Commentary:

I started writing a couple of quick, throwaway responses to the comments on the last entry but I just couldn't help myself. Here are the full-blown, ill-thought-out and rambling replies.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: okay, first thing here is the excess surrounding this film. It cost $255 million to make and to my tastes at least, wasn't anything special. It was dull. It lacked a coherent plot. It doesn't matter how good the CGI is - show me a pirate with a head like that of a Hammerhead Shark and I know it's CGI. I can see where the money went, and it's a crying shame some of it wasn't diverted to the script-writing engine room.

The thing that hacks me off most, though, wasn't the crappiness of the film. It was the blind consumption by the world and its dog (myself included) of said crappiness. I wandered along to a film that I knew already was never going to exceed mildly entertaining mediocrity. What happened to my critical faculties, and by extension to those of the several million other viewers taken for a (boring) ride? As I write this, $540,300,444 - over half a billion dollars - has been spent by people willingly going to see it.

Why didn't several million people choose to see Hard Candy or Thank You for Smoking instead? Both of which, incidentally, are absolute gems. Flawed gems perhaps, but at least they get points for trying. Why has the world poured half a billion dollars into the coffers of an amoral ethical vacuum like Walt Disney? You can argue at least some of the 50 million or so people who've seen PotC2 must have enjoyed it, but did Disney really need to make a profit of $300 million dollars off the back of that? Of course not - it's a company driven by the market to make shitloads of money to keep its shareholders happy.

In summary, our expectations and willingness to pursue them have been worn smooth by an avalanche of gaudy mediocrity in the name of making a buck. That is what is wrong with the film.

Phew.

Optimus Prime - cocktail edition: ah, now this is the clever bit. Keef writes:

That name is not to be used lightly! It had better be a bloody good cocktail ;)

I was in the Wash the other day, idly reading their cocktail menu. The name "The Beamer" caught my eye, and I wondered what it was.

It's Jim Beam and coke. (Wow, I mistyped "coke" as "cock" there. My typed correspondence revolves around a particular type of joke - can you guess what it is yet?) I mean seriously, whisk(e)y and coke doesn't qualify as a cocktail. Cuba Libre is rum and coke, or Bacardi and Coca-Cola for the branding whores. Okay, okay, for me. You see, Optimus Prime could be something monumentally mundane and still get away with it. I propose...I dunno, Red Kola and gin. Winner!