If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

1. Writing things down on pieces of paper, particularly A4 pieces of paper, is work.

This one has to be ingrained at school, innit? We are so used to thinking of writing stuff down as work that we can’t escape it. Every idea for a movie is just a history essay in disguise, and that means it must not form part of our free time. School fucks you up in more ways than you realise.

2. Work is unpleasant.

Churchill said something like, ‘find a job you enjoy and you’ll never work another day in your life’. I guess a lot of people don’t enjoy their jobs, but even those that do consider getting up on a Monday morning to do some sort of activity for the money of someone else to be work, and therefore bad. The four-letter-word status of work is smashed into us early and often, and it pretty much never stops: weekends are good, holidays are brilliant and work is BAD. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

3. Anything that doesn’t look like work isn’t work.

I have lots of good ideas walking down the street, sitting on a sofa or riding a roller coaster. When I do so I look as if I’m just having a little brain holiday where I’m letting the lyrics of Gary Numan songs go around and around in my noggin. But no! I’m actually doing the most valuable and constructive part of my job. The funny thing is, we all know this and yet no one wants to let people spend their working day walking, relaxing and rollercoastering because it doesn’t look like they’re having a shit time, sacrificing enjoyment for the man and the money. That’s why work has to look like misery or boredom.

4. Going abroad for any reason is wonderful.

Again, this one is drummed into us from an early age, and for the most part it’s true, but if you’re going to be away from your family or visiting somewhere a bit shit then it’s not a real pleasure. And airports. And jet lag. And shitty food. And missing things at home. These can also put a bit of a downer on what otherwise sends your thoughts in the direction of the word ‘holiday’.

5. Meetings are awful things.

Some of them are. In fact, a lot of them are. Then again, lots of stuff gets done in meetings. It’s become a bit of a dirty word, but with some emotionally-charged banter and chat and a few jokes, a meeting can be a not-unpleasant experience that allows you to accomplish more greatness.

6. Children are something of a drag on your ability to get drunk.

They are. Then again, maybe getting drunk isn’t what you need to do right now.

7. Any opportunity to drink alcohol is wonderful.

Ingrained from the teenage years: alcohol is good. More alcohol is better. Free alcohol is stupendous. Good quality free alcohol is unbeatable. But it’s also rare, and warm, shitty white wine, warm beer and feeling the need to drink to make a difficult situation bearable aren’t the greatest things in the world.

xx

Here’s a new Frank Budgen Hyundai ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kyfMds8k_8

And a new spot for Audi from Jonathan Glazer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABnJWPsjyU

That first one really could have been done by anyone.

The second one is a lot better, but not quite up to the heights of VW Polo or, y’know, Guinness Surfer.

But I do hear Jonathan’s new movie is excellent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwndLOKQTDs

I’ve been sent this a lot over the last few days.

The reaction seems to be overwhelmingly positive, but I’m not so taken with it.

I like the twist; it’s clever, unexpected and feels like you ought to have seen it somewhere before.

But I don’t like the seriousness, the portentous music, the wanky VO or the attempt to make this gag into an ad for beer.

What it’s got to do with Guinness (other than the fact that friends drink Guinness together, as they do virtually every other beer on earth)?

So it felt pretentious and up its own arse – not great attributes in a beer ad.

UPDATE: here’s an ice cream ad from 2011 (thanks, S&C):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHIngSfm_ck

Which just proves the point about it having nowt to do with Guinness.

Or ice cream.

Or anything, really.

UPDATE 2: and the music is from this other, equally up-its-own-arse ad (thanks, A):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwSNRlNUNEI

I don’t know where to start.

The cheesiness?

The ham-fisted direction?

The clichéed, era-by-numbers styling?

That’s probably the worst part: an ad supposedly about style that is utterly devoid of any.

Now that, Alanis Morissette, is ironic.

Great advice from the man behind Calvin and Hobbes (thanks, G).

Untranslatable words (thanks, S).

Brilliant Spike Lee doc on Michael Jackson’s Bad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkXbybLw7AE&feature=player_embedded#t=981

Ace stuff on The Big Lebowski.

The shooting of Heat (the above come from the amazing cinephilearchive tumblr):

Depth of field and its importance to the greatness of movies (thanks, G).

