Groggy on Movie Pilot!

A few weeks back, the fine folks at Moviepilot.com asked Groggy to contribute to their site. Yesterday they published my first piece, asking whether historical accuracy in movies is important. For the three of you who don't know my real name, here's your chance to find out.

Gender Neutral Toilets to Become Shooters Galleries?

Ah, Brighton. Progressives cannot rest on their laurels here. As one exciting progressive new idea is implemented, there are a thousand other ideas waiting for implementation. There is always something that needs to be done - something ordinary citizens of the city of Brighton and Hove just wouldn't have thought up. Yes, as Caroline Lucas, Jason Kitcat and the army of progressives survey Brighton, there is always 'room for improvement'. You might say, 'But hang on, that's a bit off!' but don't worry. Don't complain. Remember, progressives are more evolved than you. They are the experts. They are cleverer and they have a foresight that you will never attain. Oh, they are so wise!

So, if you are a Brightonian and you occasionally have a little stroll along the Undercliff Pass leading from Brighton Marina to Rottingdean, then you'll have noticed a little 'reconstruction' taking place. There existed, not too long ago, some public toilets. These toilets, to the untrained eye, were perfectly adequate, but your eyes haven't been fully trained! No. These toilets were vastly inadequate for Brighton and Hove - the great 'city by the sea'. "What was wrong with these toilets!?", I hear you cry.

The answer, of course, is that these toilets were not gender neutral toilets. They were not - but they very soon will be and oh, what a delight that shall be for all, young and old! How did Brighton cope before the gender neutral toilet? Yes, when ordinary citizens survey Brighton, they see things that could be improved, for some its pot holes, for some, rubbish collection, for others, high rates of crime, but few are so wise as to appreciate the wisdom of the gender neutral toilet. Would you have thought of that one? Me neither. Thank Heaven for progressives who can see the gender divisions in society and cause peace and harmony to flow like a river of sewage, straight into the English Channel.

But wait...there is more. The progressive movement in Brighton has yet more to offer. Brighton is a hedonistic town which promotes a lifestyle that regressive people used to think of as one of 'vice'. Now that 'vice' is merely an instrument in which progressives hope the heads of those who disagree with them will be placed, rather than anything to do with 'morality', a new dawn of utopian happiness for society has arrived.

A lot of people come here with various lifestyles that, still, people - even your trendiest liberal - finds difficult to deal with. Certain drug-taking habits, like the shooting up of heroin and the smoking of crack cocaine, for example, still have a degree of stigma attached to them. These are enlightened times, however, and despite the enlightenment of the times, as evidenced by such natural phenomena as the rising and setting of the sun, 'substance misuse' is rampant on the streets of Brighton, in its hostels and the flats of those who misuse substances. What to do? Well, the bright sparks in the Green Party have had an idea. Why not create a 'safe place' where addicts can go and shoot up 'safe heroin' so that everything is 'safe'?

Obviously, Caroline Lucas, Jason Kitcat and all the wise ones of Brighton's political elite know better than we, so when I suggest that it doesn't matter how many 'safe places' you create for people to take 'class A' drugs in (Aren't these classifications just so unnecessary, like 'male' and 'female' really!), they will still go and take drugs and shoot up in your glorious new gender neutral toilets - my views should be ignored. I'm just an ignorant simpleton, because, you know, if there is one thing that everyone who has taken heroin says about heroin, its that after one or two hits in a 'safe place', the need for another sixteen hits of heroin ceases pretty much immediately - especially if you had a 'safe' amount in a 'safe' place. Yes, the smack addicts of Brighton and Hove will be model citizens after 6 months of the 'shooting galleries of Brighton'. As long as the State approves of a certain behaviour, like vice or crime, vice and crime soon disappear altogether.

