But I Could Have Told You Vincent, This World Was Never Meant for One as Beautiful as You

I'm going to blog the rest of the FFW later, but right now I just watched Saturday's Doctor Who and Richard Curtis, damn him, has pressed all my buttons and made me bawl like a toddler. He's a bugger for that. I could pick holes, and probably on second watch I will do, but right now I don't want to.

Bill Nighy was Bill Nighy, which is always lovely. The scene in ( SPOILER! )

had me crying along with ( SPOILER! )

as the Doctor showed him ( SPOILER! )

. And the ( SPOILER! )

scene was amazing, with beautifully done CGI. Seeing the ( SPOILER! )

was just beautiful.

The alien of the week wasn't really central to the plot, it was just something to hang the wider story off. The actual point of it was that people, including the Doctor, ( SPOILER! )

, and the creature was a literal representation of that. Vincent's ( SPOILER! )

were central to the story, and again, brilliantly performed by Tony Curran. The scene ( SPOILER! )

was very close to home for me. The Doctor's ( SPOILER! )

at Amy ( SPOILER! )

was brilliantly played by Matt Smith, who is worming his way into my top three doctors at the moment.

And even though I saw it coming, the final scene of Amy looking at ( SPOILER! )

made me weep like a weepy thing. The ultimate Ginger indeed ♥

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Who says feminists are humourless? @feministhulk doesn't

Feminist Hulk, whom I have been following on twitter with great delight for a while now, has been interviewed in Ms Magazine. If you want to know why I love Feminist Hulk, the following quote tells you everything you need to know:

PATRIARCHY NOT WORK ALONE. SEXISM, RACISM, CLASSISM AND HOMOPHOBIA REINFORCE EACH OTHER. HULK SAY TO FOLLOWERS: SMASH ON MULTIPLE FRONTS. AND, JUST IN CASE YOU STUMBLE, BRING EXTRA PAIR OF PURPLE SHORTS.

♥

That is all.

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Fantastic Films Weekend Day 2 #ffw

I took the decision on Saturday to go and see the Make-up Ladies in the museum foyer rather than braving the stairs to TV Heaven. One of them kindly slashed my wrist for me:



... and Debi got taught to do her own stab wound. And then it was time for Horror Express.

What can I say about Horror Express that hasn't been said a thousand times before? I firmly believe it is the best film ever made. It was wonderful watching the reactions of innerbrat and purple_pen, who hadn't seen it before. It was glorious hearing all the familiar classic lines (My God! It's the Baggage Man! Monster? But we're BRITISH! and of course the wonderful exchange Miss Jones, I shall need your assistance Well, at your age,I'm not surprised! *shocked*With an autopsy! *cheerfully excited*Oh, well, that's different!). It's the film that has everything a genre fan could ever want. It's got Cushing 'n' Lee. It's got a mad monk. It's got sci-fi, and victorian trains, and hairy-handed monsters, and boiled eyeballs, and brain pudding and Zombie Kojak. It's got amazing facial hair and silly hats galore. It's got the worst chat-up line ever. It's got a whistlable theme tune. Iy even has reasonable gender balance, given that it's a seventies horror film. If you haven't seen it before, get the DVD. And if you haven't seen it on the big screen before, come to the FFW next year, because Tony knows he'll get lynched if he doesn't show it.

The Giant Spider Invasion was an enjoyable slice of silly monster hokum, starring Della Street from Perry Mason as a lady scientist, lots of lovely Mexican RedKnee Tarantulas, and a huge, hilarious, animatronic spider. It did exactly what it said on the tin.

Screentalk with Michael Armstrong (excerpts on Youtube here) was pretty interesting, apart from the fact that I kept looking at him and thinking this is what po8crg is going to look like in 30 years' time. It was followed by a screening of his film Mark of the Devil, which... well, I didn't enjoy much. Aside from the discovery that Udo Keir was stunningly gorgeous in his youth, the film offered little in the way of revelations. Yes, people torture each other in horribly nasty ways. Yes, mob mentality makes people do stupid things. But I don't necessarily need to see an unrelenting exposé of these practises on film.

Which brings me on to Birdemic: Shock and Terror... And the reason this blog post has taken me two days to contemplate before writing it is because Birdemic: Shock and Terror is, without question, the worst film I have ever seen. Not in a so-bad-it's-good way. Not in an ironic way. Not in a funny way. It's a masterclass in how not to make a film. The script was awful, the acting was atrocious, the sound editing was abysmal, the lighting was ridiculous, the direction was pedestrian and clichéd, the characters were not even one dimensional, and the special effects were only special in the sense of special school (and I say that as a person with a diagnosed mental illness). It made the films of Ed Wood look filled with Kubrickian attention to detail. It made me nostalgic for the Citizen Kane-like storytelling and subtlety of Timeslash. If you are a connoisseur of truly bad films, you should see this if only so that you can see how bad a truly bad film can be. But don't say I didn't warn you how truly, utterly terrible it is.

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Fantastic Films Weekend Day 3 and Conclusions #ffw

I went in to Bradford just before 12 on Sunday to meet an old friend and fellow FFWer for lunch. Lunch was in The City Vaults, and it was good, and there was beer and conversation. And more beer. And giggling. And impressions of Christopher Lee. And non-sequitur quotes from Babe. And in the end my schedule went out of the window, and I didn't get into the actual museum until it was time for The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue.



Tony introduced this with an anecdote about horror film geekery that touched a nerve with all of those listening, I think, and then a long list of heartfelt thanks to all the team behind the festival. I'd like to join him in that, especially the front of house staff who put up with us weirdoes clogging up their museum for the weekend - props to Jeni and Tristan in particular.

The film itself was one I hadn't seen before. I found the leading man needlessly irritating, and the leading lady needlessly weedy, but there were enough amusing moments to overcome this for me. The zombies lurched with a surprising turn of speed, and the body-part-munching was hilarious. There were some fabulous lines, and some amusing set-piece moments. It was a reasonalbe film to end the festival on, and I'm glad I saw it.

Conclusions then?

Well, this year wasn't the best one I have been to, but I've been to nearly all of them, so that's a tad unfair. Could have done with more sci-fi, and a broader range of films in general. But it was still the best way to spend a weekend I can think of. It was lovely to see the boys from the horror forum, and lots of other old friends, and it was great to see some films I have seen before, and a few I hadn't.

Film of the Festival: Arbeit Fur Alle, which was utterly, utterly fabulous.
Annoyance of the festival: staying for Birdemic, and having to pay £15 for a taxi home afterwards, when it was AWFUL.
Moment of the festival: the annual Monster? But we're British! chorus.
Winner of the annual "Which Film Will James Break a Seat During" sweepstake: Nobody. He broke it in the pub instead.

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