Suffocate Peon

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

I was walking around an indoor food market place when c7b2 came on my iPod playlist of 1000 picked tracks (but all of elseq on there) and i've still not listened to the whole collection in full to get any sense of it, just listened to bits. I don't know why I haven't already found a remote place in the middle of nowhere yet and listened to it at ear destroying volume as I fall asleep, which is the way to listen to Autechre I think, besides the art installation idea of a cushioned room of walls that slowly rotate and spin as you bounce everywhere. Anyway, it came on and i had to suppress the urge to laugh, i thought it was the most mental thing i'd heard. And I've had the urge since to listen to it again. I think it has a propulsion too that i get a kick out of. Generally, i don't get that from Autechre anymore, just amazing sounds. It's probably the most boring name ever given to a track though. They could at least blindly hit the keyboard a few times and see what comes out and go with that. Hang on. gurjfioj. pghuiighnr. egfgiitnnn. werjsi. ekodloool gnnnj. Then again. Okay, i'll look now. yutkslcand. ibogzeferlepin. enogfelsiom. wkcrosk Bmco. ok thatll do Is there a poll anywhere with peoples favourite tracks ?

Valerian and The City of a Thousand Planets I thought this was ridiculously relentlessly inventive. The costume/production designers must have had the time of their lives on this film. It merges cgi and prosthetics/make up so seamlessly it's masterful and -i hate this phrasing but- it's a true feast for the eyes *cringe* There are a series of sequences that just made me smile because of the sheer fun that exudes from the screen, it sets something up that is straight out of Jet Force Gemini (which, oblivious to the comic in 1999 i realise the game probably took influence from it) and plays out a scene that is like something from Spongebob Squarepants, so that's the pinnacle of infectious silliness to me the film gets close to. It can take a silly detour that for me a fantasy adventure space film should do more often, and pile idea on top of idea on top of idea. I was distracted by some of the action at the end, thinking 'that's another idea'. A lot of cgi heavy blockbusters I watch rely too much on bogus baddies who want to destroy the world with their death ray, seeking to over dramatize and convince you of the mega threat by contriving a lot of tedious menace that grinds you down and becomes such exhausting nonsense, or they're like Avatar and feel 8 hours long, or they're both. This is neither. The story is incomprehensible for most of it until it all becomes clear, and maybe to some that clarity is too simple but even though I'm unsure of how some things worked i couldn't see glaring plot holes. By the end i was only just starting to get into it. There's a whole sequence early on that is almost too creative to digest (and I'm overselling this massively now but i don't care) and it's the way it continues to bundle into another idea while you were just trying to work out how on Earth the previous idea worked that means i think this is primed to only get better on re-watches. This is thousands upon thousands of kids new favourite film. Luc Besson is just in his element* with this kind of film, he gives it a class that a lot of modern blockbusters have lacked over the last 10 years. And I hated Lucy so i don't think he's always on it. But this is really tight, efficient, free flowing. *not sorry Cara Delevingne is really good, she has a zest and early on does most of her acting with her eyes and cheekiness of her smile, she's a very watchable likeable positive screen presence and every time she was off screen I wanted to see her again. Both her and DeHaan with their youthful and carefree attitude contrast with the seriousness of everyone else, and although Dehann in other stuff i've seen him in does self loathing so naturally he mostly suppresses here. He's still got the voice but there's none of the angst. They go on a mission with ageing gruff types and i liked that cartoonish contrast between them, like they're superstars. They have good chemistry i think. The film could have been wittier maybe. I can see by googling Dehann's name to see how it's spelt The Independant reckon 'Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne are the worst on-screen couple ever', so there we go. I mean, they're kids. Dehann is actually not that young at 31 but he appears 22. Maybe in the comic they're older, looking at images they look it. But i liked how young they are. The film would be different if it was Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. I can sense the inevitable hatred for the film's attempt at romance as though it hangs on it and that if you don't care about it the film loses you. I liked that they're not typically muscly, it's fresh that they're young. The film doesn't really sell their brilliance and why they're so important as agents over others who on the surface appear more adequate, but they do enough cool stuff and have to improvise and think on their feet. I think The Fifth Element has a stronger opening (but then very little can compare to that) but overall i think Valerian is more consistent. Just the priest alone in The Fifth Element winds me up and Chris Tucker beyond the first five minutes take its toll, and i do lose interest before the end. Wholeheartedly recommend this film. I am easily pleased though. For a film like this i only have a few rules: don't bore me, and be as silly as you desire. I liked Gods of Egypt and Jon Carter. I hated Age of Ultron and Civil War *spit*. Fuck, the Jet Force Gemini sequence (as it shall be now known) is one of my all time favourite moments in gaming. I'm raising a white flag to any rationality. 8/10

the clone returns home body hammer trespass against us fallen angels where to invade next confessions of a dog

Twelfth is my favourite. no, i don't apologise.

