My Favourite Films Of 2017

I've decided against doing a top ten films released this year as it was getting to hard to rank them and ten would have limited my options too much. These films aren't even all films I saw in the cinema, one I watched on dvd and the other was a Netflix film. So in no particular order...

Logan

Be really careful holding his hand

This film is supposed to be Hugh Jackman's last time playing Logan, a character he has been playing for nearly eighteen years. If it is his last time then it was a very good ending. To me part of Logan's problem as a character is that he is too good, his healing powers and skeleton made him practically immortal surviving point blank gunshots to the head, numerous stabbings and even an atomic bomb, at some point it loses the sense of jeopardy. But early on in Logan it is shown that Logan isn't as strong as he used to be, his powers don't work like they did before, not only is he older, he's weaker. Logan starts the film as a driver, trying to keep a low profile, while he saves up money to buy a ship. Some recent disaster has seen the X-Men and Xavier's school destroyed and Logan now takes care of a very ill Charles Xavier. Xavier seems to be suffering from some sort of dementia and for a man as powerful as he is that is extremely dangerous. For a couple of decades, mysteriously, no mutants have been born.

Then someone tracks Logan down, a woman, who asks for his help, mainly for her "daughter", Laura, who is being hunted by a distinctly sinister organisation, and Laura has eerily similar powers to Logan and even an adamantium skeleton. Logan, who had done his best to avoid conflict, puts himself right in the middle to help her. The film is very violent and really shows what a fight with Logan would result in - missing limbs, torn out throats and more. The film shows the toll a life like Logan's can take, and not just his unusually long and bloody life but anyone who gets involved with conflict. At one point the characters watch the film Shane and we see the scene with the line, "there's no living with a killing" and Logan has killed so many. And it's not just even the people Logan has killed and the friends who have died but the innocent bystanders unlucky enough to cross paths with him who wind up dead.

In short the film is brilliant, going into areas most superhero films are unwilling to go, and not just the violence but the ideas of ageing, death, guilt and more.


The Babysitter

An odd Netflix film that I really, really enjoyed, it's a bit of a cheat putting something I didn't see at a cinema but it's my list so I can do what I want. I didn't realise until the end that it was directed by McG - which was probably for the best as that would have put me off - but looking back that makes sense. The film is about a nerdy youngster, Cole, who is perhaps a little too old for a babysitter, but still has one - the extremely cool Bee. Cole is somewhat infatuated with her. Determined to find out what happens after he goes to sleep Cole stays up and sneaks downstairs - to see Bee and her friends sacrifice someone to the Devil. What follows is a desperate battle for Cole's survival, fighting Bee and her deranged friends.It was a surprise just how good this was.

Atomic Blonde

Apparently Theron wouldn't be
a convincing superhero

Charlize Theron is one of the best actors in the world and is also quickly becoming an action superstar. Theron was the real star of Mad Max: Fury Road and I'm reliably informed was good in whatever number of Fast and Furious she was in. And then Atomic Blonde. I loved this film. I have always been interested in the Cold War and in particular the curious arrangement of the city of Berlin and how it became split between different superpowers and a venue for their war to be fought. Theron plays a British spy, sent to Berlin on a dangerous mission to retrieve stolen information, she must work with fellow British agent, and loose cannon, James McAvoy. Interesting as the setting is the film comes alive in first-rate fight scenes, and the already famous stairwell fight scene is unbelievably good. Incidentally Charlize Theron was considered for Captain Marvel but was thought to be too old (I mean she's only ten years younger than Robert Downey Jr) and while Brie Larsen will be fantastic it's a great what-if example of casting. An interesting feature of the film is that while Theron is very good at fighting she is not shown as indestructible, the film is told via Theron's recollection of events and the film starts showing Theron's battered and bruised body. While not for everyone I thought this was a really enjoyable film, if you like this sort of thing, see it.

Wonder Woman

I was worried about Wonder Woman. It's unfair but the film existed under a lot of pressure - basically would a superhero film centred around a female character be successful? Not would it be good...but successful - a successful film would help support the idea that such a film can draw a big audience. Would a commercial flop put an end to a Black Widow film or Captain Marvel or a stand alone Harley Quinn film and any other potentially interesting film based around a female character. It does feel ridiculous to even be thinking about this in 2017 when to me the obvious answer is make a good film and it will get an audience. So there was a lot of pressure. Fortunately Wonder Woman was amazing, Gal Gadot was great and most surprisingly of all I didn't hate Chris Pine. The film captured a lot of the pointlessness of the First World War with Gadot furious at the casual slaughter and disregard for soldiers lives - even from their own generals. The film has some astonishing scenes, Gadot venturing into No Man's Land and the subsequent battle being as good, if not better, than any action scene from another superhero film. The ending of the film is a bit of a letdown but that is a failing common on many superhero films but I would definitely watch the sequel.

