300: Rise of an Empire

This is a SEQUELLLLLL!!

Yes, oh yes! Blood, slo-mo gymnastics and rippling abs alert!
There is a new "300" film scheduled for July next year - set before, during and after the events depicted in the first movie. Lots of seaborne battle action apparently, with the Persian commander Queen Artemisia getting a villainous role.

Gerard Butler is not involved, sadly, but nevertheless I am sooo looking forward to this!

Daddy or Chips

I have a bone to pick with the English Language. Yes, the language of William Shakespeare and Milton and Shanna Germain: it's deeply inadequate and it dicks me off.

Consider the following perfectly viable and meaningful statements:

• I love chips
• I love my Dad and Mum
• I love my wife
• I love my mistress
• I love my child
• I love my dog
• I love Jesus
• I love my friends
• I love my country
• I love my garden
• I love skydiving
• I am 80 years old and I love my partner of 40 years
• I am 16 years old and I love my boyfriend of 3 months
• OMG I love Gerard Butler soooo much!

Now, not all those statements are actually true in my case (I have no particular fondness for potato products, for example), but even if they were, only a small child (or, I suppose, someone with serious developmental issues) would ever think that the word "love" as used in those sentences describes the same emotion in every - or indeed any - case.

This is a "daddy or chips" situation. "Love" is used to describe a whole slew of emotions, related only by denoting a positive attitude to the object described. Yet what's the alternative? "Adore"? "Respect"? "Need"? "Enjoy eating"? . . . You run out of synonyms very quickly. We just don't have an adequate range of words to describe what we currently lump under "love."

We'd need dozens of new words, I suspect. And there would always be nuances within each one of those new words. Is the emotion you feel for a child who has just won the school prize the same as for the one who lies in bed all day playing on his Nintendo DS and swearing at you, or the same as for one who is dangerously ill in hospital?

But the thing is, we all muddle by just fine with "love" in conversation or writing because we look at the context. If someone says "I love kittens," we do not assume that that has a romantic or sexual content.
Well, usually. (Sometimes the context of "love" can surprise us.)

Now here's the thing. I think we have a similar "daddy or chips" problem with  "Fantasise," even in a purely sexual context. We assume we know what the word means when someone says "I have sexual fantasies about...".

How about:

• I fantasise about fucking my boss in the office

If I said that, you would assume that I watch my boss, I make excuses to see him, I would like to fuck him, and that if I was given the chance then I would do it.

But what if I said:

• I fantasise about fucking a minotaur.

Do you think that if, by some miracle, a minotaur turned up in my living room one day, my reaction would be "Let's get it on!" Seriously? Because it's not a secret that I do have minotaur fantasies, but believe me if they were real creatures, I'd scream and run and shit my pants just like anyone else.

From the Royal Opera production of The Minotaur

The minotaur fantasy is a fictional fantasy. It does not relate to the real world. It exists only in the interior world of my sexual imagination.

"Ah, but," you might say - "the one about the boss does relate to the real world. If you got the chance, you'd go for it."

HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW?

There certainly are sexual fantasies that involve degrees of wishful thinking, planning, and intention. But just because I fantasise about something that might actually happen DOES NOT MEAN THAT I WOULD ACTUALLY WANT TO DO IT IN REALITY. Just like the minotaur, that fantasy can also be completely fictional. It stays in a nice safe place, gets pulled out at the appropriate moment (when I'm heading toward orgasm with my rabbit and need something to trip me over the edge, for example) for joyous contemplation, then gets put away again and ignored.

 This, I swear, lies at the heart of all the breast-beating and hair-tearing  when it comes to the mainstream success of Fifty Shades of Grey and other BDSM or non-consensual fantasies. "How can millions of women," the well-meaning social observer weeps, "enjoy these sick sexual fantasies? Aren't they betraying their gender and themselves? Whatever happened to decades of feminism? Does it mean they really want to be beaten up, or raped?" And at worst some dickhead will nod sagely and say "There, I knew it - send them back to the kitchen barefoot and pregnant. That's what they really want."

Since when did What you get off on for the minute before orgasm equate to What you really want in life?

I blame the English language. We need separate words for fictional fantasies and intentional fantasies, because otherwise outside observers have no idea what context to take them in.

