Here we are again, Sunday evening (might be midday morning or whatever for you) I’ve got a mug of tea and half a tube of smarties so let’s get to it. It’s my birthday; I have made it through another year without dying, well done me! Inevitably this week has seen me a bit obsessed with mortality and what I’m doing with my life. Don’t worry though; this isn’t going to turn into a self help thing with me expressing all my wants and fears. I only mention it because of what’s going on around me.

The last Hobbit film has been released, bringing with it the end of our adventures into the fascinating mind of Tolkien, which does sadden me. The Lord of the Rings is, in my opinion, up there as one of the greatest series of books ever written and the films over the years have been a great journey. The end of this film era did get me thinking about films in general and sequels in particular. The new Star Wars, the last Hunger Games, a new Jurassic Park, Paddington Bear, remake of Annie to mention just a few and it left me wondering, what’s going on in Hollywood? If it ‘ain’t broken, don’t fix it’ so why all these remakes? I have to say, none of the recent remakes have really taken my breath away, no story has really gripped me in years {maybe that’s something to do with my age, who knows} but with the amount of stories out there, films should be bringing us interesting and unique stories that challenge us, confuse us, make us examine our own lives, instead of just retelling the same old stuff over and over and over again. It’s strange that at a time where there are more people working in entertainment than ever and we can find anything you want on the internet (there will be a youtube for you) that there mainstream is so boring, the same old films being re hashed and re hashed. The super hero genre is a prime example. I have enjoyed all of them really; from the Avengers to Thor even man of steel but I am getting rather bored with it all. The same plots, the same characters, rehashing the same stuff. Don’t misunderstand me, I think there is a space for such like the Avengers Age of Ultron, Batman vs Superman – but it does seem that the industry is playing safe, wouldn’t it be better if they took a risk and tried out some other stories instead, something new and fresh?
Going back to the final Hobbit film, Battle of five armies – it was amazing, I loved it. My only criticism is that the original Lord of the Rings looked a hundred times better – the Hobbit films used far too much CGI green screens for my liking, it lost the realism the cinematography that the Lord of the Rings had, there was motion blur in these – one can CGI too much.
Carrying on the theme of re hashing stuff – news is that we are, apparently, back in Iraq helping fight Isis. My issue with this is simple; if you want to fight them then do so, fight them but stop half arsing it – for example if we mean business then drop all the special forces the UN can get their hands on into Syria and Iraq, give them laser designators and tell them this is your operation, help to protect people. It would necessitate having air assets in the air at all times to back them up. Continuing my theme of rehashing old stuff Nigel Farage has been in all the British papers recently for his thoughts on mums breast feeding. His comments were inappropriate, as usual. Let’s be clear who is backing this lot. They are bank rolled by known racist and extreme rightwing supporters, four of whom are on watch lists. I will describe two for fun (keeping names out of it of course as I am not looking to be libel) One backer is a porn king who has given around £300,000. Another who has given undisclosed amounts of money is a known anti feminist and is quoted and saying women should be in the kitchen and that women shouldn’t wear trousers as its unattractive!! Really!!!! This guy is backing ukip, doesn’t that say it all? Let’s look at Mr Farage himself, the man who can’t argue anything if he can’t link it to foreigners. A privately educated man with a stockbroker father – he is a wealthy man trying to be ‘a common bloke!!’ In reality this is a man so out of touch with the normal person, or for that matter any person ever, that it’s crazy to trust him – as a European member of parliament he spent the past 20 years on the gravy train, not helping anyone but himself. I don’t think we should hand over the keys to the castle to this manipulative xenophobe just because he likes stout ale. I say this to anyone who agrees with his views on how we should treat disability or immigrant workers – spend an afternoon working with disabled kids or go and work for a day in the fields picking produce – and let’s see if you are still hell bent on UKIP afterwards, meeting real people, dealing with their real day to day issues can change views.
As always, I hope you have a good week. Feel free to share this if you thought it was interesting and I hope the Christmas cheer has reached you. I hope to upload a new video on the youtube channel next week so keep watching out on twitter for more details. Have a good week.