Prevenge

I've loved Alice Lowe since Garth Marenghi's Dark Place and kept an eye out for her, she's popped up in all sorts of things from Sherlock to Hot Fuzz to Sightseers, always very good. Then she made Prevenge, a horror about a pregnant woman going on a revenge killing spree. It's worth pointing out Alice wrote, directed and starred in Prevenge while really pregnant. Lowe's character is pushed to commit these murders by her unborn child urging her on, demanding that she kill these people, the audience hears the voice of the unborn child and it is genuinely creepy as well as being "very articulate". The film is very good but the image of Lowe dressed up for Halloween to complete one of the murders will stay with me for a long time

Free Fire

Ben Wheatley is a very good director and has pretty dark sensibilities. This is undoubtedly the lightest of his films in terms of tone, despite virtually all of the film being a protracted gunfight. An illegal arms deal between visiting IRA members and weapons dealers goes badly wrong - for an unexpected reason - and all hell breaks loose - at one point one character shouts out that he has forgotten which side he is on and that is not surprising. It's an ensemble cast of very good actors - Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, Armie Hammer and Wheatley alumnus Michael Smiley. The film is pretty much shot in real time and while this is fun it does limit what can actually happen and I would say is my least favourite of Wheatley's films but one of the more enjoyable to watch (while it is brilliant you do not enjoy watching High-Rise).

Baby Driver

Jon Hamm isn't the star of the film or the best person
in it but he is still Jon Hamm so he gets to be in the picture

Possibly the best comedy film ever made. Easily the greatest action film in British film history. An insanely good geek film. A wonderful and poignant sci-fi comedy. These are my feelings of Edgar Wright's previous films (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World & The World's End) and if we also include Spaced - perhaps my favourite sitcom ever - my expectations were pretty high for Baby Driver. And it had Jon Hamm in it as well. Baby Driver is a brilliant film but, perhaps inevitably, I was disappointed.  The film is meticulously well made and this is not just limited to car chase scenes, the matching of visuals and audio is amazing and I am looking forward to watching it again to see all the things I missed.


Kong: Skull Island

One night I chose between seeing Kong: Skull Island and Get Out. I chose Kong: Skull Island and history will judge me accordingly. Having subsequently seen Get Out it is undoubtedly the superior film, I say superior, as I did enjoy KSI. It is extremely over the top and silly fun but I liked some of the things it said about Vietnam War (Samuel L Jackson's character is clearly struggling with America's defeat) and was interesting to see Kong shown as, effectively, a good guy. I also enjoyed John C Reilly's stranded American pilot. And yes Brie Larsen was great...she usually is.

The Death of Stalin

In my opinion you can make a joke about anything, no topic is off limits, but that doesn't mean there are no consequences. You take on a sensitive issue you have a duty to think about what you're doing, what point you're trying to make, and be prepared for criticism and saying "it's just a joke" is a pretty poor defence. That said, The Death of Stalin, is hilarious. The aftermath of the death of one of the world's worst tyrants does not immediately suggest comedy but it is easily the funniest film of the year and even manages to convey the terror and absurdity of living under Stalin. From the impossibility of finding a good doctor for Stalin (as he had all the good ones purged) to the horror of a radio producer being forced to create a recording for a concert no one recorded it was funny and terrifying. The cast is brilliant but it's hard not to single out Jason Isaacs for a brilliantly over the top performance as General Zukov, no one speaks in a Russian accent in the film, with Isaacs adopting a thick Yorkshire accent to, presumably, convey Zukov's place in Russian society. The film is a triumph from start to finish.


The Big Sick

This was the sort of true story of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife's relationship - specifically how quite early on in their relationship she ended up in a coma and how Kumail has to then deal with Emily's family. Kumail Nanjiana is a stand up comedian and actor, probably best known for being in Silicon Valley. The film is very funny and emotional, Emily's parents are played by the always wonderful Holly Hunter and usually terrible Ray Romano (who is actually very good in this). the relationship between Kumail and Emily's parents is strained from the beginning, this being the first time they've met. The film is a brilliant look at family and relationships - as well as dealing with Emily's parents Kumail has to deal with his own family who want him to marry someone from their community, to the extent that they cut off relations with another family member who didn't do this. There are interesting insights into what it's like being a Muslim in America, from the outright racist comments when Kumail is performing stand up comedy that he should join ISIS (to which Holly Hunter's character perfectly responded why are you recruiting for ISIS?) to the less overtly aggressive Ray Romano's character asking what Kumail thought about 9/11.  The film is a joy to watch and I would highly recommend it, it's better and more interesting that most romantic-comedies.

