One of the reasons I will probably be a lefty until I die is this: when left-wing think tank produce lunatic ideas, they are generally framed in terms of 'quality of life' and other such terms of making the world a more lovely place; when right-wing think tanks produce lunatic ideas, they are generally about making more people more miserable.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8515592.stm

This is not going to be a long or nuanced post. Some things are just absolute truths:

There are no circumstances in which a rape victim should take responsibility for the attack.

We went to watch Sherlock Holmes last Monday. Very entertaining, providing you leave your brain behind, which is a perfectly fine way to watch a film that doesn't take itself seriously. I liked the incarnation of Holmes - it makes sense to me that a guy who has such incredible deductive abilities is much more likely to be a little crazed than the placid detective from previous versions. I liked Jude Law's Watson too, his backstory justifying why a doctor was also such a man of action.

There's loads of touches in this movie that I liked. The slow motion scenes where Holmes plots his next move in fights, and the explosion scene were great, with the slo-mo actually serving a purpose, and allowing us to see all the details we would have missed. There's great moments of humour as well. To take just one, I was really amused by Holmes and Adler trying to dearm the weapon whilst Watson carried on fighting in the background before being launched across the room in a Family Guy-esque moment. I also loved how Holmes was a terrible locksmith, or more specifically, I loved how this was underplayed and never directly pointed out.

Because, for all those moments, Guy Ritchie is not a man who deals well in subtlty, and sometimes, it all gets a bit much. There's moment where adversity is piled on top of more adversity to the point where you struggle to really care about any one problem. It feels too long at the climax, which is a direct result of Ritchie's overblown style. The Watson-Holmes relationship used the obvious device of them talking like an old married couple, which, whilst funny, wasn't really done particularly artfully. By the end, I was even a little tired of Holmes' many quirks and abilities, which is annoying because he had the potential to reach unparalleled levels of awesome. Basically, at times, I wanted to grab this movie and say 'Stop it'.

Movies watched this year: 4

Don't people know you can't launch a leadership challenge on a Prime Minister when the news has got so much snow to cover?

My thought? I don't like Patricia Hewitt. I remember her being dull, bordering on vacuous, but the interview I just on BBC News, where she managed to claim that a public call for a leadership vote is the best thing for the party is sort of hilarious, and as blatanly self-serving as she is pretending it isn't.

I can't remember watching many films where I've actually struggled to understand what's going on for a good half an hour. Not in the sense that I couldn't get the plot - there are plenty of films like that early on. But in the sense that I couldn't get a handle on the characters, the way they spoke and acted and thought. For those who haven't seen Brick, it's basically a film noir detective story meets high school teen drama, where the style, language and archetypes are from the former, and the characters and location are from the latter. Not having any knowledge of film noir or those sort of Philip Marlowe detective stories meant it took me a while to figure out what was going on. For example, when Brendon says of Emma "she's gone" to the Brain, the auto-pilot of my brain told me that he's hiding her death and the circumstances around it and any emotions he might be feeling, and it's only when I adjusted to the (what I know know is called) hardboiled style that I realised that's enough for one person to tell another someone's dead, murdered, and that's as much emotion as will be shown on the topic.

None of this is bad, mind. The end result is one of the most original feeling films I can remember seeing, all the more remarkable given how old the underlying story type is. I'm definitely OK with being mentally challenged by a film - it's not the filmmakers job to pander to the intelligence of the watcher, or his own limited frame of reference. I suspect a second watch would lead me to enjoy in a number of other ways lost by having to concentrate. On a first watch, however, it struck me as a satisfying balance of edgy gritiness and cool quirkiness. I really liked that this unusual world just existed, with its own internal logic, and that the film was not about the reason for that. The humour was wonderful - the scene where Brendon sits opposite The Pin in his mothers kitchen whilst his mother fixes him an apple juice with excruciating detail was very funny - and their lots of off-kilter moments like that. I also remember being aware of the music and liking it.

Movies watched in 2010: 3

Without taking an unpleasant amount of pleasure in it, The Economist's obituary for Oral Roberts is delightfully sarcastic and withering.

Young Victoria was OK. It's quite a sweet love story, but not a deeply emotional one. I thought that largely was the result of trying to include too many historical or political aspects, often without really contributing to the story; or occassionally, where they did, the impact or connection to the personal stories was so tangential that it seemed rather forced. A film like The Queen showed that you pick just a one story from a complicated history, you care so much more about it and it's characters. Positive final comment: Emily Blunt is outrageously beautiful.

Movies watched in 2010: 2
...of which the reviews cheapened women actresses: 1

I was going to start on Mafia movies tonight (I have loads), and rewatch The Godfather (with a view of watching the two sequels for the first time). However, Cath has asked we watch Young Victoria instead. Great. Thoughts later.

Watched Pan's Labyrinth. Thought it was fantastic: the performances, story, the photography (beautiful yet utterly bleak). I liked the overlap between the harsh realities of the outpost and the fights with the Resistance, and the macabre fanatasy world of the labyrinth - the two worlds borders are blurred and look very similar, which furthers the idea that the fantasy world is the creation of Ofelia. It is horrific and violent in short bursts, often executed in such a way that seems both visually shocking yet massively real, like the bullet through the Captain's cheek, and the bloody in the eye above it, or the way the Captain crushes the poacher's son's face with a bottle in distinct phases. There's lots of pleasing little details which recur throughout, which start small yet grown in significance. The broken watch, for example, begins as a bit of backstory, but ends up telling us about how the Captain mistakenly sees himself relative to his more noble and heroic father. I'm sure there's a bunch of clever stuff about Fascism and the parallels with the orders of the faun, but I haven't thought it all out yet.

