margin, but, on Azar enquiring what the strategy is, Jade recommends buying everything, specifically “hot water bottles because they look good”. What’s this? Does she have a strategy? Why yes! It’s sell everything for whatever they can get. Inspired!

Back in the boardroom, Sugartits gets all hot under the collar about Steve and Ricky leaving Nick without stock for 2 hours. “Shameful,” he repeats about 10 times, clearly strongly moved. Ideally, Michael Winner would appear now to tell him to “calm down dear”. Phoenix’s assets are valued at £821, of which half is stock. Sterling has nearly a grand, of which over £600 is cash. Freakily, for the second week running the team that should have won, won.

“There’s no venture capitalists here,” sniffs Sugartits. “I gave you a van and you demonstrated you can make a grand. There’s a message to Britain.” Well, yes, and the message is: five people working flat out can make £110 each before costs, overheads and tax. Woohoo. I’m surprised he’s not beating VCs off with a shitty stick.

While Sterling consume cocktails, Sugartits rips Jade a new one over her lack of strategy. She can’t say she wasn’t warned. Naturally, Azar’s head is on the block, but Jade apparently wants to get fired as she can’t think who else to bring in. “They all did so well,” she wails, guaranteeing she’s going to be meeting Dara O’ Briain later tonight. She plumps for Tom, who basically saved her bacon throughout the task numbers-wise. The first thing she does back in the boardroom is say she shouldn’t have brought Tom back in. It’s either the stupidest tactic ever or the most cunning, but she’s basically making it a two horse race for the firing finger between herself and Azar. According to her, she should stay 100%. Which does make me consider the intriguing possibility of her staying, say, 80%, with the other 20% made up of Azar, or maybe just trifle.

As is his wont, Sugartits quotes Jade’s application back at her. Apparently her weakness is making hasty and potentially disastrous decisions, which sounds pretty problematic. However, there’s no accounting for taste (there is, after all, a Lady Sugartits) and suddenly Azar finds the only strategy he has to formulate is whether to get the black cab of shame to drop him at the bus stop or train station.

Gah, I should draw my ideas when I think of them. I wrote this one a while ago but thought I’d save it for when The Avengers came out. Then I saw this comic from Optipess and thought ‘Oh bugger’. Then I thought, ‘But I want to draw the Hulk’, so I decided to post my comic anyway and to tell you that you should go and read Optipess because it’s very funny.

If this one is too small, just click on the image for a larger version.

I think we can all guess, but let’s start with the plot. Gleaming at the centre of an otherwise bleak nation called Panem is the glorious Capitol – a mashup of Georgian London and The Grid in ’Tron’ - where bewigged dandies brandish cutting edge tech and live only to pleasure themselves, their every need met by the surrounding twelve ’Districts’, which are little more than forced labour camps.

Starvation stalks the ragged Districts, and yet the debauched Capitolites demand even more. In retribution for a bloody rebellion many decades ago, each District must offer up two youths to compete in the annual Hunger Games – a terrifying televised fight to the death in a massive glass-domed Arena in which anything can happen at the whim of ‘sponsors’, and where survival is not so much a question of your skills with a sword as how many fans you accrue on the pre-Games chatshow circuit. The condemned sell their stories to stay alive – the better the story, the better their chances. Sound familiar?

Our hero, Katniss Everdeen, comes from District 12. She expertly hunts squirrel & deer in the woods, and dreams of life beyond the District’s electrified fence. Escape is so enticing, but then she knows her family might collapse without her, especially since her dad’s death in a mining accident and her mum’s subsequent disintegration. Katniss has always been the strong one, and so, when her fragile little sister’s name is plucked from the hat for The Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Victory should bring freedom & fame, but everyone knows selection is virtually a death sentence. What chance does she have? What chance do any of them have?