Blade Runner 2049

I love the original Blade Runner. I think I have seen two of three existing different cuts. It is a great film and one of the most influential sci-fi films ever made so I was a little anxious when I heard that a sequel was being made. First off, sequels happening decades later are rarely good and Ridley Scott has a bad record with his prequels to Alien. But when I heard it was Denis Villeneuve who was making it I felt a lot better. I love Sicario and Arrival and have heard good things about his other films. Then I heard it was to star Ryan Gosling who is an amazing actor and I began to think it might it good. I really enjoyed Blade Runner 2049. Gosling played K, a replicant working for the police as a blade runner, hunting down rogue replicants. K became involved in the hunt for a particular, a possibly miraculous replicant. I don't want to say too much as there is a lot of potential for spoilers but everything in the film is great from Gosling's portrayal of K to the extended cast (including Dave Batista who has made a very successful transition from professional wrestling to serious acting). Jared Leto is suitably inscrutable and sinister as Niander Wallace, the owner of Wallace Corporation who have taken over the manufacturing of replicants, Robin Wright is a great tough police boss and I especially liked Sylvia Hoeks playing Luv, Wallace's replicant assassin and fixer. The film looks amazing and isn't just retreading the same dystopian urban landscape of the original with K at one point visiting an abandoned city with toppled statues and fallen monuments. The resolution of the film is very satisfying and left me thinking about the film for days afterwards.



Dunkirk

I am a huge fan of Christopher Nolan. He is one of the few directors I can think of who hasn't made a bad film and even the worst of them - Interstellar in my opinion - is a really good film. I also feel Christopher Nolan has been consistently overlooked in terms of Oscars (the recent change in the Academy increasing the number of Best Picture contenders has been attributed to some by the shock in The Dark Knight not being nominated) and it will be somewhat annoying if Dunkirk wins as it will add further evidence to the idea that the academy does not respect sci-fi. Anyway, Dunkirk, a film told in three different perspectives - 1. Soldiers waiting to be evacuated from the beach  2. One of the "little ships" sailing to Dunkirk to help the soldiers 3. A RAF fighter pilot providing air support. The cast is first rate from Nolan regulars Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy to newcomers to Nolan Mark Rylance and Kenneth Branagh. Interesting the German soldiers attacking the British and French are never really shown but the impact of their attacks certainly are. The film is an amazing spectacle but the acting is also brilliant and Nolan's film is not so simple to show the British as heroes. There are moments of cowardice, betrayal, anger and worse, showing what can happen when your survival is on the line. Particularly memorable were Mark Rylance and Cillian Murphy's performances, Rylance captaining one of of the little ships and Murphy a soldier who he rescues. Rylance is all stoic bravery while Murphy is suffering from shellshock and only wants to escpe. Even if it might annoy me, it would be a worthy Oscar winner.

The Last Jedi

In the few weeks we've had since the release of The Last Jedi there has been a lot of discussion about the film with a petition to have the film stricken from the Star Wars canon garnered thousands of signatures, something that none of the prequels did and they are all terrible films and a million times worse than The Last Jedi. I enjoyed the film but didn't feel it was as good as The Force Awakens or Rogue One. I had some problems with the film but don't understand the hatred that some people have shown towards it, the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey was very well done, and I liked the portrayal of Luke as a real person, not some omnipotent super being who is always completely right and moral. The battle scenes were impressive and there were some very good visuals, and I liked some of the nods to old Star Wars characters like Admiral Ackbar and even Nien Nunb. I won't go into too much detail about some of the things I liked and didn't like as that would lead to a lot of spoilers but overall it was good, not great.

