Dennis Moore.....

Who, in the words of the possibly immortal Mr Python, did indeed rob from the rich and give to the poor, much as Russell Crowe attempted to do in the recently Beard-viewed Ridley Scott epic, Robin Hood.... better by far than the awful Forestry commission bound Prince of Thieves, if only because it has the audacity to invent a French invasion, the landing craft, a whole new legend of the Hooded one, sideline the Sheriff, and keep a straight face while intoning towards King John that "an Englishman's home is his Castle...." Pausing only to remember that his own father wrote the thing that might have become Magna Carta, Russell Crowe and his accent gallivant from one side of the channel to the other, pretend to be knights, hold a folk rock night in the hamlet of Nottingham, a smallholding of only 5000 acres or so.... which to the Beard's memory of such things is a quite impressive seven and a bit square miles... or around a quarter of the size of todays current city.. a fairly healthy holding, although Cate Blanchett tries several times to play it all down.... but, like Crowe's accent, she doesn't fool anyone.... at least Terry Scott... sorry, Mark Addy, as Friar Tuck makes a good go of being properly Hoodie.... and very near comes close to saving the film... apart from the fact that I kept expecting to hear him utter "oo er... crumbs..." all the time... perhaps Mr Addy may be pleased at the resemblance to the immortal Terry... personally i would, if only because of June Whitfield.. but I digress....

Now, Hollywood has a habit of taking perfectly good stories, legends and History and making a complete cock up of it.... and usually for no good reason... The Beard is of the opinion that those lovely Orange adverts have it right...you know the ones... but it seems that at least one person in the land of capped teeth and Caesar salads (Tell me on a Sunday anyone??) believes that stories that have been doing the rounds for hundreds of years can be improved by ignoring most of the content... and who knows, they could be right....

Now, the Beard could cope with this if the alterations actually improved or at least didn't affect the storyline... but, as in the case of Robin Hood, it appears that someone wrote a medieval drama, couldn't sell it to anyone, and so altered the names of the main characters in order to get the film past the beady eyes of the execs... which is a good ploy admittedly... and is apparently very necessary... but why, I hear you ask...

And the answer is simple... it's the fault of the audience... that's right... its all down to us.. honestly... the beard has often said that paradoxically we all seem to like something new, anything fresh and virgin, to quote the divine Ms Amos, yet we also love to stick with what we know.. so, in the early days of cinema, whatever was on was an experience... but even then the filmakers made movies of popular books.. but at least some of them tried to put new stuff on, and peope went to see it, simply because it was on... but as time went on, and going to the flicks became commonplace, so the films became a bit samey... and because of thsi dichotomy, we end up with peopel who have a new idea having to hide it within a new story... who wants to see a film about medieval intrigue that wasn't a best selling book?? the money men will say.... but who wants to see a film about Robin Hood.... well...

So the Beard lays the blame squarely at the feet of the general public... and still decries the heinous act of changing perfwectly good storylines for no good reason.... take Peter jackson's Lord of the Rings.... now, the Beard is the first to admit that removing one of the encounters with the Black Riders in the Shire was fine.. after all, how many times do we need to see the nail-biting Hobbits hoiding under a tree.... and the general public can probably do without the Tom Bombadil/Barrow Downs episode, despite it being one of my favourite bits.... but missing out the Voice of Saruman and the Scouring of the Shire is, basically unforgivable... as was making Grima fairly pointless.... if anyone wants a discussion as to the significance of this episode, drop me a line.. and as for the elves getting to Helms Deep... well, don't get me started....

The Beard's favourite electrical sales guy and the Beard himself often bemoan the fact that Hollywood has no idea how to redo Anime films.. the only two that the Beard can remember being any good being Crying Freeman and Blood;The Last vampire... and of course, we all understand Alan Moore's reluctance to put his name on movies adapted from his work.... Watchmen was basically ok, admittedly, but V for Vendetta remains unwatchable to fans of Moore's original...