Worse, we may become confused about our own fantasies. Something pops into our head during sex and we find it hot, and then we may become frightened or guilty or disgusted at ourselves. "Is this the real me?" we ask. "Am I really this sick pervert?" And then it starts to affect our behaviour in non-sexual contexts. And that's bad.

And we start worrying about other people's imaginations. "Are you fantasising about her again, instead of me? Are you looking at porn again? Why aren't I enough for you?"
 

If we could only accept that there is a part of the sexual imagination that is a separate sphere - sacred space, if you like - that is entirely private, where anything goes, which causes no harm and has no influence over our moral, rational, grown-up lives ... well, then, we would save ourselves and each other a whole lot of grief.

Accept your sexual fantasies. Acknowledge them. They are your business and yours alone. They can be used for pleasure or catharsis, to face up to deep deep fears, to shock and confront, or to explore parts of one's soul. They are fiction. And if you give them sanctioned, separate space to play in, they will not rule you.

So, Mr Shakespeare ... why didn't you give us more words for Love?

Movie review: Machine Gun Preacher

What?! What are the evil fiends of Hollywood trying to do to me? A new Gerard Butler movie? - yes! With him punching people and shooting them, not just some shite rom-com? - YES!
Playing a Born Again Christian missionary????
AIIIEEEEEEAAAAAARRRGH!

You understand my sense of conflict here, I hope.

Stop talking about the Baby Jesus and get your kit off

What actually swung it was the fact that it's a true story, about a real guy called Sam Childers, who sounds ... interesting. And pretty conflicted himself.

The real Sam Childers

The movie is an action biopic, covering several years of Childers' life. He starts out emerging from prison. He's a career criminal, a junkie, and a violent piece of trailer-trash with no apparent redeeming features at all. He undergoes a conversion experience, cleans his life up, sets up a successful construction company and pops out to East Africa to do some charity work for a couple of weeks - where he discovers the awful mess going on on the Uganda/South Sudan border, and in particular the plight of children coming under nightly attack from the LRA rebel militia. Horrified, Childers starts an orphange out there. Protecting the children involves taking up arms against their oppressors - something Childers is strikingly good at. A violent man, he just needs the right cause to fight for. Unfortunately the enemy in this instance is way too big for him to handle. He becomes increasingly obsessed and angry at the situation and how little people in the outside world are doing to help, and eventually undergoes a crisis of faith and abandons his wife and child in the USA in order to carry on his humanitarian work. However a small child reminds him of the good side of human nature, he is reconciled with his family, and the movie ends with them carrying on the good work. Which, in real life, Childers is still doing.

The controversial (and interesting) bit about Childers' mission is that it involves leading armed rescue missions into LRA-held territory. With extreme prejudice. Hence his "machine-gun preacher" sobriquet.

Well, frankly I found this fascinating - but frustrating too. The movie covers quite a long period in Childers' life, so is inevitably episodic. The director also seems wedded to the idea of "show not tell," which means that nobody explains anything. So it's really hard to get under the skin of the main character - you don't hear him talk about how he feels, except in the content-free Christian jargon of "fighting the Devil." And the successive scenes can feel really disconnected from one another. For example, the film leaves it terribly ambiguous as to whether Childers falls off the wagon and goes back to shooting up heroin at one point. It doesn't give him space to explain how he feels about the death of his best friend, or how that affects his beliefs, or how that crisis affects his congregation. It doesn't even tell you whether he recovers his faith in God by the end.

Most frustrating of all, there is no background or context given for the actions of the LRA, who are the villains of the piece and by anyone's standards a bunch of utter bastards. They abduct children and turn them into child soldiers and sex slaves. They kill indiscriminately. But why were they founded? What are their aims? Who are they? Criminally, the movie even gives the (inadvertant) impression that the LRA are Muslims, which is just SO wrong - the Lord's Resistance Army originated as a Christian militia of exactly the sort of muscular, charismatic stripe that Childers espouses. (And a secular aid worker points out to Childers just how much in danger he is of looking just like the LRA leader.)

