Deplorable imitation.

I'm going to start this post like an American stand-up comedian starts his routine: what's the deal with originality these days!? And when I say originality, I mean the suspicious lack thereof.

"Originality is the art of concealing your sources," Benjamin Franklin once said, and it's a credo that got me my Master's degree (I kid, I kid), but Hollywood can't even get that right.

And it's not just Hollywood, either. It seems that every bit of media (excluding the internet) that reaches our ears, eyes and minds exists already, albeit in a slighty different shape or form. When exactly did we, as a species rightfully proud of our intellect and creative capabilities, become incapable of creating a single original idea?

Are we dumbing down that much?

Virtually every film playing at our local cinemas seems to be a rehash of an earlier premise, every song on our radios a remix of an existing tune. Sure, Christopher Nolan did all right with his reboot of the Batman franchise, and yeah, J.J. Abrams' reimagining of the Star Trek universe made it cool to be a Trekkie again, but do we really need a prequel to A L I E N ? A sequel to Predator? A remake of The A Team, V., The Prisoner (the latter two on the small screen)? Don't even get me started on Teen Wolf, Short Circuit and The Never Ending Story.

If this is frustrating for me (and perhaps you), imagine the slap in the face this is to every talented screenwriter out there, working a dead-end job because no one will read their work. Studio big wig, if you're really too busy to read screenplays (which is, essentially, your job), pay someone to read 'em. Hell, pay me to read 'em for you; I'd love that gig.

And now, books, too. A year ago I wrote about Eoin Colfer's intention to write the sixth installment in the legendary Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, late Douglas Adams' brain child. And guess what? Despite himself, despite Adams' inimitable style, despite humanity shaking its collective head dejectively, the guy went ahead and did as promised: 'And Another Thing...' is available at your local bookstores right now, ellipses and all. As appealing as it may seem to be able to traverse Adams' universe once more (or someone else's approximation of it), did anyone, anywhere genuinely think this was a good idea?

I suppose my plea, in short, is this: people of the world, please, stop it with the rebooting, reimagining, remixing, remaking, rehashing, prequeling, sequeling, recycling of every idea that ever made anyone a buck in the past. Seriously.

However, I shall end on a positive note.

Flipside! (I almost, but not quite, felt like Busta Rhymes there.)

Whether Eoin Colfer's sequel is any good or not, it is a delight to see that the inimitably singular Douglas Adams still has not vanished from our collective consciousness. Whether it's through this literary (ahem) sequel, or Stephen Fry's and Mark Carwadine's continuation of Adams' environmentalist book Last Chance To See in the form of a series of documentaries on endangered wildlife, the BBC's plans to turn Adams' Dirk Gently novels into a tv series, or even a NASA probe quoting Adams seconds before it slammed into the moon, it is undeniable that the deluge of ideas Douglas Adams unleashed upon us unsuspecting Earthlings is still ceaselessly percolating through the cracks of reality and into our lives.

And that can never be a bad thing.

Nostalgia updated.

I want this t-shirt.



I want it now. Someone buy me this.

Source: Threadless.

You can almost hear it.

Pop quiz, hot shot. What's this from?

Don't ask.

I own a cat. I love her dearly.

But should she ever, I don't know, pack her bags and head for California in search of a life in showbiz (or die), I will get a new cat. Call me callous, but I will.

And I will name it Tetris.

Once again.

About a year ago I happened to catch a lovely little Irish film called Once and I fell head over heels in love with it. I wrote about it here; go read it, it's a review I stand by and will not reiterate here save for the following: I gave the film top marks and postulated that this film might very well have bluffed itself into the upper regions of my list of best films ever. I wasn't sure. I needed a second viewing.


Today was that second viewing.

Once is the very best film I have seen in my life. The very best. And in my little bubble, in my list-making, film-loving world, that is quite something; it is only the second time I've declared a film my absolute favourite. This tiny little film, this speck of celluloid that I more or less stumbled upon by accident more than anything else, in its flat out refusal to conform to any of the established Hollywood (or any) norms, has plucked my heart out of my chest and it ran, ran, ran with it.

I see no sense in piling superlative upon superlative in my praise for this film, so I won't; the only superlative that matters, that dreams of coming close to capturing the essence of this film is 'flawless', so I will stick to that: this is flawless perfection (in this case, and this case only, the pleonasm is forgiven) in both the broadest and smallest sense of the word.

Besides, I dare anyone to listen to Marketa Irglova saying 'three thousand' (or anything, for that matter) in her lovely three quarter Czech, one quarter Irish accent without falling instantly, desperately in love with her.

Pixar is Up to something.

Ha! See what I did there? I'm witty.

Pixar has done it again. It seems the studio's only weakness is its incapability of making a bad film. Even the simplest of stories they can turn into a showcase of storytelling that has set a standard for today's films, animated or otherwise.

But blowing Pixar's horn is not what I am here for; if there's one thing they have plenty of, it's good reviews. I just wanted to note that Up's protagonist, Carl Frederickson, especially in his younger years early on in the film, looks exactly like a certain tv producer/film director/media wizard we've come to know and love.

To wit:
Does this mean we'll be getting a Pixar/Lost cross-over, because I'd love to see Sawyer grapple with Bruce, the herbivore-wannabe, anxiety riddled Australian shark or to suddenly see WALL•E silently wheeling by in he background, cleaning up all the shit these people leave behind on the island.

Or has J.J. Abrams been a computer generated person all along, existing as a figment of Pixar's imagination only?

All right, I might be reaching.

But I'm on to you, Pixar. I'm on to you.

And you thought your baby pictures were embarrassing.

Who would have thought that Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter most famous for his Starry Night, the Potato Eaters, and cutting off his ear because he was as bonkers as a box of wet badgers, would ever paint anything that is genuinely out of this world; say, an orange sun blazing in an alien sky:



Not me, because he didn't.

This is an award winning micrograph of in-vitro fertilization, showing the exact moment at which the sperm attempts to penetrate the egg's membrane. If succesful, fertilisation occurs.

The reasons why I happen to find this extraordinarily beautiful are twofold: 1) the fact that we are able to witness this is a technological feat of astounding proportions, and 2) when you're watching that image you are witnessing the birth of life, a genuine biological miracle, and you cannot escape the realisation that everything, from the universe itself to life in its smallest sense, starts off in a glorious blaze.

I'd love to have this on my wall on a 3 by 5 foot piece of printed canvas, if not for the fact that I'd then have to explain to people what it is and they would probably regard me as a pervert.

But still.

Mesmerising.

Doogie Howser M.D. is doing a little jig and I can't take my eyes off of it.


If you know what this is from, I'll marry you. Because people who know what this is from are marriage material. Fact of life.

's All.