But as I say, it's our own fault.. if the general populace were willing to take the occasional risk, then maybe we would see more and more originality.... but that's probably asking too much... after all, go to any cinema as the filmgoers are coming out, and ask their opinion of the film... 99% of them will sing its praises... 80% won't be able to tell you the plot, but that's by the by... the rest will be made up of people who don't want to appear different, poor people who don't want to admit that they just spent a couple of days pay on being bored... but that's folk...

Still on the subject of films, the Beard and his future Beardess went to see the almost certainly execrable Sex and the City 2... which admittedly had its moments... there were moments when Sara Jessica Parker was off screen, which is a bonus in anyone's book, and then there was the cameo from Miley Cyrus... which was worth the admission price alone... now the Beard never used to rate the young Miley, being more of a Hilary Duff fan... but then apparently 75% of us will have mental problems at some point.. but I digress.... but all in all, it wasn't the worst way to spend an evening... and at least the only sportsmen featured were rugby players... which was a merciful relief.... and at least among the racial stereotypes and awful clothes, there was at last the hint that, as the Beard has suggested in the past, Sex and the City is not as liberatingly feminist as it always made out.... but is in fact the exact opposite... but at least it wasn't football....

The Beard has luckily managed to escape said overrated playtime so far... not one game have i seen, not one score do i know, and my life is no worse for it... several have attempted to inform the Beard of the progress of the England team, and I am sorry to say that i seem to have perfected at last the skill of not actually taking any of it in.... now, if I could do the same for all useless information, perhaps the friends of hirsutery would be happier... or perhaps not...

The emphasis on football has however re opened the whole thing about heroism.... now, call me churlish if you dare, but a bunch of overpaid nancy boys kicking a ball about and taking time off from injuries that the average kickboxer would ignore doesn't seem all that heroic.. and to suggest, as one newsreader did that somehow these short wearing millionaires would somehow save the country seems at the very least naive, and in my opinion insulting to the thousands of men and women in HM Forces who are actually charged with that job for real... now I'm sure that if kicking a ball around a field really could save our country, the boys and girls in the Army Navy and Air Force would be the first to buy some studded boots.... and to be honest, if the Beard is to believe the little he listens too, if it was down to the England Squad to save us, we'd be ruled by a different country each year.... which may not be a bad thing.... but yet again I digress...

So to sum up... try something new, don't worry about sport, give a big cheer to our lads and lasses in DPM, and various blues, and please please please lets start bigging up real heroes.... and as a postscript, the Future Mrs Beard and the Beard's tent are up in the Outer Hebrides, a lovely part of the world... of which more later... but until we stop hailing zeroes as heroes, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As Promised Earlier....

