Mental Challenges

The bookcases are falling, in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Waterstones, one of Britain’s leading book retailers has been forced the close a large proportion of their stores due to a recent dip in sales. Why is this? Amazon. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, there’s hundreds of them and they’re all putting these atmospheric little book hoardings out of business with their ridiculously cheap prices and lack of travel-time. For example, I recently purchased Leo Tolstoy’s Russian epic ‘War and Peace’ off of Amazon for a mere two English pounds. You heard right, 994 pages of classic 19th century literature for £2. The point of this block of motionless jumbo is not to rant at Amazon for their fantastically small prices, no all of that (^) was the set up for precisely why I bought ‘War and Peace’. 

It’s easy enough to set yourself a challenge, a target, an objective, whatever you want to call it. But to set a reliable challenge, well that’s pretty hard. I personally find myself setting myself little goals and recording them in a nice long list (arranged neatly with my other lists). This prevents boredom and eventually leads to happiness, or so I’ve been told. Having completed several of these goals, I eventually reached the more… silly ones. And sure as hell “Read ‘War and Peace’” was written there in black and white. But on first glimpse, I thought nothing of it, instead passing over to the line “See ‘The Graduate’” instead (which, by the way, is a fantastic movie). It was not until last week, which I re-discovered this goal after a rather interesting trip through Amazon’s book market. Thousands of classics which I’d always seen myself reading at some point in life, all of which priced at £2. I couldn’t help myself and so, almost as a joke, me and a friend both purchased the biggest, thickest and most pretentious of the pile, which happened to be ‘War and Peace’. 

The book arrived today, classical war portrait cover, blurb blotted with eager and over-indulgent spiel about “Tolstoy’s views on history”. All 994 pages staring me in the face and yet I cannot for the life of me be bothered to raise a finger and turn the first page. It’s my brain, it immediately shuts down at even the thought of such a monstrous act of boredom. This is not only representative of the ‘War and Peace’ debacle, but many others in tail. My quest to finally see ‘Citizen Kane’ has not yet ended, nor has my recent urge to use a typewriter. These goals which seem simple enough, and require little thought always end up being sidelined for no particular reason. Maybe it’s just me, who knows, but this idea of setting myself tasks has exploded within myself. Meaning revision is impossible. Meaning exams equals failure. 

Will I ever get round to seeing ‘Citizen Kane’? Yes. Will I ever use a typewriter? Most certainly. Will I ever finish ‘War and Peace’? Erm… I’ll get back to you. 

One Brain-Fart of a Poem

So I was sitting in Business Studies at school today, as you do, in the middle of a controlled assessment. To those unaware, it's a silent work thing, which I had finished. I sat and stared absent-mindfully at the nearest wall when I suddenly had a brain-fart and scrawled the following on the nearest piece of paper I could find. It's far from perfect or even finished but who knows, maybe one day I'll be famous and you can all say "Hey, I remember reading that when it was first on his blog!". No one will EVER say that, but it's a nice idea. 

He lived as many but died as one, 

Under the fist of a social bomb. 

Crawling and cawing with hideous life, 

Beneath the circuits of his android wife. 

A borg sent forward yet backwards for love, 

Not a force from below but a force from above. 

Garnished with beauty but devoid of emotion, 

It exists without sadness in a forgotten notion. 

Outside, in the distance the conversation collapses, 

A bothered brain implodes as time elapses. 

If not for the minds of the tortured living, 

Live not be the evil of gross unforgiving. 

May joy be as fragrant as life in a day, 

For the waiting soul of the Head doth pray. 

Worth A Thousand Words?

They always say a picture is worth a thousand words. So here it is, a picture that has the potential to be worth a thousand words but in the end, is just Andrew Garfield in a Spiderman costume. A tight fitting one at that. But this picture is much more, much much more. If not faked, this is the first official (and I use the term lightly) glimpse we have had the new Spiderman movie franchise. There’s been a few cheeky paparazzi shots of Andrew Garfield and in particular, Emma Stone, shooting scenes for the re-boot but nothing as amazing and juicy as this. 