Dunkirk I never got into this and can't imagine being moved to tears by it (not because it isn't an emotional subject but purely personally it somehow failing to engage me). It was so fleeting and felt so light. (even though it's portraying dramatic sequences). I loved its cinematography and its purity in only focussing on the British and French, the nazis only referred to as 'the enemy', keeping dialogue to a minimum and trying to just place you in there and capture it occurring, but I never really felt the enormity of the threat. I didn't care about the characters. It's pure mood and ambience which I should love and do, but there's a series of survival sequences that I'd have been engaged with more had it been more conservative in its structure, and use of time, and development of characters. This is a far more grounded and real film than something like Brotherhood of War, that's so Hollywood and cheesy in comparison, but God was I holding back the tears by its very manipulative end with its outpouring of emotion and grief. Also, not meaning to moan about something that seems unimportant but the picture not fitting the frame of the screen prevented the unadulterated immersion that this film really requires. The score is fantastic, reminiscent of Greenwood's for There Will Be Blood maybe in its screeching horror, but in the latter half I did find it too overbearing and constant. I don't click with Nolan for whatever reason. I think the constant music has a certain effect - I thought this about TDK too in the way that it suspends you in a place where it's like nothing is playing out in real time. It's like being trapped in a trailer. I got it from the film Confessions too, you can't breathe, in that there's no simple scenes of people doing simple things, everything is shown as an aside, or memory, or in the past, with jarring music playing over the top, it gets tiring after a while. Dunkirk isn't anywhere near like that, but I'd have preferred a longer film that by its end really felt like you'd lived through a whole week of struggle rather than 40 minutes. Use the time to develop the key characters more earlier on. It was so fast moving, when the credits rolled I just thought 'is that it?', like one the greatest evacuations in history described as a miracle felt like not much at all. 6/10 probably

I don't see any 'syro' track listed ? ???

Stride Portugal. Oh my.

Man it is so fucking good to see you posting pictures again oh wow, that's probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me ! People notice ?!

Next door neighbour's cat, who I hired out and paid in pats to the head.