Everything that happens next is so affecting because of Jennifer Lawrence. As Katniss, she carries this movie with such grace and vulnerability that you totally believe in her, almost from the very first shot. Consequently I found even the slightest scenes intensely moving. And it wasn’t predictable. Katniss is the emotional core of this brutal spin on tyranny and yet she is not a rebel; there is no violence in her heart. Only a dignified desperation.  

As a result, though, ‘The Hunger Games’ didn’t deliver the satisfying moral climax I expected. Katniss is set up to defy her masters but then doesn’t, entirely, because by movie’s end she is neither warrior nor politico, but somewhere in between. As a figurehead of a very human nobility long forgotten in the Capitol, she doesn’t yet know how dangerous she is. It will be the sequel’s work to present the social changes wrought by her victory, and so I walked away from the cinema oddly underwhelmed, but quietly satisfied by a mainstream picture that trod its own path and wasn’t afraid to underwhelm. I just hope the sequel equals the excellence of the set-up.

As for its popularity. Quiet rebellion? Now more than ever, isn’t that what we all want?

****

Well, that was a waste of my time. As usual, lookswise, the contestants range from “buy me a drink and then we will never speak of this again” to “actually, now I think about it, there’s something quite appealing about Sugartits’ tiny squinty eyes.” So, once again, the viewing audience is left to get what jollies they can from Countdown Crumpet Nick Hewer.

This week’s task is to buy junk and sell it to the Hoxton Hipsters who roam Brick Lane of a weekend, looking for ways to throw away their meeja earnings. Candy from baby, one would think. Unfortunately, the babies are on The Apprentice, mewling and whinging, throwing their blankies out of their buggies and, for all I know, weeing their knickers.

Tom (it’s ten to two, he’ll have to do) is PM for Team Phoenix (these people must be aware they will have to pick a team name when they apply, so why does nobody invest any time in thinking of a more memorable name? Or are they reflecting the ashes their careers will be in after the nation has seen them insisting vehemently that they had contributed hugely by making that 25p sale?) Tom at least thinks about how many items it would be possible to sell in a day. He settles, for no apparent reason, on 50 to 70 – presumably a 40% variation is no problem to him – and then sends his buying team off to an auction house to purchase the said number of items with a budget of £200. They are reduced to rooting around in bins and to that other Apprentice fall back, bitching behind the PM’s back without actually standing up and making their opinions heard.

Scottish Laura (a two pinter, but not requiring hard drugs) heads up Sterling. Having gone insane and bought every piece of junk they can get their sweaty palms on, and under the impression that they’re in a small village in Hampshire rather than East London, they decide on a ‘strategy’ of ‘shabbychic-ing’ everything in their emporium (boldly entitled ‘Vintage Gold’). Karen calls this ‘upcycling’. How ‘upcycled’ something that’s had orange velvet stapled on or a dodgy ‘Union Jack’ painted on it is, I can’t say. The stated aim is that it will be desirably retro, which, for the record, is where I’d have gone, heavy on the 50′s and 60′s furniture and knick knacks. In other words, retro items. Not crap with flags on it.

Tom’s team, having discovered the 4 items they bought at auction aren’t really filling their shop, hit up a junk shop in Tooting. They cackle about what gold they have procured for the sum of £30. The shopowner cackles about what shite he sold them. Who is to say who is right, but a useful guide when shopping in Tooting is Stick To Curry. You can thank me for that one later.

For some reason the apprentices have taken some kind of vow not to use the word ‘shop’ and keep referring to a ‘retail unit’. Which makes me relieved to see the units are indeed traditional shops, and not blankets spread out on the street selling single shoes, half-used batteries, and the brake shoes off your bike that got nicked two weeks ago.

Ah bless. Some dark haired bloke (don’t fancy yours much) is trying to blend in with his potential customers by chilling out in a cardi. Hip!