They'll never leave needles in Brighton's toilets again because they've been 'sorted out' at one of Caroline Lucas's 'safe shooting galleries'. So obviously, if someone goes and shoots up smack in one of Brighton's gender neutral toilets, leaves the needle for an elderly lady to examine, goes into one of the shooting galleries, goes over, overdoses and dies, that won't be your fault will it, progressives of Brighton? The first body bag coming out of a 'shooters gallery' won't be great publicity for Caroline Lucas or her party of progressives, but, hey, at least she'll have the population reduction euthanasia centre she always wanted, as well as the gender neutral toilets where sexually predatory men can have their way with men or women or whoever is in-between much easier than they could before. But don't listen to me, I'm just a regressive - a bit of a pessimist - uneducated in the ways of progressive wisdom. I'm sure both the gender neutral toilets and the shooters galleries will work out just fine. Hey, Caroline, why not just combine both ideas and make the gender neutral toilets into the shooters gallery? I mean, they're going to do it anyway, right?

I can't wait for the BBC's first documentary on the project - 'Taking Smack with Caroline Lucas'. Don't put it on after the watershed because, I mean, what's the point of a watershed? This is just another form of classification! Obviously, there will be some rabid reactionaries out there, in Brighton and beyond, who consider that Caroline Lucas is 'endorsing' or 'promoting' or in some way 'condoning' the heroin problem in Brighton, by promoting the idea of people taking drugs in a centre provided by herself and the wise leaders of Brighton and Hove. Apparently, someone has been driving around Brighton with a white van that has 'Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead' emblazoned on it. Someone needs to tell him (or her, indeed, oh no...another gender stereotype!) that they are mistaken. Caroline Lucas is still very much alive. Personally, I think Caroline Lucas should change her name. It's too obvious that she is a woman. For a society that has rejected gender roles, stereotypes and aims solely for gender neutrality, Caroline should adopt instead a number for herself and lead the way. Why not, six hundred, three score and...

I don't know. I can't get that worked up about gender neutral toilets. It's more concerning that they are saying they're gender neutral. Like, they see gender as some kind of problem that needs to be overcome or something. Creepy.

Happy Birthday Will

And a Happy Feastday to English men and Women everywhere - today is St George's Day - and what did he do?

Why slay the dragon, of course, oops, sorry Wales.

But here are some lines that all Catholics who oppose Same Sex "Marriage" and the Etonisation of our religious and social values by one, David Cameron, should know by heart....author, William Shakespeare who was born on St George's Day.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!' 

Vive la Prance!

Today, it is highly probable that French Premier Hollande's government will approve legislation permitting Same Sex "Marriage"

                             "Not tonight Joseph"

Modernité

Sodomité

Bestialité

Our Lady of Lourdes - Pray for France

St Denis - Pray for France

St Bernadette - Pray for France

St Jeanne D'Arc - Pray for France

St Michel - Pray for France

St Fiacre - Pray for France

St Jean Vianney - Pray for France

None But the Brave

None But the Brave (1965) was among my most-watched childhood movies: AMC ran it almost weekly, and it made passable filler between Rio Bravo and Patton. However cool it seemed at the time, Frank Sinatra's only directorial effort is an embarrassing pacifist whine, pitched at the tritest level imaginable. Think John Boorman's Hell in Pacific re-envisioned by Stanley Kramer and you're there.

During the height of World War II, a squad of American Marines is shot down over a remote Pacific Island. Captain Bourke (Clint Walker) takes command over the objections of Lieutenant Blair (Tommy Sands). Bourke discovers they're not alone: an isolated Japanese garrison remains on the island, commanded by sensitive Lieutenant Kuroki (Tatsuya Mihashi). The two sides skirmish repeatedly until Kuroki enlists the American's doctor (Frank Sinatra) to operate on an injured soldier. Bourke and Kuroki initiate a truce which lasts until Bourke's men contact the US Navy.

The basic problem is None But the Brave simply isn't credible. WWII's Pacific Theater was a nasty race war, both sides viewing the other as subhuman. Japanese soldiers habitually massacred Allied civilians, bayoneted or beheaded captured troops and worked survivors to death in slave labor camps. Allied troops weren't shy about killing Japanese wholesale either, not helped by the latter's tendency towards banzai charges. Neither side took many prisoners; why house and feed enemy "vermin" when you can exterminate them?