So, I did say more of Sex and the city later... and as a beard always keeps his word, here we are... now some of you out there are big fans of the Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle, and what I'd like to know is .. why? Why can otherwise intelligent, discerning women not see what a dreadful programme it is??? I mean, far from being this wonderful, liberating treatise on the empowerment of women, it seems to me to be merely a crassly commercial paean to commercialism and consumerism, full of the worst kind of cynical product placement.. and can someone please explain why we are supposed to find the characters attractive?? I mean, Kim Catrall has had her moments (Two Golden Balls springs to mind...) but SJP??? She has that craggy prune like skin usually only seen in Australians of a certain age... now looks aren't everything, hear you cry.. and I agree.. but the SITC girls al seem shallow, grasping bitches.. if this is what women are supposed to aspire to being, I think I'll turn gay.... and what of this preoccupation with the search for Mr Big in his suit and with his good salary.. surely an unrealistic aim, considering what most rich attractive guys in this country are like... I was unfortunately accused of liking SITC yesterday, a comment which almost resulted in a semi-well-known editor and poet taking a tumble from the Wrekin.... but I digress.... he apologised, realising himself that he was confusing it with Ally McBeal, a truly empowering show, of which I am unashamedly a fan.. despite the dancing babbies and huge tongues, Ally is firmly rooted in realism.... where the SITC girls are all well off, successful and just need to find the perfect man to gain eteernal happiness, the lesson being that if you're a wealthy columnist you'll do it easily, Ally shows us a different side to success.. that money isn't everything.. not fro nothing was the original tagline Single, Successful and Falling Apart... Ally gets many chances for happiness, all ruined by her SITC-like insistence on waiting for the perfect man, who unfortunately is an idealised version of her childhood sweetheart who is now marrieed to someone else, and isn't the guy Ally wants him to be anyway.. she flits from relationship to relationship, and we the viewer can see, as outsiders, that she could be perfectly happy with the Dr, or the Plumber, or even the man who wants to fly... but as they are not ur-Billy, she can't.... her own search for an artificial happiness is what keeps her from happiness.. and who says the yanks don't do irony! No happy endings for Miss McBeal.. none of her affairs are enriching or trouble free... plus, despite the main cast being lawyers, the characters, unlike those in SITC, are recognisable.. and they are not even all well off... Elaine the receptionist is probably one of the most important characters in the show.. the least well paid, the lowest on the social ladder, she has dreams and happiness... having decided to aim for the stars yet be contented with her lot... she gains pleasure from the simple things in life... such as gossip, easy sex, and her face bra... Its a truly empowering program.. without being too obvious it allows us to see ourselves, and helps us avoid making the same mistakes of Miss McBeal and her friends... its genuinely funny, moving and poignant, reaching genuine depths... and I think Emmeline Pankhurst would have loved its portrayal of a woman in a responsible job but who is still a woman, struggling not against men's arrogance but her own feelings as a woman, struggling to be what she has been conned into believing she should be... despite realising that it is a con.. the opposite in fact to the SITc girls, who have fallen for the con hook line and sinker, and are now seeking to perpetuate it to a new generation.. is SITC really a male supremacist ploy to undermine years of womens lib?? Who knows.. but please please please, stop the endless repeats of SITC and lets have some more Ally...and until we can all be The Biscuit, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!

Strange things on my mind....

So, last night i was wondering about chips.. not whether or not to get some, but rather what it is in the human psyche that makes one person suddenly think "I know.. I'll slice up a potato and deep fry it in oil, just to see what happens..." once there were no chips... once there was no bread... once there was no fire... now some of these things we can explain by happenstance and serendipity.. a lightning strike sets the forest on fire, people notice that its warm, and someone takes a bit home as a souvenir.... and roast meat... some lucky guy or girl finds the smel of burnt animal strangely attractive, and takes a bite....pretty soon they're doing it deliberately.. but what about bread or beer? What sort of accident ends up with a mix of grain, water, yeast and sugar all coming together and fermenting or baking... that seems like deliberate experimentation to me... but why? What would make someone look at a small, undistinguished fungus and think, "I wonder if that will make my floury paste stuff more interesting... whoops, I've dropped it into that strange rockbox thing that dom left by the fire..." Most religions are so worried about the whole thing that they bring in divine intervention, Prometheus and Loki and Saturn, giving us agriculture, fire and beer... but not necessarily in that order.... and of course, being gods (and a ttan!) there's no need to ask where they got it all from... to me, its interesting, but ultimately unimportant.. all it really illustrates is that we are now so used to thinking and so ill supplied with things to think about that we'll think about all sorts of rubbish... unless of course you are James Dyson.... but i digress... in a world full of serious problems to think of, why do we sit and think of rubbish... is it because we don't really care? Or is it that we just don't enjoy it? Or possibly the fault lies with the fact that we are constantly having a lot of our thinking done for us by that evil entity the media and its illegitimate child the government... and strangely enough I'm having trouble... not only has this strange machine just sent me to a rail timetable without my express wish (pun intended...) but it as also wiped out half of the post, and I am now trying to replicate it from memory.. despite having been told that it has been saved.... strange.... basically, I was trying to get across that we are, when it gets down to it thinking engines, and one day we will all stop thinking about the unimportant things in life, like gilette razors and that Sex and the City film (about which more at a later date...) and begin to concentrate on something important.. and then we will be doomed... so until the thought begins to contemplate the notion of crossing our minds, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!