Movie films watched in 2010: 1

My new years resolution is to watch films. I'm so rubbish when it comes to watching films. There are so many I should have watched (by which I mean, ones everyone has seen apart from me). A pointless ambition? Maybe. But it should hopefully be an enjoyable one. And, I always thinks it helps intelligent comedy to have as many cultural touchpoints available as possible.

I aim to watch 100 this year. I'm starting tonight with Pan's Labyrinth.

I passed a sad landmark last Sunday. It has been ten years since a friend of mine from high school, Ed Matthews, died. He had turned 16 two months before, and he took his own life on December 27th 1999.

I do think of him on occassion. We met at the start of year 11 (September 1998), and quickly became good friends through sharing a lot of the same classess. Ed's importance on my life and on my character really can't be overstated. I was an awkward boy, short in confidence outside my group of friends. Ed was massively popular. He was cheeky and playful - he would disrupt a class with a joke, but in such a way that he rarely got in real trouble. I attribute, at least in part, my future interest in comedy and performing to him.

People would joke that we were identical twins (despite only having bright blond hair in common) and I loved hearing that, because I secretly doubted I was half as interesting or funny or as enigmatic as he was. He was a teenager who refused to care what anyone thought of him, in a way that most people only bluster about. He wasn't interested in the politics of the school yard - he had time for you if you were interesting and fun, regardless of who you were friends with. He brought out the best in everyone around him. I think he made me comfortable with myself, and helped me embrace who I was and what I was interested in, and care much less about how I was seen. If I can pass only one attitude to any children I might have, it will be that.

Of course, I was fifteen. I considered him one of my best friends, but when he killed himself, part of the shock was because I knew nothing that might be troubling him. He never even called. He just went and did it. I know a little of what happened now, the falling out with the unbelieveable overreaction. He left a note in his pocket for when it was found. On it was written his name, his address and the sentence "everyone likes a considerate suicide." His last joke.

Sometimes I feel angry at him. Sometimes, thinking back, it barely seems like that Christmas holiday happened to me at all - so much has changed since then. But mostly when I remeber us daring each other to lie on the book shelves at the back on the class until the teacher noticed, or him hopping around on his BMX, or the last time I saw him (Christmas Eve 1999, laughing and waving), I think what I do is miss him. The answer to all the unanswerable questions drives me crazy.

Hilarious.

"Hey Zach, if you play your song Killing in the Name Of on the radio, you won't swear will you?"

"Oh, no".

"You'll just say 'I won't do what you tell me', instead of 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me'."

"Oh, yes".

"Well, I believe you, because I have no reason to think, based on this little exchange, that you would ever not do something that you were told to do. No reason at all".

I'm supporting the Rage Against The Machine for Christmas Number 1 campaign, not because I think it sends a powerful message (it does not) or because I care about who tops the Christmas chart (I do not), but in the name of SHENANIGANS. I am pro-frippery. And also vastly amused that Cowell would call this bit of fun 'cynical', given how he makes a living.

Buy the track or don't buy the track. But do make a donation to Shelter, who do amazing work for a group of people it would be easier to forget about: "You'll never silence the voice of the voiceless".

UPDATE: Cowell again bemoaned the campaign earlier, calling its organisers "miserable". He also said it's denying Joe "his moment". Firstly, he's had plenty of moments, including the one where he won the talent contest that he entered and got a million pound recording contract. Secondly, there's the implication of entitlement. The fact that Cowell sees the Christmas number one spot as something that should be granted to everyone who wins his show is just another reason to get on board.

John Hutton, as Defence Minister:

"The individuals transferred to Afghanistan are members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a proscribed organisation with links to al-Qaeda....

...The US government have explained to us that those individuals were moved to Afghanistan because of a lack of relevant linguists to interrogate them effectively in Iraq...

...The US has categorised them as unlawful enemy combatants and continues to review their status on a regular basis...

...We have been assured that the detainees are held in a humane, safe and secure environment that meets international standards that are consistent with cultural and religious norms."

Let's play a game called Spot Everything That Is Wrong With The Above. It's round one in a game called Spot Everything That Is Wrong With UK/US Counter-Terrorism Policies. To highlight a few:

- America pretty much decided their affiliation without a trial. Reprieve (a human rights charity) dispute this status for at least one of the detainees.

- Does "review their status" mean check they are still barely alive? Or check their assumptions weren't wrong?

- The relevant linguists explanation is the weakest explanation for anything ever.

- Perhaps the word "linguists" was a typo. For the word, "violent psychopaths".

- Assurances as to the high quality of conditions of imprisonment from the people you ask to covertly torture suspects don't carry much credibility.

- What do cultural norms mean for secret prisons? Because I'm fairly sure the cultural norm of a secret prison is nothing good.

- Aslo, what do religious norms mean for secret prisons? Muslims are allowed to pray five times a day? I think if I were in a secret prison, I'd be praying a lot more often than that.

I was reminded tonight, pottering around YouTube for guitar songs to copy, the first time I heard my favourite REM song - from their 2001 unplugged set: Cuyahoga.