RetroStation gets in the customers, but doesn’t have much to sell them. “There’s a difference between minimalism and emptiness,” sages Nick. The team muse on whether to buy some more stuff to sell in their shop – ahem, retail unit. The buying team is despatched to a car boot in Battersea, where they become such a nuisance doing the patented Apprentice act of quibbling over thruppence happenny that a stallholder finally flogs them something for a pound on the proviso they bugger off.

Half way through, and still nothing’s caught my eye. Not the items, the contestants. The items get snapped up by the denizens of Brick Lane, desperate to unburden themselves of their heavy heavy twenty pound notes.

“I thought their product selection was poor,” says Nick. “What do I know?” Well, more than the average Hoxton Hipster, Nick. There’s a rather satisfying shot of one of the ‘upcycled’ items falling apart as its proud owner lugs it home.

But still no hotties.

Both teams make about £1400, but, not having been allowed to spend any money, Phoenix/RetroStation win. Tom’s stinginess is praised, but I think we’ve all been watching this for long enough now that we know he equally might be being ripped into pieces in a manky caff for not spending enough. Sugartits sends them off to learn to swing. Dance! Swing dance! Did I mention they weren’t that good looking?

Back in the “boardroom” it’s Laura and Gabrielle who tear each other a new one over orange velvet material, while Lord Sugar rests his head in his hands and wonders which one he can pick who won’t end up suing him.

Gabrielle (if you like that sort of thing) and Jane (not in a million years, she looks like a female version of that Northern Irish nutter Blarney Jim from 2011) are offered up by Laura for a Lordly mauling. Having called Laura a raving lunatic for not giving her team a budget, Sugartits gives Jane the finger.

Ah, it’s not the famed Northern pallet entrepreneur but serial trouser forgetter Jessie J. Then this must be The Voice, the one that’s not the X-Factor or American Idol. Joining Hilary-Jessie is not, in fact, the grumpy electronics magnate, but Voice of the Valleys, Sir Tom Sex-Bomb, as well as rapper/producer/car pimper Will.I.Am and some Irish bloke who has done ‘sold out stadiums with U2 and Sir Paul McCartney’. Well, perhaps, but my cat could have sold out shows with U2, he just couldn’t take much of the credit for it (on the other hand, my cat buries his shit rather than releasing it on CD and iTunes.) Between them they have 150 years of experience, all of which are Tom’s.

These four are going to be coaches to the contestants they pick, select the best ones to compete with the other coaches’ acts and then ultimately judge all the acts in the live shows, which will also have a public vote element. Sound familiar, no? Apparently not, because we have to have a big booming ‘How It WORKS!!’ explanation up front. The much-vaunted difference is the coaches face away from the stage when the contestants sing, so they can judge by voice alone, only seeing what kind of freakazoid owns the voice when they have either committed to working with that person or when the song ends (theoretically the contestants have been pre-screened so we don’t make a Knight of the Realm sit through too much pure, unfiltered crap. Sir Sugartits should take note.) The contestants (if lucky enough to get a choice) pick the coach they want to work with, which apparently gives them ‘artistic control’. Yes indeed, much akin to the kind of control a three year old has when asked if they are going to get in their bath now or would just prefer to go to bed all dirty and then their teddy bear will say “Poo you stinky.”

To show how they are, like, real music people, not like that Simon Cowell who can’t even sing the Hokey Cokey, all the coaches all sing “I gotta feeling.” All it shows is a) Hilary and Sir Sex Bomb’s voices do not blend at all well and b) Danny O’Bono is waaaaay too white to sound convincing on even the Hip Pop of The Black Eyed Peas.

The first person up is Cher Lloyd with a guitar and Irish accent singing Jessie J. will.i.am spins round first but, to be fair, he’s starting from a base of Fergie and Chezza Cole. Eventually all the coaches spin round. This is surely partly because the pressure of looking engaged and really into the music while the camera beadily watches you not really focusing on anything because your chair is facing in the wrong direction simply gets too much.

