>>Nostalgia For Infinity

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Today’s appearance in Brighton by the racist English Nationalist Alliance only managed to muster what looked like about 30-odd people. It was hard to tell, concealed as they were behind huge lines of fluorescent jackets. I’d say that Sussex Police easily had three times as many officers as the ENA had attendees and that was just escorting their march, not even counting those watching over the rest of us.

The number of various anti-racist, anti-fascist and queer activists, Brighton folk, socialists and trade unionists was a bit more impressive with something like 2-300 people joining the main march, plenty of other people showing support as we passed, and I think a few dozen anarchists running about and trying to block / tussle with the ENA.

The police forced us to move on from the station (I think, I joined the march just as it got going) and we headed along Queen’s Road, then down North Road to Victoria Gardens where we found ourselves penned in. Great. This was pretty shit but spirits were pretty high and most folks were having a laugh, enjoying the sun, listening to a few short speeches and generally not being reprehensibly awful human beings. The reprehensibly awful human beings took about an hour to show up, possibly due to interference from the anarchist bloc, police management or just through being too stupid to walk about 15 minutes to their destination.

When they eventually arrived they spent about 20 minutes listening to some speeches – thanks to getting ourselves penned we had no idea what was going on so consoled ourselves with chanting at them. Hmm. After that was up they were escorted back to the station, surrounded by a cloud of onlookers, hopefully a few of whom were sharing their opinions of the ENA and the EDL. Eventually we were let out of our pen but not before a few spirited attempts to break through the fence were made. A few people were arrested, mostly for being mouthy as far as I could see, and hopefully have been / will be released without charge (I didn’t know any of them).

After that I headed homewards and found the remnants of the ENA arrayed outside the station with a bunch of the remaining counter-protesters chanting at them. I left at this point but apparently the fun continued for a while longer when the ENA got themselves an escort to a nearby pub (would that the police offered this service to regular folk) which was again surrounded. Well, I imagine they got the idea that they’re not welcome here and easily outnumbered, even with an almost total lack of promotion for the counter-demo.

A bunch of photos and a very short video follow. I am not a good photographer I’m afraid, so suck it up.

The front of the column

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Okay yes yes I am working on some REAL posts and reviews and things. Work is hard at the moment! Which means I gotta get my relax on, rather than slaving over a hot keyboard for y’all. xx

It’s so nice to see an intelligent movie for a change. I can enjoy a dumb action flick or a sentimental tear-jerker as much as the next slob, but smart movies seem really rare if you don’t really watch many movies.

Critical reaction has been mixed. I like to think that all the people with different opinions to mine are narrow-minded or less clever than I am, because that way I get to feel intellectually superior even though I position myself as an everyman “reviewer” rather than some hoighty-toighty ivory tower “critic”.

This review is not the kind of nonsense I feared it would be when I first started writing it. I was afraid it would be another review where I’m dreaming I’m writing it and then I wake up but I’m really still dream-writing and only dreamed I woke up, but then I really wake up, but no, really I’m still dream-writing, ad infinitem (sic). This is a little bit like the movie, but most of the story challenges the audience to follow a very complex plot, rather than trying to trick the audience into falling for special-effects razzle-dazzle. There are dreams within dreams, but most of the time the audience knows when that is happening, even though this review may not really back that statement up.

So, does Inception make sense? I’m not sure. It makes more sense than most action films. It is not stupid. But it is complicated, and I’ll have to see it a couple more times before I decide if it plays fair. This sort of analytical laziness is fine because I’m a reviewer and not a critic.

On the other hand, any screenwriter who knows enough physics to understand that inside an elevator you can’t tell gravity from acceleration has my respect, because I like things that correspond with what I already know even when they’re mostly insignificant when discussing works in this medium.

This is not Leonardo DiCaprio’s best work but there are excellent actors in smaller parts, especially Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy. I’m going to assume you know the roles they play and not discuss them any further.

And Inception is popular, proving wrong the conventional wisdom that nobody wants to see films that make you think like the famously unsuccessful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Vertigo, Seven Samurai, Fight Club, City of God, or Nolan’s own Memento. Inception is already #3 on the IMDB all time greats — a little too soon but a good sign for the future of smart science fiction films, or at least an indicator of how fickle people can be when it comes to recent blockbusters.

Imagine Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan. Then keep imagining it, and pretend you’re dreaming, because I’m not going to explain this bizarre conclusion to my “review”.

[Disclaimer: I've not seen Inception. I'll probably check it out on DVD as it sounds interesting. I also have nothing against Rick Norwood. He's probably a really nice guy doing cool stuff, but this is not a good review by any stretch of the imagination.]

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