Fantasy | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is perfection.

Back to the cinema.

I first purchased this bad boy in ‘Alps Second Hand Shop’ on Dalry Road in the scorching summer of ’99, which remains to this day the greatest era of recent cinema and probably my life. The VHS was a battered, well-worn pan and scan number that cost less than today’s fare for a single bus journey on one of our ghastly maroon peasant wagons. It suffices to say that the following two hours were a religious experience. The video, if you are curious to know, looked exactly like this:

Ocean Terminal’s Vue Cinema reopened yesterday after a lengthy hibernation, the new ‘distancing epoch’ peppered with PPE and anti-bacterial spray flying everywhere. They are showing some classics, presumably because studios are unsure as to how to proceed with their new releases. £5.99 a ticket for this cinematic baptism? Yes, yes, yes.

What a BELTER it is, magically flawless, deep escapism imbued with universal themes, a compendium of genre tropes and technique. PhDs have been written about this motion picture, and I cannot pinpoint even a single thing in it that should not … be in it. One could deem the experience Citizen Kane (1941) in space. There is no point me highlighting the highlights, as we all know what those are.

“NOOOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOOOO!”

I would just like to say that 99.9% of cinema today is fucking gash, total tripe. Pure shite.

This isn’t.

Game of Thrones. Goodbye, my love.

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Eight years of Westeros drama, 2011-2019, with a godawful two-year hiatus between the 7th and final season. To accidentally appropriate a catchy verse in a recent Justin Bieber song, it’s been a hell of a ride (driving the edge of a knife).

Thrones was two-in-one TV, shades of history with splatters of fantasy, brutal realism and realpolitik – one got the sense of the intrigue at the court of Klemens von Metternich or Bismarck editing telegrams – with magic and dragons. And all if this topped off with booze, tits, and your occasional rape. Peak Thrones has to be season 4, for the superlative writing, the intricate balancing act between the intimate and the epic, Tyrion’s ‘fuck you all’ trial, and the sheer number of what-the-fuck-just-happened moments. It was literally astonishing.

Things went a bit downhill from season 6 on. It was evident the writers, having gone beyond the Martin books, had run out of ideas and sadly resigned the show to that of ‘experience’ – spectacle, hordes of extras, battle after battle. Which is fine, but the verbal sparring and power plays such as those between Varys and Littlefinger were sorely missed, so too was any sense of remaining mystery about the familiar ensemble – all their cards were on the table. It frankly became a bit silly. Not to bother, it’s partly because the bar was set so high for so long that the later episodes in the saga felt lazy despite being the most watchable bits of drama on TV.

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Summary thoughts:

What the hell was Petyr Baelish’s accent all about? It fluctuated from one region of the British Isles to the next depending on how devious he was feeling.

Tyrion got boring by the end. He forgot he had witty things to say, and it didn’t help that it was no longer a case of dwarf vs. everyone.

Ramsay Bolton was Joffrey on steroids.

Stannis Baratheon reminded me of almost every supervisor/manager I’ve had, displaying a facade of nobility, but will without compunction burn their own kin for a pay rise.

And every time I eat chicken I think of The Hound and Arya tearing around the countryside, psychos in arms. Those two were meant to be.

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Wanderings and … wonderings.

Category Archives: Fantasy

The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is perfection.

Game of Thrones. Goodbye, my love.