They all lay out their agendas. Why would Willy be a desirable coach? Well, he’s a major name dropper and apparently he will help Irish Cher have hits in the UK, USA, Brazil and the Philippines. And Kazakhstan. Jessie J says number 1s are a ‘bonus’ (presumably she has some other cunning plan up her sleeve for paying the bills then) and it’s really about the music. In other words, it’s not about the money, money, money, we just want to make the world dance. Well, that’s all very noble, but it’s not how Simon Cowell bought houses in Malaga and Barbados. And he is someone who truly can forget about the price tag. “I can’t compete with that,” says Sir Sex Bomb, who has had more pop moppets than hot dinners, it’s how he looks so good at his age. He suggests picking the right songs. Which leaves O’Bono to focus on ‘musicianship’.

O M G! It’s one of the ones no-one remembers from 5ive, Simon Cowell’s answer to Take That. When I say ‘answer’, it was the equivalent of being thoroughly dissed and only thinking of the perfect retort 3 days later while on the bus. No-one turns round for poor Sean’s uninspiring version of ‘Trouble’. Jessie J has obviously been rehearsing how to turn people down while not pissing anyone off. Sir Sex Bomb has not. “It’s hard to know what to say to someone like that,” he says. Well, Sir, you are in for a tough few weeks.

The auditions may be blind, but dear old Samuel Buttery is nevertheless unwittingly giving the judges a clue or two as to his looks via his nomenclature. A little less time with the buttery might be a good idea. Samuel busts out Adele and it’s a campy cabaret-fest of squeaking high notes and booming alto. Sir Sex Bomb hits his light, which I now see says, I Want You. “I don’t think I’m the package,” says Buttery, ” like J-Lo, or Beyonce.” Well, no. Sir Sex -Bomb looks a bit non-plussed but manages to recover admirably and sticks solidly to his story that he totes knew Buttery was a bloke when all the judges say they thought he was a woman.

The next contestant has alopecia. She actually looks perfectly attractive in a Sinead O’Connor kind of way but jeez, please don’t let this be the tip of an iceberg that ends up with the producers digging up the Elephant Man and parading him out on stage to prove a point. Toni gets to do a good, old-fashioned, dead grandad sob story about her hair and Hilary, O’Bono and Sir Sex Bomb, all of whom seem to have run out of contestant-seduction steam at a rather early stage, lamely tell her it would be fun to hang out. She picks Hilary as her dragon – ahem, coach.

Aundrea is a ‘big girl’. Apparently big people don’t want to be to looked at, and no- one wants to look at them. She does a fairly out of control version of ‘Crazy’ (the Cee-Lo one) and everyone manages to resist the pressure of the camera and remain still, apart from Sir Sex, who seems to have a kind of death wish for contestants no-one else wants.

Adam Isaac has got a fairly standard American rock style voice, but also a regular BMI and all his own teeth. In this show, he’s practically a curve ball. Sir Sex turns round and looks relieved, and positively justified when Willy also flashes I Want You.

“Can I say one thing?” asks Sir Sex. “I was in Hawaii with Elvis.” There’s a bit more to the story than that, but is it necessary? Not at all. But at least it did illustrate something related to the potential coaching of Adam, unlike Willy’s story, which just shows he’s a name dropper. After a bit of a premature climax, probably not Sir Sex’s issue, Adam chooses the grizzled semi-retired crooner over the car entrepreneur and friend of Chezza.

The next two contestants’ ‘thing’ is that they are boyfriend and girlfriend, which is not particularly visual. Everyone except Sir Sex turns round for Max’s mash up of ‘Come Together’ and ‘Lose Yourself’. “I forgot to push my button, didn’t I,” says Sir Sex, who, after a dodgy start, seems to have rapidly recovered the smoothness and charm that’s kept knickers thrown at him for 6 decades. The others manically drop names and accuse each other of dropping names and blether on about who does and doesn’t know Macy Grey until Max eventually chooses O’Bono on the basis they are dressed the same.