Live By Night Ben Affleck's passion project with a leading turn by him (as Joe Coughlin) whereby he delivers a performance that's so lifeless it gives the impression he doesn't want to be there. It's almost bizarre, he showed more signs of life playing an autistic psychopath in The Accountant. I think he was going for stoic, understated, and cool. A man who says a lot without saying anything at all, but to do that it needed to be played by an actor who is interesting to watch such is their intensity and ability to appear deep in thought that you're engaged by just wondering what they're thinking. Ben Affleck isn't that. The film is beautifully shot and has a fair few tense moments but it never becomes anything more than just an okay episode of Boardwalk Empire. But i love that show so that's fine by me. The 35% Rotten Tomatoes critic score is verrry harsh. It doesn't really work as a character study - i only realised it was meant to be that after reading reviews. I never figured Coughlin out but i never tried; he always sounded like someone trying to act tough but coming across as naive and quite stupid doing it, rather than someone who'd been around and was streetwise enough to know what he was doing. The film's visual beauty kind of strangles it because Affleck, neither with his camera work, editing or performance breathes enough life into what is trying to be an epic story...i think. Certainly people die, and there is drama, but it happens around Affleck's Joe Coughlin even when he's at the center of it and affects him. Coughlin barely reacts to any of it with anything more than bored indifference, or moderate sadness. I think it needed a central performance that expressed some of the inner conflict at making his way through this gangster life that came with consequences. Affleck's character is neither good man nor vicious thug. He is ruthless in some moments but doesn't sell it. He is genuine and compassionate in other moments and sells that more. Ben Affleck always plays good guys doesn't he? I think it might have benefited from using someone like Steven Graham in the lead. He played a tortured soul in This Is England effectively and gave depth to Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire while also giving energy to the scenes he's in, always seething. Affleck can't do anger, and come to think of it never tries. He has so much to be angry about in this film yet is about as nonplussed as one can be. Everyone else is acting brilliantly too, there's some great turns in here. It's definitely worth watching. This is Affleck's least good film, but i don't think there's a vast difference in quality. And maybe he needs to just concentrate on directing his films if he wants to develop more of a personality and be more expressive and bold. I generally just think he directs the story as is, usually good stories too, and that's enough. The story here doesn't translate and his performance lets it down. 6/10 The Founder When you make the occasional trip to McDonald's you don't naturally consider that at the beginning of its inception its owners weren't entirely all about profit over quality, that they had a vision that while speed of service was at its essence it wasn't about the commercialism of the product they were selling. Very early on, when Michael Keaton's Ray Kroc is attempting to build his first McDonald's to the brothers set standards, he offers up the idea of selling the food menu space to Coca Cola, and argues it'll be so small you'd barely see it. They say no, it cheapens it, once you sell out there's no going back. Kroc can't understand the objection, he's driven by money and they're driven by delivering a decent service. It's a bit more complicated, because to expand as quickly as he was doing Kroc needed to raise easy money and cut costs. The brothers were happy with him expanding their brand, but not happy with him diluting it. While it isn't a great film, it's very enjoyable. Tom Hanks turned the role of Kroc down and it's hard to imagine how he'd cut out the humanity required to play this character. Keaton has an affable way of speaking that I find so easy to watch. I heard/read a film critic say something like; who wants to watch a film about fast food hamburgers, and your interest in the birth of the biggest most iconic brand probably will say much for your interest in popular culture in general. But I am the type to watch this film then read imdb trivia and the Burger King wikipedia, before jumping to YouTube to waste time watching their adverts from the 70s. It's just a reveal of a story you've never considered, that few really know about. It's more generic than the Danny Boyle Steve Jobs film but that is a story everyone is already familiar with, that's been told in film and print numerous times, and covers two decades we've all lived through. This is fresher, it takes you back to the 50s, an entirely different time when McDonalds wasn't associated with happy meal toys and Ronald McDonald, but a simple family friendly restaurant that just tried to be different. I don't care for the cynicism that will write this film off as just more marketing. A pointless story that didn't need telling. Business is interesting, design decisions, advertising, balancing values with cost, and more so with brands that cover so many decades of change, that are so ubiquitous now you can't imagine them never having existed such is their impact on the popular culture you grew up consuming, but which all started with a few people with big ideas. (If nothing else, Fallen Angels wouldn't be the same without McDonalds) I'd like a film about the birth of WWF wrestling, that I watched growing up and played the games but have never considered how it all began and the central figures behind its growth. 7/10

can someone, anyone please for the love of fucking god just detonate a bomb inside a room containing all of Trump's team. I want to see the charred remains of them all, mangled up among the dust. love and peace from u.k. x x x

