“Bigmouth Strikes Again!”

Good afternoon Dear Reader

Here within and withal is our final epistle in our triptych of transgressions, at least within our lights. Today we turn those lights, cameras, actions on the world of cinema and list the factors and features of the silver screen that leave us disgruntled. As before, all lack of gruntles are purely our own and no crabs were harmed in the making of this blog post. And yes, we will be using Smiths song titles again.

Paint A Vulgar Picture

The lights go down and the music goes up. Instantly we are dropped into a world of extreme excitement as a thrill inducing, vertiginous sequence with state of the art graphics shows the protagonists in action, probably, at this stage, foiled by the antagonist. There is then maybe a brief moment of quiet where we at least learn everyone’s names, and then, rather like the first day at work, we are spiralling back into action again. Perhaps there is a training exercise, or a chase, or some such. Pause for recap and repeat, each time louder, brighter and with more effects.

The lights go up as the credits role and my, haven’t we seen a wonderful spectacle. As for character development, theme, plot and so on, well, they weren’t that important, were they? Of course, it all makes for first rate entertainment, that makes an hour or so pass quickly, but without the depth of story, it is all so much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

There Is A Light and It Never Goes Out

There is a famous joke whereby a gentleman (a Mr Lenny Henry) enters a shop specialising in recorded music. He enquires after a particular piece of music and is offered the “single mix, 12 inch mix, dance mix or instrumental remix”. The gentlemen in question replies, “Could I have the one where they get it right?” We have the same feeling these days about movies. The scourge of sequels is sufficiently well known to merit no further discussion, but it seems these days we have extended editions, directors cuts, reboots, deleted scenes, alternate endings, digitally enhance versions, et cetera et cetera. One no longer knows which version of the film one is watching. We would most heartily exhort the entertainment industry to focus on making the film once and, in the words of the joke, “get it right”.

What She Said

We fear this may be a sign of ageing and impending deafness, but as we don’t encounter this problem in real life, we suspect not. The object of our ire in this section is that most pernicious and diabolical curse of the modern age: mumbling. Yes, you heard us right, which is one advantage of enunciating with clarity. So many movies today seem to feature the scourge of mumbling characters that no visit to the cinema is complete without a hissed “what did he just say” comment. Maybe it’s a stab at realism, maybe it’s what the “cool kids” do these days, but whatever it is we find it (indistinguishable words).

So there it is, Gentle Reader. We have usefully concluded then that in writing our novel we should shy away from characters that are disinteresting mumblers, from scenes of excessive violence and banal humour, from cliched genre tropes and from unsatisfactory endings. Suitably forewarned we shall approach our task with a beady eye for such misdemeanours and shall vigorously excise any examples.

We hope you have enjoyed our cerberus of criticism and continue to have a pleasant weekend. Next week we shall endeavour to “accentuate the positive” and post something much less disparaging but no less enlightening.