Ben says he comes from Derry, but apparently via the Jersey Boys wardrobe. Apparently he’s had a million hits on YouTube. Which doesn’t in itself prove anything musically. I could put a video on YouTube which I’m fairly certain would garner me a million hits and music would not be in the forefront. Willy and O’Bono turn around so quickly it seems they might have been some of the million viewers and recognise the voice. Eventually they all turn round. “We could make something different,” says Willy, who is actually starting to appeal with his name dropping and face pulling. “You’re a risk taker, and that’s what I look for in a vocalist,” says Hilary, with her whole year of experience behind her. “I could teach you how to have a worldwide hit”, she says, rather improbably. Sir Sex says he and Ben could win this. Which is going to be embarrassing, as he already told Adam the same thing. Fortunately, and inexplicably, Ben chooses Jessie. Maybe he’s getting bored of wearing trousers.

No-one turns around for Twinnielee. Which would be sad for her even if her boyfriend wasn’t Max who had three coaches fighting over him. Twinnielee. Really?

Phil, the next contestant, looks like the love child of Frankie Cokecozza and the bloke who’s a knob in the ‘student house’ BT ads. Intriguingly, although he fancies himself something rotten, he also has the charisma and stage presence of passed wind and clearly this can be detected through the thick leather of the chairs as no-one turns round. Entrepreneur, rapper, producer, manager, musician and mentor Willy adds another string to his bow, that of buck-passer, as he explains the reason he didn’t press his buzzer was because he was waiting for Danny to press his.

Oh god, someone else singing a Jessie J song. Happily, my annoyance soon turns to pleasure that she sings it much better than Jessie. Heh heh. They all turn around. Willy name checks Bob Marley, more to get his name in for any actually relevant illustrative reason. He then manages to turn Jessie’s current success into a diss. If he carries on like this he’ll be poached for BGT before the next show.

And that’s it! The earth has trembled, windows are shattered, Cowell’s mighty BGT has been assaulted and yet we all still live. Praise the Lord (Sugar of Cockneyville).

The story opens with a young, bumbling Edgar Rice Burroughs receving a summons from his uncle, John Carter, who has mysteriously died and been entombed by the time Burroughs makes it to his uncle’s mansion. The youth discovers he’s the sole beneficiary of Carter’s massive fortune, but why him? Perhaps his uncle’s personal diary holds the answer.

Flashback to John Carter, a former Captain in the Confederate army, drifting through the American South like a hobo, obsessed with finding a cave of gold. After a tussel with a Colonel trying to draft him back into the corps to subdue the local Apaches, Carter discovers the cave. But it’s not only a treasure trove. It’s a transportation chamber to another world. 

Carter wakes up on Mars with the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, which obviously brings him to the attention of the locals – some friendly, others decidely not. He learns that the fate of Mars – or ‘Barsoom’, as they call it – rests on a power struggle between the kingdom’s of Helium and Zodanga, respectively good and evil. When the Zodangans are gifted the all-conquering ’ninth ray’ by the Therns – shape shifting priests with the power of telepathy and a passion for manipulating entire civilisation throughout eternity - the question is: can Carter redress the balance?

It’s an epic story that evokes Dune, Flash Gordon, Dances with Wolves, Gladiator, and even Aladdin, so I wasn’t expecting it to hit all the right notes, but it didn’t look like a pantomime, and it wasn’t aiming for camp. How wrong could it go?

The opening narration tried to dismiss any pre-existing notion of Mars: “You think it’s a red planet. It is not.” Well, I wish it had been, because otherwise there was very little to differentiate ‘Barsoom’ from the Arizona desert. Peerless mocapped extraterrestrials aside (and the Tharks really did make Jim Cameron’s Na’vi seem Smurfesque) ‘John Carter’ didn’t make me feel like I was on an alien planet at all. Every other design aspect was rendered with such an elegant grandeur that I felt oddly cheap expecting a 70′s filter or beautiful matte painting to transport me across the stars, but that’s what I needed: a few moments of breathtaking beauty to lift me out of the dust.