Get Out

A last minute New Year's Eve viewing for Get Out, a film I had wanted to see for a long while. Get Out was written and directed by Jordan Peele who is not very well known in the UK but is part of a very big sketch comedy double act with Keegan Michael Key in America. I've watched some of their sketches and like many sketch shows are hit and miss, my favourite of their sketches is the discussion on a news programme between the two white news anchors and the black weatherman and reporter about the dangers of black ice, it quickly becoming a thinly veiled argument about race. Get Out is a horror film that is about racism in America, Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, a photographer who has been dating Rose Armitage for several months. Chris is black and Rose is white. Rose is taking Chris to meet her parents and at the beginning of the film Chris is anxious about how her parents will react to her having a black boyfriend. The trip does not go well for Chris beginning with an unpleasant encounter with the local police and things just get worse, and weirder, from there. At first the only black people Chris sees are those who work for Rose's family. While Rose's parents don't seem overtly racist they do make things tense, the father telling Chris how much he liked Barack Obama and things like that. When more guests arrive it gets worse. Then there are also odd things, like who is continually unplugging Chris's phone when he is trying to charge it? I can't really say too much more but it is a great film. There is an alternate ending on the DVD which is definitely worth watching with the commentary as Peele talks about how Trump's election changed how he wanted the film to end.

So those are my favourite films of 2017 and I think my favourite and best is probably Logan. There are lots of good films coming out soon I'm particularly excited about The Shape Of Water and The Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. 

In Defence Of Sci-Fi - Big Ideas, Oscar Hate, Unbelievable Non-Sci-Fi and What It's Really About

spoiler warning - minor spoilers for Arrival and major spoilers for one episode of The Twilight Zone from 1960


I recently wrote a blog about the best films of the year and another blog about being disappointed by a lot of films this last year. In the second blog I ran through the list of films that I wished I had seen and one of them was Arrival. Well, I managed to see that film the other day and have to say it would certainly change my top ten of the year, right now I'd say number two after Rogue One. It's rather fitting that my two favourite films of the year are both science fiction, but drastically different films. I love science-fiction and when I think of my favourite ever films there are lots of sci-fi - Blade Runner, Alien, The Empire Strikes Back, Dr. Strangelove, Aliens.  This blog is called Ninety Per Cent of Everything which is a reference to a quote defending the quality of science-fiction, basically that ninety per cent of it is shit, but it's equally true that ninety per cent of anything is shit.

Most convoluted rizla game ever

There has been a habit of taking books, films, television shows that are science-fiction and refusing to call them that - many people do not consider 1984 science-fiction, even though it is about how technology effects a future world, the very definition of science-fiction. Dr. Strangelove, I film I've already mentioned as one of my favourites is according to Wikipedia is a "political satire black comedy film" with no mention of science fiction, to IMDB it is only a "comedy". Whilst the film is certainly a satire and comedy the film revolved around two pieces of technology that did not exist so I would argue it's science fiction. To many people it seems that a "classic" by definition cannot be science fiction, and science fiction that spoils that view is quietly re-categorised.

While I am very discerning when it comes to specific films, I love just about every type of science fiction. I love big space operas like Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy. I love clever, indie sci-fi like Moon or Ex Machina. I love dystopias from The Hunger Games to Children of Men. I would categorise superhero films as a subgenre of science fiction (which I understand to be a somewhat controversial position) as they usually involve technology that does not exist.

Guardians of the Galaxy - enjoyably over the top

Arrival is very much the clever big idea sort of science fiction film, it's not about space battles or exploding cities. The setup is actually very much like Independence Day (a sci-fi film I don't like), where a number of huge spaceships have arrived, hovering, perhaps menacingly a short distance above the ground.

But that really is where the two films depart - it seems that the aliens wanted to talk. The US government assembled top scientific experts, specifically linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Dr. Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to help them understand what is going on. Why are the aliens here? What do they want? Are they a threat? A lot of characters talk about what happened when the Europeans arrived in North America and Australia, how the more scientifically advanced group drove the other group to near extinction, will the same thing happen with the aliens? The film is about a lot of things and like all good alien films it's more about the nature of human beings as it is aliens. Amy Adams' performance was brilliant and it's very much her film. Not giving anyway any spoilers I am looking forward to seeing it again to better appreciate the clever things that are going on in the film.

I hope to see Arrival getting a lot of nominations for awards but I'm prepared to be disappointed. The Oscars have a long history of snubbing science fiction. Heath Ledger won an Oscar for his performance in The Dark Knight in 2009 but the film wasn't nominated for Best Picture despite being hailed by fans and critics as a great success. Looking at the other nominations that year it was certainly much better than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button if nothing else. The following year in what might have been a response to people asking where was The Dark Knight's Oscar nomination the list of nominees was raised to ten with cult sci-fi hit District 9 and sci-fi blockbuster Avatar getting nominations alongside more predictable Oscar fare.