So what do we know? Roughly a year ago Sam Raimi pitched his idea for Spiderman 4 to Sony Pictures (the production company who fund it) and after the cock-up that was Spiderman 3 (even though I quite enjoyed it) Sony decided to make Mr Raimi jump through a few hoops. The original idea was to have John Malkovich play The Vulture, a rather menacing aging fellow who can fly and also have Anne Hathaway as Black Cat, but the story would be morphed so that Black Cat became The Vulture’s daughter, then she would play the whole villainess style Catwoman-type deal. With me still? Good, then Raimi wanted Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman (now married/engaged to Mary Jane) to deliberately murder The Vulture and ashamed at what he has become, throw away his alter-ego (quite literally throwing the Spiderman costume away). Then he would regather the super-hero persona in Spiderman 5 after Mary Jane gives birth to a little girl. Sony didn’t seem to like this much so they pretty much put Raimi on the chopping block and gave him his marching orders, supposably after (according to a lot of movie news websites) John Malkovich had signed his contract. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and the rest of the original cast followed. Then a few weeks later came news of a re-boot.

Sony announced that the Spiderman series would be re-booted, still separate from the Marvel Universe (Spiderman is owned by Sony, not Marvel) and that Marc Webb, veteran of 1 movie (the truly stunning (500) Days of Summer) would helm said picture. Buzz began to circulate about possible ideas and casting choices and many assumed (and still do) that the movie will take a more teen-drama twist and be more about the life of a troubled young-boy as opposed to the fantastic action-driven script of the original Raimi effort. Casting rumours spread like wildfire but most were surprised when British actor Andrew Garfield was chosen ahead of the likes of Anton Yelchin to play Peter Parker. Later on Emma Stone beat out Mary Elizabeth Winstead to secure the role of the female lead, originally thought to be Mary Jane but later turning out to be Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone is a natural blonde apparently). Martin Sheen was confirmed as Uncle Ben then fIlming started roughly a month or so ago and there’s been the odd set photos leaked, a couple you can probably see darted around this article. So that’s all we know. 

My 2 cents on the matter however, is radically different to most people I know. I don’t embrace the idea of a re-boot but I reckon it’ll be nice to see a fresh twist on Spiderman’s story. I’ve been a fan of Spiderman since a very young age and one thing the first of Raimi’s efforts did was to modernise the super-hero story. Before 2002’s Spiderman there was one X-Men movie which, although very good, was a little daft for my taste. Spiderman suddenly made having super-powers gritty and cool, with just a smear of blood here and there. The casting was spot-on and the choice of villain was also right on the money. Sadly, for me, it just got worse and by the 3rd movie, the series was running out of steam. With a new team behind the re-boot and an ambitious new director we can hope for a surprising treat, even if he is a little un-experienced in the action field of cinema. My only beef being Andrew Garfield’s position as Peter Parker. I’m not condemning the choice, he was great in The Social Network, but that’s because he was in a supporting role. He’s yet to tackle a big beefy lead role with a bunch of stunt work and his American accent isn’t quite perfect. Although age-wise and appearance-wise he’s a better fit than most others, I still can’t place him beyond Tobey Maguire who, to me, was, is and always will be Spiderman. With the re-boot I like to look at it as a very much “get what you’re given” scenario. The circumstances could be better but I have nothing but hope for the new project and if the picture of Garfield in full Spidey gear is anything to go by, it should be different to say the least. The Spider on the chest is a little thinner and longer, the gloves are a different design and other features have been slightly changed. I don’t want to really go on record with anything about the new suit until we take a glimpse at the mask (it’s something that’s ruined previous adaptations) but I’m pretty confident that the re-boot is going in the right direction. Onwards and upwards as they say!