And then there was my issue with John Carter himself. Taylor Kitsch had the requisite muscle, and even the requisite smoulder, to make an excellent brooding hero, but I think he lacked the Everyman quality that a Harrison Ford – or even a Costner – could have brought to the role back in the day. Instead, Kitsch had a very 21st Century presence that undermined his believability as either a Victorian gentleman or, crucially, a remnant of the American Civil War.

He just couldn’t sell me the idea of John Carter as The Outlaw Josey Wales in his introductory scenes, and so, when Carter was transported to Mars, I didn’t go with him. I watched his adventures with interest & occasional amusement (I loved the giant supersonic pug dog) but I hadn’t engaged and couldn’t, despite the best efforts of Dominic West as the powercrazed but suave would-be conqueror Sab Than, and the uber-reliable Mark Strong as the Machiavellian High Priest.

For over two hours I was a spectator at a splendid sci-fi spectacle. Alien armies amassed, duels were fought hand-to-hand on sand and over it in glittering solar-powered sky ships, their Napoleonic cannons booming over the heads of six-armed warriors commanding twenty foot betusked ‘White Apes’, who became the lions to John Carter’s Christian in the Tharkian arena.

Actually, that was my favourite scene. Carter’s captured by the Thark chief and thrown into the gladitorial pit. He’s chained to a boulder to hobble his Earth-conditioned superhuman agility, but still has to protect the wounded old Thark chief, Tars Tarkas, and his daughter, Sola. He’s trying to distract one White Ape while hauling on his chains when the chief releases a second. The over-the-shoulder, mildly annoyed ‘oh, all right then, why not?’ groan Carter gives at this unwelcome development really warmed me to him. It was a neat character touch that made Carter both more human and more heroic, and it was just the kind of off-script tweak Harrison Ford might have made.

Prior to that, director Andrew Stanton edited a brilliant sequence, intercutting Carter slaughtering a horde of aliens with the moment he discovered his wife & young child burned to death in their Virginian woodland cottage – each slice of his blade matching a cut of his spade as he buried their bodies, brilliantly explaining the rage coursing through him on Mars: “I was too late once. I won’t be late again.”

So, I’m not saying there aren’t great scenes in ‘John Carter’. As you’d expect from the director of ‘Wall-E’, Stanton’s excellent at integrating the epic with the goofy, the panoramic explosions with the more intimate moments, without flagging the gear changes. It’s all pretty seamless, but I was too busy playing catch-up with the character – trying to care for him as I should have from the start – to appreciate the Herculean effort Stanton made to so perfectly orchestrate all this magnificence passing before my eyes.

The problem really hits home toward the end, though – and skip to the final paragraph right now if you don’t want to be hit with a massive spoiler. Here it is: after finally gaining everything on Mars – Love, friendship, a Kingdom – and finally rejecting Earth and its tragic memories, Carter is suddenly thrown back to Virginia and loses it all. This should be a massive kick in the guts, hard enough to rupture the tear ducts. Remember ‘Somewhere in Time’, in which Christopher Reeve in 1980 becomes obsessed with a 70 year old portrait of Jane Seymour so hypnotises himself back to 1912 so he can woo her? It’s a beautiful love story, and Christopher Reeve does such a great job of eliciting our empathy that, when his courtship is successful, and their wedding is imminent, and he suddenly pulls out a coin from 1980 that forces him back to the present, your heart can’t help but break. I almost had a nervous breakdown when he then refused to eat or drink or sleep until death returned him to her side. Sniff.

Now that is a love story that totally destroyed me because I chose to invest in Chris Reeve. Comparatively, when Taylor Kitsch suddenly found himself forever separated from his beloved, I felt next to nothing. I know it’s probably expecting too much for such a mammoth action movie to be so intensely romantic, but I expected to care about John Carter just a little more.