District 9 - One of the films that benefited from wider Oscar nominations 

In my opinion Christoper Nolan is one of the best directors working today but has not received the awards and critical acclaim he should have done because he has largely done sci-fi. A case in point, there is already Oscar buzz around his next film, Dunkirk, a big budget World War Two film about the evacuation of Dunkirk almost as if the moment he moves away from sci-fi people see his films as Oscar-worthy. Looking at Christoper Nolan's back catalogue the majority of his work is either sci-fi or has strong sci-fi elements, before Dunkirk only Memento and Insomnia are not science fiction. The Dark Knight trilogy of Batman films are the high watermark of superhero films, Inception is about using technology to enter dreams and Interstellar is a sci-fi epic of space exploration, time travel and using technology to save mankind. In my opinion Christopher Nolan has not made a bad film, something very few directors can say.

Looking back on the winner for Best Picture Oscar, I went back to 1950 to find a sci-fi winner and couldn't do it. The closest to sci-fi was it's genre cousin, fantasy, when Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won, which was surely an award for the astonishing achievement of the complete trilogy rather than that single film. So why do the Oscars seem to hate science-fiction? Well, I don't think they take it seriously, presumably for the ridiculous reason that it's about stuff that isn't real. The Oscars had no problem rewarding Titantic, which while despite being based on real events was one of the least plausible films I've ever seen, which must be something of a challenge. This is even worse in television - plot devices that the worst sci-fi writer would be ashamed of are trotted out regularly in soaps and dramas with little said about their realness or characters so unbelievable they would make Zaphod Beeblebrox look innocuous, but Doctor Who is dismissed by many because "that couldn't happen in real life".

The comparatively believable Zaphod Beeblebrox

What many people don't appreciate about science fiction is that it's not really about the future or other planets or aliens, it's usually about this time, this place and us. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica had more to say about the War on Terror than any other programme on American television, writing episodes about suicide bombings, foreign occupation, torture, civil rights, religious freedom and religious extremism, topics most non-sci-fi wouldn't dare go near. By setting it in another time or place gives writers a freedom to discuss these issues. One of the most famous examples of this was an episode of The Twilight Zone about aliens infiltrating America and how a small town tore itself apart with accusations and witch-hunts, all the while the aliens watched from outside the town, barely lifting a finger and letting paranoia do their work for them. The episode was clearly about issues closer to home in America, with paranoia against communist infiltrators hitting fever pitch.

Arrival clearly has a message about human cooperation and trust, discussing how almost by default powerful countries don't trust each other, too concerned about losing their own advantage. At a time when the person poised to become the most powerful man in the world seems eager to restart the Cold War arms race it's something to think about and shows the power of science fiction and I suspect there is already a sci-fi film in the works about an insanely arrogant and ignorant politician elected to run the universe.

Missing Out - Not Watching The Wire, Watching A Film Day and The Inevitable Mortality of Authors and Readers

At Christmas I was kindly given the complete box set of The Wire which I am slowly working through and enjoying. The Wire is a television programme that many cite as being the best thing ever on television beating even such gems as The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, but despite it's huge critical success I had never actually watched it. The Wire is a drama based in Baltimore about crime that featured the police, journalists, lawyers, criminals and more. Each season took on a different aspect, some being from mainly the perspective of police or journalists, even looking at schools and how they impacted on crime, the important thing being that it was examining crime and the causes of crime. It is odd that such a programme passed me by as it is exactly the sort of thing I would like (including the pretentious kudos of watching an imported high quality drama hailed as the best thing ever that most people haven't watched) and it was even picked out on Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and higher nerd praise does not exist. Actually as Spooky Reading Girl pointed out Charlie Brooker didn't just mention it on Screenwipe, when we bumped into him in Edinburgh he told us specifically to watch it.

The best tv show ever?

I was perhaps too young when The Wire started and many people say it is hard to get into with complex dialogue that took no prisoners. There is also definitely a state of mind people enter where they actively resist something that is being watched by everyone else. A lot of people got so annoyed about people asking them if they had watched Breaking Bad, they swore never to watch it. For a long time I did not believe television was capable of making something that was genuinely brilliant. This was a huge hole in my pop culture knowledge and something that I was going to have to address. I held film in high regard and saw television as very much the inferior medium, where even the good stuff was drowned in an ocean of gameshows and reality television. Eventually I changed my opinion and it wasn't just the relatively recent prestige television but realising just how good something like Buffy The Vampire Slayer was. 

