No but seriously, why so serious? (NONBOND NIGHT 1: BLOODY MARY)

(originally posted on myspace)

or... "And with that in mind we've given this name to a new type of Nuclear Bomb"

So guess what I went and saw on Sunday?... Here! Clue!

 

  Tha-hat's right, I went and saw The Dark Knight... which I feel I probably shouldn't be writing about as it is bloody everywhere, but, mm, this is going to be a short post anyway, it was horrible and sometimes brilliant but mainly horrible, yet the Dainipponjin clip posted above does something more interesting and disturbing and entertaining with comic book violence in a much shorter time. Okay, I'm not sure actually that's what The Dark Knight was meaning to do, but I AM pretty sure that a man dressed as a bat fighting a man dressed as a clown should have a bit of Romance to it, if not downright Fun. There should be more to it, I'm saying, than simply a man dressed as a bat fighting a man dressed as a clown, but The Dark Knight smothered all that inherent resonance with Its Interpretation. (It brought something new to the party, sure, which I suppose is great but, mm, I have to say I think Kirsty Wark agrees with me. It don't "chime".) Like the most recent Bond, its refashioning of the "myth" basically involved a total subtextectomy, everyone talking in terrible essays about each other, the painstaking doing of PROPER damage to humans and, at heart, just a kind of narrative self-loathing. It had to be self-loathing, didn't it? I think Christopher Nolan is amazing, a real heart-breaker, but no-one could really have WANTED to tell this story, or it would have been better told, non? I just find it so weird that this is entertainment. Or is it filler fodder? Most of my friends have seen it more than once, so it must be the first. I don't know. Graham Linehan's been posting a bunch of stuff about some disturbing inferences concerning the post 9/11 Anthrax attacks lately, and last night I lay awake thinking, the only way to get this story on the News must be to say you're making a film about it. That's the only, the only way. And a worse public service could be performed than the setting up of a production company whose only job were to direct media attention to topics of national importance by churning out puff pieces for said-topic-inspired-films, films that themselves need never leave Production Hell. Heck, you wouldn't even have to draw up contracts, just make some calls and e-mail London Lite with "Sienna Miller expresses interest in Anthrax movie". None of which is to cast aspersions on Newsnight Review by the way, nor Natalie Haynes. Duh.

Anyway, back in the sixties a film came out with a guy called James Bond in and cinema went mental. And THIS WEEK I SHALL PROVE IT with a series of clips salvaged from youtube, again last night, while brooding on the iniquities inherent in the system, and listening to Adam and Joe's theme tunes for Quantum of Solace. Yes, to make amends for posting nothing during the run of "Hamlet Abridged", which was a joy to do - and to give you a little taste of the piece itself - I shall be offering up atrocious nightly, non-Bond nuggets, such as this gobbet from the lesser known, I-shit-you-not, O double-7 series: "MISSION BLOODY MARY":

 

[Originally I posted the opening sequence but that's been taken down.] It's when the talking gets going that this shit really flies, and I can only hope the dialogue we came up with for Hamlet occasionally matched MISSION BLOODY MARY'S depths. And thank you to everyone who came. Big thanks.

Actually, here's another little taster of the Camden Fringe. Sorry, but I still have no camera and it's the only thing from the show I could scan. It's my show shirt after six quick-change matinees, the salt's pure Fringe.

It's salt.

Like she say, I can't see why THIS had to happen.