This was supposed to be the start of a trilogy, so perhaps ‘John Carter’ will become a slightly weaker entry in a stronger series. Until then, it’ll remain a valiant disappointment.

**

Working Title knew that the setting and approach could be Anglocentric, but the underlying issues – ageism, racism, chauvanism, etc – had to be universal. Warp Films are continuing that tradition with a fantastic rosta of instant classic British Indie movies, from Four Lions and Submarine, to Dead Man’s Shoes and This is England, fostering talents like Shane Meadows, Chris Morris, and Richard Ayoade.

For all these reasons I like to keep up to date with Warp’s schedule, but late last year they released two major pictures that I never quite got round to catching, so I decided to watch both back-to-back this week.

Kill List is a horror/hitman hybrid that could have been co-directed by Terence Fisher and John Mackenzie, except that it opens like a Ken Loach movie – all jump cuts and emotional explosions as professional soldier Jay tries to provide for his family without undertaking jobs better suited to his ex-squaddie skills – i.e. contract killing. It’s plain he’s taken such gigs before, and that they’ve been lucrative enough to spoil his wife, Shel, who’s now on his back to finance the jacuzzi she so desperately craves. Trapped between her barbed demands and his shitty social skills, Jay accepts his army pal Gal’s offer to split the loot from another ‘Kill List’ – three hits, a bagful of cash, and Shel off his back for another eight months.

Matters go pearshaped from the moment the boys accept the contract, sealed in blood when their contact suddenly slashes Jay’s palm. Why the ritual? What connects the marks? And has Jay been chosen for something more than just a few hits? I won’t elaborate further, except to say that the entire enterprise veers into serious Whicker Man territory toward the end via some unforgettable violence that was so, so bad that at one point I wished I’d never pressed play (let’s just say I’ve never really wanted to see what happens when a human head interfaces with a ball pain hammer, but now I’ll never forget it.)

I was with the movie right up until the moment Gal dies. As the most normal person available, he was my anchor. Perhaps intentionally, the moment he was eliminated I was as adrift as Jay – lost in a perverse morass of pagan chaos with no time to reorientate. My reaction to the sudden, gruesome finale was thus not so much ‘Wow’ as ‘Jesus. Did that really happen?’ I’m still undecided as to whether this is a good thing or not – it could still go either way, which is maybe why the movie’s been so polarising.

Tyrannosaur, conversely, is all about the slow burn of real life, and it captivated me from the moment council estate hardman Joseph dissolves into sobs behind a rack of charity shop suits. He’s hiding from the kindness of shopkeeper Hannah, who in turn is hiding from the nightmarish domestic abuse meted out by her repulsive husband in their middle class detached house.

Olivia Colman, as Hannah, is electrifying. Watching her intone ‘I love you’ with empty-eyed hopelessness, as she cradles her blatheringly apologetic bastard spouse after yet another beating, makes me wonder at BAFTAs sanity for not even nominating her this year, although she did win at Sundance and Chicago, and pick up Best Actress awards from the Evening Standard and the London Critic’s Circle, which is the least she deserves. Hannah is a perfect portrait of a woman shattered by lovelessness.

Only screentime stops her usurping Peter Mullan as the film’s centre, although he is almost as fantastic. His Joseph is a man standing with his face against the wall he built himself from decades of violent physical and mental abuse. His wife died because he wasn’t a good enough reason to stay alive and now he has no-one and nothing except the wall he’s too old and too weak to knock down. As a brilliant actor himself, director Paddy Considine – who deservedly did win BAFTA’s Outstanding Debut award – gives both performers the space & time to show the devastating reality of what must be done when all other options expire. Change, or die.

Tyrannosaur is the best British movie I’ve seen in a decade, so bravo, Warp Films, for these uncompromising pictures. Here’s to even bigger & better things over the next three decades of all things Warped.