The Happening, priority boarding on budget airlines, and Kryptonite padlocks

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK
Film Review : The Happening
If you ever go out to find a restaurant with a crowd of people I recommend you go in the first restaurant you come to, as otherwise you will walk around town all night, with one person or another rejecting each restaurant for some reason or another. Similarly, every once in a while I watch a film that's someone else's choice. It's pretty rare, but sometimes it brings a good surprise, sometimes not.

On this occasion I ended up watching 'The Happening'. When I heard of it I thought it was something to do with the song from the sixties by The Supremes. It isn't.

Mark Wahlberg plays Elliot Moore, a science schoolteacher who hears that there's some cataclysmic happening going on and tries to get out of town with his wife, a maths teacher & his daughter and his wife. They get on a train going out of town, but gradually they find their journey taking dramatic turns for a variety of reasons, mostly to do with this weird phenomenon that is causing people to take their own lives in allegedly gruesome ways.

I say allegedly, because although I can, and do, flinch with the scaredy cats when it comes to on screen-gore, this film had very little worthy of it. When I react with shock to films, my friends will usually ask if I'm all right and offer to leave. I generally don't notice I've been doing it particularly. One friend was so upset by my convulsions in the remake of 'House Of Wax' that they made me leave with them. I found that extremely irritating as I'd had to pay for the film and watch the dreadful thing, only to be marched out before I'd seen it completely and put myself in a position to write a damning critique.

The Happening is an apocalypto horror without enough well done gore to be a classic of the genre. I was flinching at what shock I might be about to receive only for it not to be particularly frightening. The film also featured some fairly disastrously timed schmaltz that was lame even for an incurable romantic like myself.

I was drawn to a comparison with the original 'War Of The Worlds' from some fifty plus years before. That was a film that drew you in with its Technicolor glow, scared you with its special effects, and moved you with the plight of its heroes, and the way decent human behaviour was corrupted by fear of impending disaster.

After all this time, this 2008 equivalent isn't as scary, although it is obviously trying to shock, and it doesn't connect with the personas of its protagonists who are barely as compelling as the cinema going public. In fact the guy I warmed most to was the guy defending hot dogs as a foodstuff whilst they all made their run from the deadly phenomenon.

Another aspect of the film is the thin dressing up of an environmental message. The apocalypse is supposed to be some kind of response to man crapping on the world. It's laboured and unconvincing. Compare that to H.G. Wells 'War Of The World' book where the Martians were an allegory for the way Victorian Britain was colonising the world. Now that's a powerful insight. Personally if we're going to make some blunt connections I'd like to see a film that makes the connection between the real eco-disasters that have hit the USA and its contempt for global action on environmental change, and for some of the victims of those disasters.
Overall Review : Thumbs down. Please note that although I'm not a fan of this genre or an expert in it, I believe that if you are you will find it rather disappointing.

Travel News : Ryan Air Priority Boarding
What a fascinating concept priority boarding on Ryan Air is. Whatever next? Priority queuing in banks? Priority standing areas in gig venues? Superior versions of free newspapers? Luxury beggars that give you special blessings from God when you give them enough money? I think that if you can be bothered to pay for priority boarding on a Ryan Air flight then you are basically saying that you can polish a turd. I'm afraid I'm unable to agree, but go ahead. You're helping them make profits and stay in business for the rest of us.

Hardware Review : Kryptonite padlocks
The concept of a padlock named after the substance that causes comic-book hero Superman to go weak at the knees is an interesting one. Certainly this chunky lock, which when appropriately fitted gives no open screws to the world to be undone or bits of metal to be cut or bent out of shape, has an instant deterrent effect on the Lex Luthers and Braniacs of this world. Then again the fact that you are using such an elite lock may draw attention to the place where you put it. Some of them appear on the back doors of white vans or those involved in building work. Another deterrent is the sign 'no power tools left in van overnight'. Such signs probably go a good way to help promote daylight robbery.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]