Spooky Reading Girl for a long time had a similar problem but with films. When we started going out and we talked about our favourite films, tv shows etc. I felt that she hadn't seen a lot of classic films. Importantly, this doesn't necessarily mean good films, but films that most people have watched, films that are perhaps cultural touchstones. I think everyone  has some gaps in their knowledge, to this day I have not seen Raging Bull despite being a huge Marin Scorese fan. Some of the films that SRG hadn't seen included Rocky (and to this day we argue when SRG refers to The Rocky Horror Picture Show simply as "Rocky", that name is already taken by another very famous film), Back to the Future, any James Bond film, any of the Star Wars films and eventually she became tired of the exasperated cries of "How have you never seen Back to the Future!" and for a year watched a film a day, crossing off many of these films. Spooky Reading Girl found it a very interesting experience and watched, and loved, many films that she wouldn't have normally watched. It also got her, and by extension me, into listening to Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film radio show.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode do the best film
show in all of radio, tv and podcast land - hello to Jason Isaacs

There have been many other things that I got into late, or in the wrong order. I loved The Foo Fighters before I even knew about Nirvana. I didn't buy any LCD Soundsystem albums until after they had broken up. Being born in 1983 I missed the 1960s, the decade I consider to be the best in music history so what chance did I have? There will be numerous bands lost in the mists of time that I would love and will remain forever hidden. I only watched Firefly when it was being repeated for the fiftieth time on the Sci-Fi channel and that is one of my all time favourites.

Usually when people talk about things they have missed or haven't got round to watching yet are cultural behemoths, Star Wars, Bond films, The Simpsons, things that even if you don't like them you should still watch them as they will help you understand culture better (I have heard this argument used for both Shakespeare and the Bible). Some things though are missed because they were never that successful or always just maintained a cult following. Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is one of the funniest programmes ever on television and there is a grand total of six episodes, just the one series on Channel 4, but to merely mention the name Thornton Reed is enough to reduce some people to laughter. Arrested Development, perhaps the best sitcom in the history of American television struggled for three seasons to find an audience but was eventually cancelled (Netflix did give the show a reprieve). Films like Vertigo or television shows like Twin Peaks are going to be glaring omissions but with really cult things you might never even be aware of what you're missing out on.

Arrested Development - Arguably the best sitcom that hardly anyone has seen

Marcus Brigstock hosted a very interesting radio, and later television, show called I've Never Seen Star Wars on which the guests would check through a list of things that most people have done, with having seen Star Wars being used as the classic example. The show would then pick some of these things to - the guest would watch Scarface, or eat sushi, or listen to The Archers. Most of the time the guest would not really enjoy whatever new thing they had done, as after all, people will probably know whether they will like something like The Archers but occassionally they would really enjoy the experience and it is certainly true that that has happened to me, where my conception of what something was like was completely inaccurate. When Harry Met Sally is a good example as I had expected a very boring, very straight forward romantic comedy (the second worse genre of film after musicals) but was in fact something very different and far more interesting and funny than I had anticipated.

I have heard some people say they won't start reading a series of books until the series has been completed, so they know it has been finished (poor George R. R, Martin, creator of the Games of Thrones series of books has to endure constant speculation about his own health). There is a similar thing with tv shows with people not wanting to invest time in a show that gets cancelled after one season. This is all well and good but what about if it's not the cancellation of a show or death of an author that is worrying, what if it's your own mortality? Dying is a pretty bad thing to happen but knowing that almost certainly I will die in the middle of a book is incredibly frustrating. I will die in the middle of excellent tv programmes or eagerly awaiting a sequel or I've bought tickets to see a comedian but will never make it. This would all be okay if I believed in an afterlife but as an unapologetic atheist I know I will miss out.

The Game Of Thrones series of books -
 more correctly known as A Song Of Ice and Fire

But does it really matter? Even if I accept that my own mortality and the vastness of culture available means it is impossible to see, read and listen to everything worthwhile...is that such a bad thing? It might not be objectively bad but it seems an awful shame to miss out on the good stuff especially when so much bad stuff is inflicted on me without even asking for it. I am rather proud of the cultural island I have managed to construct where I can keep most of the bad stuff out but even so I have heard songs by Justin Bieber, I have seen clips of Mrs Brown's Boys and even suffered the mindnumbing banality of The One Show and there is something wrong with a world where I haven't found the time to watch Raging Bull but have seen Batman And Robin.