Bill Burr: Walk Your Way Out - I love Bill Burr, but I don't think his last 2 stand up specials have been as good as his previous 3. It's weird hearing him spontaneously grab at subjects as though he's only just latching on to them in the moment, throwing them out there as a curveball on the audience....when you've previously heard him do the same thing on chat shows with more effect, with the host laughing his head off in bewilderment. This long form format doesn't work so well for those immediate insane ideas - like sink cruise ships - and I think he drags on longer than he used to with every idea, taking its sting away without upping the absurdity. I think it's easy to get lost in his rambling. 6/10 I, Daniel Blake - finally seen it. 'The Decision Maker' will contact you. It was at that point i kind of wished there could be an alternative take on the disability assessment system that goes full darkly satirical absurdist, but i like this dry straight approach too. The uk government are paying French and American companies such as Atos and Maximus up to £500m to assess ill people using a points system that seems to only take into account arm movement as meaning you're fit to work. Beyond the humiliation, it's caused deaths and suicides. Suicide is the single biggest killer of men aged under 45 in the UK. 4,624 suicides in 2015, that's just men btw, A suicide every two hours ! That's an epidemic. 12 a day. The cost of benefit fraud is £1.2 billion a year. 'Fraud' being a loose term. Everyone in the uk is relentlessly told the story of the poor unemployed 'skiver' who is exploiting the system with their 12 kids living in a 3 bedroom house on some estate, living the high life of cigarettes, obesity and bingo. But we're not told of the foreign corporations basically handed taxpayers money to do a pointless job inefficiently. It's an actual scandal, a disgrace. And no one in the uk gives a shit. So foreign (we' have a thing about foreign over here lately, 'take back control' etc...the campaign tagline thought up by an American...) corporations handed millions to make a profit of British people who've spent 30 years paying into a system that contributes to it affecting their health to the point where disease or illness suddenly strikes and renders them incapable, and instead of understanding this and basically giving them back their own money they paid into the system, they're treated like shit, dehumanized, put through a process that is actually openly unfair that 60% of appeals are a success. I mean...60% of appeals are a success. The system is wrong, everyone knows it's unfair, but they grind you down and force you to give up through the lengthy process where you're struggling to get by and give up the fight to prove they're wrong. Europe (our enemies at the moment) have repeatedly expressed how inhumane it is and challenged it. No..that's wrong, they challenged the bedroom tax didn't they. Not enough houses ! A person lives in a house but doesn't use that extra bedroom, let's make him move away from his family and support structure ! A disabled person needs the extra room for all the equipment that keeps them alive but that is inconsequential detail. All the social housing was sold off, which has nothing do to with the poor sap who simply finds himself being given an extra tax, as though it's quite easy to just leave. It's the bizarrest idea I've ever heard and this is now a rant yay. It's insane. And I know it's worse in America. It feels like one of the worst things about our society is its tendency to normalize and justify actually extraordinary things. In the harsh reality of life and the way the media report on the news, insane things can occur that are given legitimacy. Like...from a uk perspective, the BBC covered Trump's inauguration and didn't or couldn't call it out for what it was, him being an actual narcissistic idiotic child. We have a prime ministers questions where questions are asked and literally the answer every single time is 'yeah but you messed it up before us, we're just trying to FIX your mess! And don't you dare question our commitment to ..such and such, we've put more money into it than you did!' (misrepresent the truth). We lack the ability to zoom out and see the craziness for what it is. Only as we slowly progress (eventually) to a more tolerant progressive society can we look back maybe and think; that was crazy. Or film or media can heighten it and reveal its core truth. A handful of people having the same amount of wealth as the poorest half is insane now - i like the imagery it conjures, but in a few hundred years time they're going to analyse this post millennium period to a great degree, fascinated by us all exhausting all our worries over Trump, they'll be dumbfounded and confused; why on Earth did they just put with them this? How archaic and utterly broken could their supposed democratic and political system be? How could there be so little agency from the masses? They'll come a point where people won't be able to understand, and it's shit having to live through tortuous prolonged transitional period where everyone knows everything is backwards but there's seemingly no way to direct all the energy, time, effort, anger, thought into changing what matters. well that was a waste of time to write Yeah, so, Ken Loach 50 years ago did a film that was about a couple becoming homeless and apparently it was shocking. Now people step over the homeless in the streets, or if you're a posh conservative you burn a £20 note in front of them. I Daniel Blake comes out and society is so paralyzed by its own deep denial and futility to have any actual impact on what is happening. right stopping there, burn westminster to the ground, start again. 8/10

Manchester By The Sea I liked this and found it easy to watch - coming after American Honey it's the polar opposite approach; economically shot, straight and simple with no indulgence or flair. If I'd watched this unaware of the acclaim it has I wouldn't really pick it out as outstanding, it really is a film where those who love it are the only ones worth listening to. I can't really pinpoint why I wasn't moved, the revelation didn't hit hard because we don't see enough of his life beforehand, and I found the music loud and overbearing and at odds with the understated simplicity. It didn't work for me, and there's a lot of music, very operatic and profound classical pieces that draw attention to themselves. Casey Affleck for me always carries around with him a sulkiness, it's just more pronounced here. He doesn't seem that different when he has the perfect family to when he doesn't. I wouldn't want a blunt difference, but his previous life and the affect its had on him seems secondary to his relationship with his nephew, which mainly consists of driving him around. He's convincing but I don't think he has range, and it's not a transformative performance where you can't see the actor like a lot of the best Oscar winners in recent memory. I think he'll probably win the Oscar and probably ought to but I'm not sure what people are so impressed by. I was probably more impressed by Shia Labeouf in American Honey (a sentence I never thought I'd write) because he's evolved from the last time I saw him in Lawless, and every other annoying cocky sidekick role he's had. 6/10 Kubo And The Two Strings I'm an idiot. I didn't understand any moment of this film. 4/10 Jack Reacher: Never Go Back It's odd to see Tom Cruise bored. Maybe that's just the character - having not read any of the books, I wouldn't know. Even when threatening people he does it with zero relish, barely getting the words out. He's sort of similar to Daniel Craig in the last few Bond films, just this muted presence. That's his natural state I think, judging them by their interviews Craig is barely conscious and constantly jet lagged and Tom Cruise is dying of hysterical laughter or leaping on the interview sofa. I can't say I've ever seen Cruise appear so lifeless. He's still got charisma and he seems to love doing action films, but he doesn't seem particularly enthused by the material here. The film's story is also a bored boring mess of exposition-delivered events of no apparent consequence, while really at its heart it's about Reacher protecting a 15 year old girl who may or may not be his daughter, and how their relationship grows throughout the film. There's lots of chase sequences which aren't particular exciting, and an end sequence which seems inspired by the opening of Spectre. When I think of even the average Korean thrillers, they have substantially more passion and drama. That's the difference for me, where Hollywood is getting it wrong; the lack of enthusiasm and ambition. It's not even poorly directed, it has a weight and seriousness to it, but it's bland and goes through the motions. I prefer The Accountant more but neither even attempt to deliver great action. Think of every other scene in True Lies, Swarzenegger on a horse chasing the motorbike riding terrorist up a hotel, up an elavator, off a roof...Or the jets and the limousine and the unfinished bridge over water...or the 15 year old daughter (heh) who climbs along a crane hundreds of feet up, and leaps on to a jet... In Never Go Back we get a fight in a kitchen that's so bland that a minute after it occurring I couldn't recall what exactly happened. True Lies has an action scene in a public restroom filled with humour (old man on toilet), tension (kicking down each door), slo motion leaps through the air, brilliant gunplay, destruction. 5/10