Star Drunk: the drinken sci-fi film (thanks, J):

Camera on helicopter blade (thanks, G):

Terry Gilliam teaches you animation, Monty Python style (thanks, T):

Catleidoscope (thanks, M).

Wonderful comic strip (thanks, G).

Selfies in serious places (thanks, J).

Dude pisses on lava (thanks, G):

Girls with Mesut Özil eyes (thanks, A).

Fracking explained (thanks, G):

Collaborating with a 4-year-old (thanks, A).

America’s porn searches.

Joss Whedon’s writing tips.

Very funny Yahoo answers (thanks, G).

Hilarious Japanese dinosaur prank (thanks, J):

Stunning abandoned stuff (thanks, G).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-UciSePPPw

Here are a few lists of the best movies of the 80s.

I’ve always thought that it was a slight decade, cinematically speaking, and that seems borne out by those lists, many of which include popcorn movies such as Robocop, Predator and Ghostbusters.

I love Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as much as the next person, but I’ve never been able to consider it a great movie, in that way that, say, Raging Bull is great.

For me that decade is where enjoyment and quality parted company quite cleanly, giving us the enormous fun of the aforementioned titles (plus Die Hard, The Terminator, Back To The Future, E.T.,  etc.), but leaving us wanting in terms of greatness.

If you look at the two decades that bookended the 80s there are so many riches that it makes any 80s list look slight by comparison:

The 1970s: The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Apocalypse Now, Annie Hall, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, All The President’s Men, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, Harold And Maude, American Graffiti, Aguiire: The Wrath Of God (and many, many more).

The 1990s: Three Kings, Boogie Nights, The Silence Of The Lambs, The Age Of Innocence, Schindler’s List, Goodfellas, Unforgiven, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, LA Confidential, Se7en, Short Cuts, Fight Club, The Three Colours trilogy, etc.

But the 80s?

Full Metal Jacket, Raging Bull, The King Of Comedy, Do The Right Thing, Blue Velvet (I haven’t seen Grave Of The Fireflies, which appears on many of these lists)…

Then you drop down a level to movies like Platoon (a little too surface; bad performance from Charlie Sheen. Ditto Wall Street), Amadeus (too slick), The Last Emperor (too long and boring), Jean De Florette (is it great?), Spinal Tap and Airplane (not as funny as I remembered them)…

Anyway, that’s just my somewhat damning opinion on an entire decade of movie making.

What do you think?

Hey, I like to chuck the word genius around willy-nilly as much as the next guy, but in this case I think it’s worth acknowledging just how amazing a creation Alan Partridge really is.

I missed the whole radio thing, but from The Day Today onwards I’ve found him to be one of the funniest, best-observed, most perceptive comic inventions of our time.

He’s 22 years old now and I struggle to think of any character that has developed through their career in many different stages like Alan has.

There was the fantastic Knowing Me, Knowing You, I’m Alan Partridge, Anglian Lives and several others, culminating in the recent Alpha Papa movie.

Of course, a single joke could never last this long, so he’s adapted to different circumstances over the years and we’ve lived that along with him. Contrary to surface appearances I believe that we don’t so much think of him as a gormless twat, but more as one of us. When he says ‘Smell my cheese!’ in desperation to the controller of BBC1 we recognise that situation where circumstances have conspired to leave us watching our dreams disappear. But whereas we would just sit and watch sadly, Alan goes further and part of us envies him for not letting it go.

If you watch this Armando Iannucci interview you discover that they didn’t deliberately give him awful taste; he actually likes some quite ‘cool’ things. They didn’t make him come from a comedy daft town like (as was most appropriate in the 90s) Milton Keynes; he comes from Norwich, which is sort of sad and pathetic, yet at the same time neither of those things.

This is where a character gains longevity: he’s not so much a gag as a real person with well-rounded believability, and that’s why he can develop in new areas.

One of which is the Alan Partridge app, which plays chunks of his Morning Matters digital radio show interspersed with your own music collection. The Partridge bits are very funny, but there’s another odd layer of humour that happens when Kanye West songs become part of his show.

Here’s another interview with Armando Iannucci on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF0IhyAasWw

I put that up on this blog about three years ago.

I then received a stern email from someone threatening legal action if I didn’t remove it.

But if it’s been on Vimeo for two years they must have chilled out about it.

I hope.