Peter Gibbons interview

A classic scene from a classic film.

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Thanks to Łukasz Łakomy.

You had me at hello

This moving and well-known scene from Jerry Maguire is one my favourites in all cinema.

I love irony of the location - a feminists’ meeting - and it’s great to see pure sincerity and old-fashioned romance between a man and a woman trumping that mindset.

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Spot the difference

Is it only my girlfriend and me, or is it obvious to everyone how Stephen Jones, gifted melody maker and quirky lyricist of Babybird fame, and Kiefer Sutherland, good actor but repeated drunk driver of 24 fame (and several good films including Flatliners beforehand) are virtually identical?

Disregarding Sutherland’s exploits off-screen and considering his no-nonsense persona Jack Bauer instead, it seems heroic characters sometimes come looking the same!

North & South: A call to romance

The following is the ending of the BBC Bafta award winning drama North & South, based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. It’s a “spoiler” in that it shows you how the story ends. It’s an “improver” in that it will remind you of a time when women were ladies and men were gentlemen, and this touching, understated, and well acted scene would surely melt the heart of even the most hardened and misguided feminist or the most loutish yob. The music, by Martin Phipps, is also beautiful and adds much to the atmosphere, so I have embedded it at high quality…

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Very often on this site I have written of the need for people to re-examine their values. It’s sad to see city women reject decent men in favour of idiots during their twenties and then wonder why they are “on the shelf” in their thirties. They should instead, of course, reject the corrupted values of junk magazines and programmes such as Sex and the City (and most other programmes on the TV for that matter), which do not have their happiness, rather only their own profits, at heart.

Many men are little better: I see the most disgraceful brash, vulgar behaviour on some occasions when I go out (the only only trouble is, of course, these same men are often the ones chosen by the women while decent men are sidelined). One can hardly stand at a bar for 10 seconds these days, for example, before a mouthful of offensive language is unloaded nearby without the slightest care. And if you were to complain to staff, who do you think would be the one asked to leave? Objection to public profanity in this decadent society would merely be considered quaint. So now I avoid pubs at weekends. Men need to grow up and understand that real fulfillment cannot be found from drunkeness, idle sex and abandon, but only from an acceptance of responsibility and a justified sense of integrity.

There needs to be a widespread return to sensitivity and dignity in city society, because it seems to fast be evaporating before our eyes, with people only ever behaving properly because they feel they “have to”, or “might get caught” - and this elimination is being celebrated. It looks a little like the fall of the Roman Empire. People need to understand that genuine consideration for others, not the pursuit of wealth, is the source of happiness. This needs to happen generally and needs to filter into personal relationships too. There needs to be a return to romance - which is an explicit demonstration of sensitivity. Like Tina Turner said:

“There’s not enough romance in this world. Too many people thinking only of themselves. You’ve got to give love for its return.”

I, however, will not be available. I’m taken - by the kind of lady I thought had been conditioned out of society all together, the kind I have wanted to find all my life. With her grace and integrity she is an antidote to the vulgarity of the society I see around me here in inner city London, and is the kind all men would desire to have and all women would aspire to be, if they only knew what was good for them. I feel rather as if I’m flying away in a helicopter from a war zone, as in the film Platoon - I feel concerned for what is left behind, but very happy to be out.

Gary Oldman

A couple of videos showing the versatility of actor Gary Oldman!

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Who Dares Wins

This classic old film illustrates what will invariably happen (and what did indeed happen in the Iranian embassy siege of 1980) when terrorists are stupid enough to invite the Special Air Service (SAS) into their lives.

The SAS are not interested in taking prisoners. They are effectively an execution squad. Part of the reason the members dress as they do is to instill fear and alarm into their enemy: you do not want to be faced with a man dressed head-to-toe in black, wearing a gas mask and carrying a submachine gun, the product of 15 years’ professional training by the British Army in how to kill, who is going to shoot you on sight.

The film shows how things can go wrong in raids (when the curtains catch fire) and it shows how weak-minded leftist liberals are often the source of the problem and not the solution, as they idealistically simplify complex issues. It is not a complete fantasy, being as it was based on the Iranian embassy incident and Lewis Collins served in the Territorial Army and applied to the SAS (he was turned down because of his high profile).

During the Iranian embassy incident, by the way, it is said that one SAS member, on realising that one of the terrorists had escaped along with the hostages, identified the man and began to drag him back inside the building. We need hardly guess what would have happened there, but he stopped (much to the chagrin, no doubt, of Mrs Thatcher) after being warned the world’s TV cameras were watching.

Watch, enjoy, and be thankful we in the civilised world have such brave men doing a job few of us could do - a last uncompromising line of defence to protect us in a world which is now far more dangerous, and more full of insanity, than when this film was made. (And if you are a religious nut - watch, learn, and think twice: when these guys arrive you won’t need your explosive belt.)

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Titanic: “A Diamond?”

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2001: A Space Odyssey

This is one of the most famous sequences in cinematic history, with an inspired choice of music.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a classic science fiction film with numerous deep philosophical themes relating to free will, artificial intelligence and ethics. It is so stylishly directed and produced it revived film noir and invented the “cyberpunk” genre. In this excerpt, from the opening of the film, replicant Leon Kowalski undergoes a test which was actually proposed by genius code-breaking mathematician Alan Turing in 1950 (”The Turing Test“). If a machine’s replies are indistinguishable from those of a human being, Turing proposed, then we should grant that machine the same sentient status as a human being…

Advertising Lies

Sitting in the cinema waiting to watch The Bourne Ultimatum this evening (action-packed thriller - if highly contrived - starring the likable Matt Damon) I was again subjected to an onslaught of ludicrous advertising, the claims of which made the subsequent film seem relatively realistic.

First there was British Airways showing lots of smiling happy people on the ground then arbitrarily linking this to themselves, saying “upgrade to British Airways”. There was no perceivable connection between two.

This was nothing, however, compared with the next treat: this was Christian brainwashing organisation The Alpha Course, who had the ignorant cheek to devalue our lives by portraying human beings as products on conveyor belts, then asking “Is there more to life than this?”. The answer to the question is 1) “More than likely no, nothing at all more” and 2) - as Richard Dawkins has said - “How much more do you want?!“. Christians are so unbelievably greedy. The world is a wonderful, fascinating place and they should be happy with one life. It is disgraceful that they devalue it and always want more. They should concentrate on understanding this life by closing their bibles, permanently, and opening some science books well before concerning themselves with any other lives. There is enough here to occupy them forever, if they would only care to open their eyes. Also they should stop preying on the weak and the vulnerable.

Indeed the only decent advert before the film began was one for the Disability Agenda, which showed a troubling portrayal of the way many disabled people are bullied by those around them. So let’s be clear about that issue as well: in the case of someone bullying somebody less fortunate than themselves, I think we all know who the disabled one really is - very seriously disabled at that.