Trump is so thin skinned he won't be able to stop himself from responding to apparently false media reporting and mass protesting. Keep it up Americans, he will have a meltdown. It's only been a day and already he's rambling. The one thing he hates more than anything else, as comedians explained when doing the roast, is him being made out to not have as much money as he says he has, and being a lousy failure of a businessman. Please annoy him with that in mind.

We're gonna be such an embarrassment for future historians looking at what the fuck went wrong at the turn of the millennium. hello if you're reading this from the year 2178. ps check out my art don't tell me they're dead links ffs

I Am Not A Serial Killer

I want to decapitate Michael Gove.

When you're bored of life you dream of one day passing your driving test, buying a van, leaving your cunt country with its cunt inhabitants, finding a long winding countryside road in the pitch black night, playing Parhelic Triangle as loud as possible, feeling; this is it, fuck it, pass out now, careen off the road down a drop, go to silicon heaven where all the calculators go. Only a month to go ! Wish me luck !

Amazing ! War On Everyone I think The Nice Guys might be a thousand times better than this. You might think, a thousand? That's a lot. Not even 500 times, or 100 times greater? I don't mind a comedy film being as nihilistic as it likes, as long as it's funny and not boring. I didn't laugh once, I mostly struggled to detect where the humour might lie, the characters are uncaring, wilfully flippant hateful bastards (..there?), it has no story worth knowing or bothering to make sense of, there's no action and when there is (shooting, running) it's badly shot shit. I spent too long wondering; that isn't that Jamie Dornen is it? What a look-a-like! How about that. It's 98 minutes, feels like two or more hours, begins aimlessly in a laid back way like a hangout film but without the wit to make it worthwhile, I got 40 minutes in and wondered; why did they bother making this? It didn't seem like they cared, that there was anything they were burning to just unleash on the world. There's a scene where the two cops are on a street corner waiting and a lad on a bicycle rides up and says; heh, what you doing? Loitering with intent, says the cop. Fuck off!, says the lad. Fuck off! say the cops. Fuck off! says the lad. Fuck off! say the cops. The film is just scenes like that stitched together. I prefer Martin McDonaugh. Seven Psychopaths is no masterpiece, but I feel like after this I could list a lot of very good stuff from that film. And In Bruges > everything else. I think it's easy to overlook how bad this film is and just let it off easy, but equally easy to re-watch bits again and think; it looks quite nice, it's alright really. 3/10

I've always wanted to listen to pro radii in a pitch black padded room that maybe rotates and turns slowly, maybe you put on a padded bubble suit and step inside with others and bounce off each other as you listen to the track.

Coming across young women in the media who've forged a career by selling their soul to spout ultra conservative crap reminds me of that Charlie Brooker joke on Have I Got News For You about Sarah Palin that combined the words penis, of, like, a, vortex, hate, into, sticking, your, into some kind of funny order I can't exactly recall.

I don't know why no one ever asks Obama about him hiring the architects of the financial crisis instead of prosecuting them, as one of the first things he did. Or ask him, in passing; heh, how's Chelsea keeping up?

Meh. Guardiola aged more after managing Barcelona for a few seasons Which is strange, as you'd think having thousands of deaths on your conscience would take more of its toll on a man than racking your brain trying to figure out how to best to unlock Espanyol's tight defence away from home etc.

James Richardson of football weekly guardian podcast-90s football Italia-BT sport champions league host-Jimbovision youtube film reviews fame reckons that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than Temple of Doom, but it's an impossibility given 80s practical effects > 00s cgi effects.