There are plenty of fun, popular Sci-Fi films on my Top 100 list, honest guv. ET, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future etc. It is just that the random number generator keeps picking the ultra obscure, arty sort of stuff. Well, after this insane latest offering, I've got news for you random number generator, I'm sacking you off in favour of a good old fashioned 30 sided dice!
(Now watch me get mysteriously murdered in my sleep by a sentient random number generator).
The day had started off pretty frenetic, as I headed into York City Centre during May half term week, well that was a daft idea! Tourist ants blocking my progress at every turn.
A baby dropped it's pub mascot in the street, Gaz the Giraffe, a vague acquaintance of Colin the Cauliflower, as I make my way to York's only pound shop, Poundland .....
I was hoping for a cheap pie, maybe a full Fray Bentos range, and maybe a small selection of cheap semi-popular bottles of ale. Foiled on both accounts, maybe Home Bargains out at Foss Islands retail park would've done me better? Might give it a go in a fortnight.
So I go instead to the House of the Trembling Madness bottle shop - where I bought two ridiculously priced beers. One from Belgium in solidarity with Mummy & Daddy Sci-Fri, holidaying in Brussels from today. And the other, from Poland, because that is where tonight's film is from.
And from there, I found an overpriced 'Ye Olde Worlde Piee Shoppe' on York's most shambolic street, The Shambles. Tourists were lining the pavement photographing an unseen entity, possibly an alien craft, so I squeeze along to the side window where an attractive pie lady asks if she could put the two pies, Wild Boar & Huntsman, in the same bag. I agree, even though I wanted to say no.
Huntsman pie? Presume it is made from deadly spiders.
I add last week's 'Atlantis' to the beer range, but I only end up drinking the weird two foreign ones, meaning it rolls over to week 11.
Then it was time for a bit of Hull City Dr Who chic .....
Shades & bucket hat, mushy peas and Space Raiders ..... check!
And this week's 'in focus' Space Raider alien is the beef bloke , Giant Gruber ....
Funny he lives in Zouch, where I once had half a poor quality Bass in a pub on a canal, possibly called the Rose & Crown. Didn't see forests or caves, but then you wouldn't wanna bump into Gruber on a dark night would you, and that goes for the Allo Allo bloke too. 'Astroturf grazed bovine' I WOULD try though.
It was on with more tunes from Uncle Matt's Space Mix, a nice mixture of the more popular and the obscure .......
I wasn't sure which pie was which, but the toughness and weird smell made me soon aware it was Wild Boar - one of those meats you suspect shouldn't be for human consumption, a bit like cat. But overall, once I'd remembered that last minute Bisto, I was happy with my efforts.
I'd already pretty much finished the Belgian beer by the time the film started. Never been a fan of Belgian beers, never really 'got' them, but at 4.5% this one at least didn't taste like battery acid, in fact it reminded me of those 'Lagers of the World' selections that Mummy Sci-Fi used to buy me when I was 17, which I'd enjoy in my bedroom with a bit of HIGNFY or Fast Show on my tiny NEC television on a Friday night. Ah, those were the days! Sort of.
It was only thanks to someone on Reddit who shared a link to a weird website featuring 'Eastern European Apocalypse' movies.
The story of the film is almost as crazy as the film itself. They spent two years 1976-77 making it, before the Polish government thought it was a critique of them and ordered everything be destroyed!
Well, they smuggled some of it out, some was lost, so only 80% of the film remains, and they finished it off ten years later as best as they could.
If I said it was heavy going, that'd be an understatement. And when you add that the subtitles came up in the centre of the screen, and that the director narrates over the missing bits with scenes from 1980's Poland whizzing along in the background, not only was it almost impossible to follow, it was almost impossible to penetrate. Oh and the characters with their ridiculously long political monologues, close to insanity, wailing down the lens of the camera, NOT to mention it lasts nearly 3 hours, make it one of the hardest films I've watched in my ENTIRE life!
And yet, I stuck with it and sort of rallied for the final half an hour, so it MUST have had something.
And the film buffs of course, love it. In that "I'm slightly cleverer than you" sort of way.
Chance of a pub or bar scene? Impossible. I'd give you an idea on the plot but I've rambled long enough.
Right, let's wield the D30 to see which film we'll be watching a week on Wednesday night .....
It is a 'lower' 11 from film 25 .... so that's 'Ghost in the Shell' (1995). Japanese Anime ugghhh, NO must be open minded! See you then,
SiFi Si