Mind you, this isn't to imply moral equivalence between the Allies and Imperial Japan. But the fact remains, neither GIs nor Japanese had much interest in peaceful co-existence. Some conflicts can't be resolved by cigarettes and painting smiley faces on a leg stump (yes, that happens). Maybe an Eastern Front epic with the Waffen SS befriending NKVD Commissars would strain credulity further, but not much. Even as an allegory, Brave's set up feels unacceptably phony.

As a Japanese-American co-production when "Yellow Peril" resentment still lingered, Brave's intent is admirable. But Sinatra ruins our good will by ramming the theme down our throats. Early on, a scene of Kuroki chewing out his fanatical Sergeant (Takeshi Kato) is intercut with Bourke and Blair arguing. Kuroki's pedantic narration further underlines the message. Worst of all are two flashbacks that amuse rather than enlighten. Things end in a bloodbath followed by the most on-the-nose "message" ever committed to celluloid. Like many war movies, Brave has its cake and eats it too, presenting thrilling action while whining about the pointlessness of it all.

The best that can be said of Sinatra as director is that he doesn't hog the camera. Harold Lepstein captures beautiful Hawaiian scenery but the photography is rote, mechanical hackwork. Every scene seems to run a beat too long. Even the action feels sloppy: Sinatra films the skirmishes in close-up and medium shot, establishing no spatial geography between the Americans and Japanese. We never figure out where one side is in relation to the other, which would matter if we cared.

In front of the camera, Sinatra reverts to lazy Rat Pack mode, swilling booze, grinning incessantly and occasionally slapping somebody. Aside from his operation centerpiece, Old Blue Eyes might be comic relief. Clint Walker handles his He-Man leader competently, while Tasuya Mihashi gives a respectable turn as his Japanese counterpart. Stealing the show, in the worst possible way, is Tommy Sands. His bellowing Sergeant Rock caricature plays like a drunken hick R. Lee Ermey, generating gales of laughter with each slurred scream. You'll either find Sands hilarious or want to punch him in the throat.

None But the Brave is a sad mess. The innovative idea of an evenhanded war movie disappears amidst reams of cliches, position speeches and bad photography. All that remains are Sinatra's good intentions - and lousy direction.

So, Guys? Have You Set a Date Yet?

You have to laugh otherwise you cry.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Also, has anyone else noticed that more or less as soon as Pope Paul VI instituted a World Day for Vocations, the Church entered into a vocations crisis? I expect that in the 'bad old days', every day was a day of prayer for vocations...

Help! Ayuda! Au secours!

                   

Urgent help is needed. Not for me you understand but for a friend who is battling on behalf of the old rite Latin Mass - on behalf of all of us really.

I cannot say more, such are the forces ranged against those who labour to bring the Extraordinary Form of Mass back to our churches that matters are most sensitive and confidences have to be made.

But, if you can bring yourself to add a small novena to your already overloaded schedule of prayers, I know that success will be ensured and blessings brought upon your household.

The intercessor in this case is our blessed mother, Our Lady Undoer of Knots, because, of course, my friend faces a series of complications that must be overcome and who better than the mother of God to ask her Divine Son, on our behalf, to cut through those knots.

If you are a priest please consider dedicating a Mass to this cause - it really is gravely important and vital to the cause of evangelisation.

And, possibly, one day, all will be able to be revealed.

This simple novena to Our Lady Undoer of Knots begins today and ends on Tuesday 30th April.

And, on behalf of my friend, thank you.

 Virgin Mary, Mother of fair love, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exists in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the snarl of knots that exist in my life.
You know very well how desperate I am, my  pain and how I am bound by these knots.
Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of his children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life.
No one, not even the Evil One himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.
Powerful Mother, by your grace and intercessory power with Your Son and My Liberator, Jesus, take into your hands today this knot...(please remove the obstacles faced in this project) I beg you to undo it for the glory of God, once for all, You are my hope.
O my Lady, you are the only consolation God gives me, the fortification of my feeble strength, the enrichment of my destitution and with Christ the freedom from my chains.
Hear my plea.
Keep me, guide me, protect me, o safe refuge!

Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for me

NB: I am trying to produce a tally of the number of novenas that are committed to. Please leave a brief "count me in" in the com box please, thank you.