So as a narrative this movie had me tearing my hair out. As a window into a physical and moral battleground, it was gripping and humbling. The themes in Machine Gun Preacher should be a challenge to everyone. To cynical atheists who sneer that all Christians are just complacent hypocrites. To Christians who believe that all that you have to do is have faith, and that God will intervene to fix everything. To anyone who holds that violence is never the answer. To anyone with any humanity at all, as we sit in our peaceful Western countries, and all this goes on, and we do nothing.

Sam Childers website
Sam Childers talks about the movie

P.S: The Catholic News Service described this film as "morally offensive."

P.P.S: Eloise has pointed out that this review makes it sound like I didn't like the movie. On the contrary, I give it 5 stars. I'm just frustrated I couldn't give it the max 6.

Law Abiding Citizen: movie review

I was worried about this movie. Worried because I thought I'd miss it while I was on holiday. Worried because the trailer implies a really nasty torture scene, and I can't cope with torture scenes in movies. Violence yes: torture no.

Luckily neither of my fears came true. Despite a slew of  reviews claiming that "nothing is left to the imagination", they don't show the torture. At least not in the version I saw, which makes me think reviewers must make stuff up out of their asses - or maybe it was a completely different cut everywhere else in the world. The torture is gleefully described by the perpetrator in advance, and you do see the corpse afterwards (at some distance) but THEY DON'T SHOW ANYTHING, which is what matters to me. (There is at least one spectacularly bloody murder later on, btw, but it's so fast it doesn't count as torture.)

Anyway, the plot: This film starts as a courtroom drama and turns into a revenge thriller with a theme of Law versus Justice. Extremely punitive justice...

Clyde Shelton (Butler) is stabbed and sees his wife and daughter killed when burglers invade his home. The perps are arrested but the forensic evidence is ruled inadmissable due to police foulup and the prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a deal: the (less culpable) burgler gets the death penalty and the worse one gets a few years in prison after turning state witness. Rice does this rather than risk a trial because he doesn't want to ruin his 96% sucess rate at prosecution. Shelton is betrayed and furious. Cut to 10 years later when Shelton's slow-matured and very elaborate plans for revenge come to fruition, and both burglers die horrible deaths. Shelton is arrested. But then the others involved start dying: the judge, the defence council, the junior lawyers. How is Shelton carrying out the murders from inside prison? And since Rice is clearly being saved up for last, how can he stop Shelton, short of commiting murder himself?

I've got to say,  I enjoyed the film, and not just because of the totally gratuitous strip scene (Huzzah!). It's shallow as a puddle really, with only one message ("Don't compromise with evil") but the fact that the anti-hero is a smart bloke outwitting the "hero" keeps you interested. There's never going to be a happy ending - although you are clearly supposed to sympathise with Shelton (if not his methods), he is already damned and living in his own hell; there can't be any redemption for him except death. It's just a question  of whether Rice is redeemed or killed.

I was a bit disappointed he got off the hook.

Sadly, once Shelton's secrets are revealed the film flags a bit - at the climax he is about to blow up the mayor, the police chiefs and legal bigwigs at once, in a final blow against the corrupt justice system that failed his family. I really couldn't bring myself  to feel even slightly anxious on behalf of that lot.

But it was a fun ride that far. Don't watch it if the sight of blood scares you.

 

Movie review: Gamer

SF/action movie Gamer opened in the UK this week. Like I need an excuse to post pictures of Gerard Butler...

This film took me totally by surprise - it was WAY better than any of the three of us anticipated, and if you don't believe me go read Eloise's review. I thought I was going to see "Gerard Butler does The Running Man"- in fact what we got was "Gerard Butler does Blade Runner." With added ultraviolence. Blade Runner is about robots who function like human beings; Gamer is about human beings who function as robots.

Setting: the near future. Plot: Kable is a death-row prisoner given a chance at freedom by surviving 30 rounds of a pay-per-view sport called Slayers, in which combat teams slaughter each other. The twist - each human participant is electronically controlled by a games-player through the internet: in Kable's case a 17-year-old rich kid. Kable has nearly made it to the magic 30, but there are powers at work that are prepared to make very sure he won't win, because he Knows Too Much and Must Be Silenced... Meantime, Kable's destitute wife is forced to make her living by being a controlled avatar in a social environment called Second Life Society, where her RL controller gets off on dressing her up in trashy clothes and making her have sex with strangers.

Visually, this film is brilliant. Fast, slick and clever, full of telling little gags as well as carnage and car chases. I loved the extrapolations of current technology to show how we'll be interacting with the Net in a few decades. The combat sequences are ultra-bloody and filmed in a bleached-out palette reminiscent of many a shoot-em-up, the Society sequences are colour-saturated and poppy. And every so often it gets really surreal ... like when Kable confronts the main villain who then launches into an elaborate song-and-dance number. ..

There's a lot of violence of the shooting and smashing heads kind, but it wasn't that that I found disturbing. What stays with me is the movie's portrayal of the way a society slides into solipsism: the poisonous attitude that no one else but me is real. People seen on-screen  (whether in camera footage, on websites, in interactive forums or on reality TV) exist only as sources of entertainment. Their pain and humiliation is to be laughed at or discussed around the watercooler - but not troubled over. And certainly not stopped. Because it's making so much money for people.

In some ways this is a similar film to District 9  that I saw last week: the plot as written is thin and probably doesn't stand up to interrogation, but the world it paints is mind-blowing - and a rather too plausible distortion of our own.

I'll never look at The Sims again without shuddering.

---

*In fact I confidently predict a film-buff game where every time there's a reference on-screen in Gamer to Blade Runner - "Oh look: there's Pris!" - you have to neck a drink.

The Blood of the Martyrs - an excerpt

Blogger willing, the above clip is Gerard Butler's audition for the role of Dracula. I can tell you, if I'd been that red-headed casting assistant (instead of just being a red-headed smutwriter), I would have come right there and then. Those eyes...

Anyway, this is all in aid of celebrating the publication of the vampire erotica anthology Lust at First Bite (nearly sold out at Amazon as I write this!). I've already posted a little snippet of my story The Blood of the Martyrs over at Lust Bites, but here's another exerpt:

---

St Aronne, a centuries-old vampire searching for redemption, has come to confess to Emily that he has killed her lover Paolo.

Then I was back in my own body, and I was pressed against Aronne, my heart hammering, my mouth sticky, my body full of fire and my mind reeling.

‘Did you see Him?’ he whispered, easing my head back from his throat. His body was all muscle under Paolo’s stolen clothes, every inch hot and hard. I’d had my teeth sunk in his neck; I glimpsed bloody half-circles on his pallid skin. ‘Did you see the face of God?’

I tried to clear my throat. I could feel his very obvious sexual arousal. The feeding had excited him: my vulnerable body pressed to his, prey to predator, almost asking for death.

‘Yes?’ he urged, and I nodded. Because I did understand. I understood how his tainted blood, an alchemical mix of psychotropic substances, could convince a medieval believer that they had seen God. What other explanation would they understand?

‘I cannot,’ he groaned. ‘My blood is a gift for mankind, but not for me. You are blessed, Emily.’

I wondered which was worse; lying to a saint, or lying to a vampire. The visions had shaken me, moved me, filled me with heat and awe, but they had not convinced me. These days we no longer believe that spiritual enlightenment can be found in hallucinogens.

‘Your blood, though…’ His fingers were gentle on my throat, stroking the pulse, even as the lift of his lips betrayed the tips of his teeth. ‘Tithe me a little, Emily. I have starved for nine centuries.’

My eyes widened.

‘I will not hurt you.’

Yes, I thought: like an alcoholic will stop at only one glass. But I couldn’t resist his need, and not just because he was physically so much stronger. The charged particles of the vision were still pouring through my body. My limbs felt heavy, my heart pounded thick and fast, my skin fizzed with the chemical memory. And he was holding me still, close against him. My unhinged mind could not respond to something so overwhelming, so my body was left to its own instinctive responses: terror and submission. I lifted my chin.

Gratitude lit his eyes, momentarily holding hunger at bay. He shook his head. ‘Too much.’ He slipped the buttons of my pyjama top instead, one at a time like a lover, until he was able to bare my shoulder. ‘Here.’

I nodded, certain he did not need my permission. He stooped to my shoulder. His mouth was hot.

The first wave was sharp, pure pain, the second euphoria. It was like when the Professor laid me over his knee and smacked my bare cheeks as hard as he could, until bottom and hand alike were burning with heat. It was pain, but it was good pain. It made my heart race. It made me soar. It made me open up like a blossom of sensation. I suddenly realised that my panties were sopping wet and had been since I came round from my visionary journey, that my sex was heavy and hot and my breasts tingling with need. I groaned out loud.

Aronne’s hands tightened on my hips. I pushed up into him. And again I felt the insistent jut of his erection.

Slowly he withdrew his mouth so he could look me in the eye. His lips were dark with blood. Holding his gaze, I reached between my breasts and slipped the remaining buttons, opening the pyjama top, revealing my flushed breasts. My nipples were engorged and hard. Paolo had enjoyed putting sprung paper-clips on those deceptively fragile points, then playing with them until I begged for release.

‘Bite those,’ I whispered, shaking.

---

For those interested in the writing process, I've also added a new page of notes on this story to my website. (Go onto the main page with all the pictures of the book covers, scroll down nearly to the bottom to "Lust at First Bite", then click on Author's Comments.)

Rocknrolla - film review

Okay, so as a rule I don't have any interest in gangster movies. More-or-less by definition they revolve around unsympathetic characters, and Brit crime flicks offer a vision of this country that is rather less recognisable to me than, say, Balamory, and considerably less attractive.

But I went to see Rocknrolla because of Mr Butler of course. And it was fun. A rollicking ensemble piece; if it wasn't the wrong genre I'd describe it as a romp. See Gerry dance (More than a nod to Pulp Fiction in that scene)! See Gerry in the briefest sex scene ever committed to celluloid! Gangsters batter each other about like they were cartoon characters and threaten each other with crayfish.

The director Guy Ritchie has been accused (by his brother-in-law) of being the most rabidly homophobic bloke in showbiz, but it doesn't come across in this film. Actually there are quite a lot of lingering shots of fit, undressed male bodies. There is a plot that revolves around (terror of) homosexuality but it ends up really rather warm and touching. And jeez, if you're going to get a pity-fuck off anyone, why not start with Gerard Butler?

The movie is pretty violent of course, although any violence that would mar the comic tone is carefully kept offscreen. Death is reserved mostly for characters you have been led to believe to deserve it. Just don't go thinking about the slaughter and torture that's taking place when the camera turns away.

In fact don't think about it much at all; the plot revolves around a number of devices that are fairly preposterous: a "lucky" painting that exerts a powerful attraction over everyone who sees it: a small-time rockstar who fakes his death just to raise his sales: an accountant who is prepared to rip off her deadly dangerous boss twice simply out of pathological boredom: a Russian gangster/property tycoon (no resemblance to an actual Russian London-football-club-owning tycoon intended, my arse) whose idea of security is to transfer 7 million Euros across London via two unarmed banking clerks: a high-flying lawyer who is prepared to illegally reveal the identity of an important underworld grass simply on the chance of a screw with a two-bit piece of rough. In a world where beautiful women can easily (and literally) be bought, Thandie Newton as the Accountant manages to pull off the trick of being irresistable by simply smoking a lot, blinking rather than talking, and being coldly unavailable.

On the plus side the characters are well-played (and the central Rocknrolla, a junkie rockstar played by Tobie Kebbel, is both charismatic and impressive). It's blackly funny, witty and has a great soundtrack. I enjoyed both Eastern Promises and In Bruges more, but I'd happily watch this again. And the promised sequels.

"Beowulf and Grendel" - DVD review

I bought a copy of Beowulf and Grendel some time back, for obvious reasons, but put off watching because the public reviews were so poor and I didn't want to be disappointed. Then a friend of mine who doesn't know Gerard Butler from Adam happened to say, "Have you seen Beowulf and Grendel? It's really good but it's incredibly bleak."

So I watched it. And you know - it isn't half bad.

The plot is the traditional one: weary old King Hrothgar, great hall, monster attacks the Danes at night, etc etc. The twists in this particular version are that they have tried their damnedest to make it look historically plausible - proper Viking architecture & boats, epileptic Irish priests bringing the Word of God to the heathen etc - and that sympathy rests firmly with Grendel. Who isn't a monster despite being described as a "troll" throughout: he's clearly a Neanderthal. So Beowulf finds that his enemy (who bears a very particular grudge against Hrothgar) is intelligent and not interested in fighting him. Which is a bit embarrassing for the poor hero...

Filming was done in Iceland in the teeth of terrible climactic conditions, and the landscape looks stunning in every scene*. I still can't believe they staged a baptism scene in that river without actually killing their actors. This isn't a Hollywood movie though, and it shows - the pace is slow and deliberate, there's no CGI and it is very downbeat in its message. The female roles are strong and well thought-out while remaining realistically grim.

Online complaints about the sound-quality turned out to be hugely exaggerated. In fact there are only two major flaws. One is the accents; I can cope with Hrothgar sounding Scandinavian and Beowulf sounding Scottish but I cannot cope with a witch with a strong American accent. Why didn't they just coach everyone in a similar Danish accent?

The second flaw was not really their fault: you can spot to the second the exact moment that their finances were whipped out from beneath them, in the last week of filming. It's the fight with Grendel's Mother (who is a monster), which is desperately downplayed but can't disguise the fact they were clean out of cash for her costume.

I enjoyed it and I'd happily watch it again. I think it comes across as an ambitious and very earnest endeavour that almost worked beautifully.

The DVD extras are plentiful and very good too - including a thoughtful interview with Butler about the themes of the film. God he's beautiful. Ahem. Sorry about that...

Oh, and there's a very tempting trailer for their award-winning companion documentry Wrath of Gods (a sort of Icelandic Lost in La Mancha) which details the horrors they went through during filming: blizzards, landslips, waist-deep mud, a director who appears to be a total nutter, a rapidly-closing Arctic winter, financial disaster, ships that could only float for 4 mins before sinking... and finishes with a clip of Butler talking to camera while stripping off his wetsuit. They certainly know their market!

You need to release Wrath of Gods in the UK, guys!

---

* But they've started commercial whaling again so Iceland is off my holiday list.

The Acceptable Vampire

Well, it looks like my short story The Blood of the Martyrs has been accepted for Black Lace's vampire anthology Lust at First Bite! I am really delighted, and can think of no better excuse for posting a couple of screen-caps from Dracula 2000.

Of course the first thing I did on being told was re-read the story, and I found a massive and awful typo in paragraph 2...

*Bangs head off desk*

My vampire Aronne doesn't look anything like Gerard Butler's version. He's a red-eyed albino who is not only a savage predator but a bona-fide saint. Set in modern Venice, The Blood of the Martyrs is a tale of dark and crazy Catholicism. I'll post an excerpt as we get nearer to publication.

In the meantime, ask yourself: how did Dracula get tan lines?

Veraine

This is actually a photo of Gerard Butler playing Attila in the eponymous TV mini-series. Bad series. But it came out sometime after "Divine Torment" was published and when I saw the cover of the DVD I went "Bloody hell! - that's Veraine!"

Which is the whole reason I have this enormous crush on a relatively obscure Scottish actor. Well, he's not so obscure now.

To be 100% Veraine he'd have to have greying hair of course, and black eyes not grey (Veraine's north-Indian-ish). Still, he's 90% right: my ultimate sexual hero.

There's a clip on the extras of the Dracula 2001 DVD showing GB reading for the title role while still wearing the Attila long hair and eyeliner. It's probably the sexiest thing I've ever seen. Secondary brain (the one in my knickers) kicks in and overrides primary one. I have no interest in vampires, but I'd let that one kill me stone dead.

Not A Dry Seat in The House

Gerard Butler! With no clothes on!



Yes, it's "300" the movie - Proof that there is a god. A god of gay military porn possibly, but certainly a deity of some description.



There are twenty things wrong with this film. It's borderline racist. It's quasi-fascist (but not in a Nazi way). It equates physical beauty with moral perfection. David Wenham does a really weird Long John Silver accent. It's not violent enough (Seriously!). The Leonidas/Gorgo sex scene should have been ooh, about ten minutes longer. Worst of all, unlike "Gates of Fire" the novel, which is deeply moving in its depiction of men facing certain death with the utmost courage - and it's only moving and only courage because they like all people do fear death - in 300 the Spartans are having such a good time getting themselves killed that it doesn't seem tragic or even much like sacrifice.



But it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.



Favourite sequence

Gerard Butler Pictures