Eugene's Old Wisdom

Wristcutters: - A Love Story 

(Avoid the Trailer - It'll Mess with the Movie) 

"...I mean, she did say she'd be right back. 

Then again, Eugene's old wisdom is when a girl says that, she never does actually come back..."

You'd think a dusty, bleak, baking-desert purgatory, where nobody can smile and all the inhabitants have committed suicide isn't exactly the most obvious setting for an uplifting roadtrip movie. Some crackpot freaks might think it's perfect, but I'd say most people aren't too thrilled at the prospect of gawking at a trio of depressed outcasts roaming semi-hell for an hour or so. 

Most people however, would be mistaken. 

Unearthing and watching Wristcutters, a good 5 years after it's release was just an indescribably cool find. Immediately you're caught up in this curious barren retrograde scene, where entropy's taken it's toll and almost everything's broken or stuck together with gaffa. Strangely, this downbeat world has shitloads of charm and this weird kind of supernatural 'mystique glaze' which intrigues throughout. 

Eugene, Zia and Mikal are the main characters, played by Shea Whigham, Patrick Fugit and Shannyn Sossamon. All three are wayward and lost for some reason or another, but end up thrown together on a disorganised, bumbling quest to track down Desiree, Zia's recently offed-herself ex. Tom Waits makes an excellent and typically croaky appearance as the mysterious Kneller, a commune leader with a few secrets under his belt...

Mixing up downtempo storytelling and borderline insanity is a tricky move to pull off, but Wristcutters works it out gloriously. Any film which brews together the following ingredients: -

Romance +

Blackholes +

Suicidal Families +

Inuit Throatsingers +

Minor Miracles +

Spraypainted Flowers +

Inventive storytelling and genuinely touching scenes is hitting all the right notes for me.

ANYONE WHO READS THIS IS UNDER ORDERS TO WATCH AND ENJOY THE FILM

GET IT HERE £4

Vicious Rioters and Dim Responses

Rioters.

Early August 2011. 

We've been treated to some crazy sights over the past week. Dumb and vicious kids ruling the streets at night, mercilessly smashing up towns attempting to grab some free booty and cause general mayhem. Watching those scenes, endless loops of enhanced  real-drama on BBC news 24 was pretty sickly at times. Viewing the madness, I probably wasn't the only person in the country with mixed feelings. The lefty liberal in me was all :-

'Awww, these kids, if they had a reason to live and didn't grow up in Cameron's 'merciless UK' with monstrous role models. In what is possibly the most malign but boring generation in the history of the human race... They might be doing something useful.'  

While the other part of me (The dark side, has many names but on this occasion it was The Daily Mail Brute) was already lining up 12 tequila shots and drilling some 5 inch screws through a baseball bat, ready to go deliver some heavy puncture wounds, alongside a few splintered bones to these rioter bums. Fuck it, while HM's streets are lawless we might as well go get stuck in. Surely? Go out and get me some blood and Burberry-London soaked hoods. 

Hooding - 21st Century Scalping for the Disenchanted. 

Well - Hooding may seem like a good (Perhaps slightly vengeful, definitely legally grey) option. BUT - These people are total shits! Vengeful, godless, jobless, hopelessly pathetic wasters with no prospects and even less respect...

So what would be a fitting punishment? Well there is one rage-fuelled option which appears to be gathering a lot of attention.

E-petition - NO BENEFITS FOR RIOTER SCUMBAGS

Ok.

Just in case you didn't get it on first glance.

THIS IS A MORE IGNORANT AND REACTIONARY NON-SOLUTION THAN A FULL BLOWN, GOVERNMENT ENDORSED, NATIONAL DAY OF HOODING.

Approaching a neglected, poverty stricken area, then taking away the benefits of criminal youngsters who inhabit that area is going to LOWER crime? Benefits for are lot of these people are the only fucking ALTERNATIVE to crime. Many who've committed a petty act, or a first offence will be forcibly plunged into total criminality as a means of survival. One day they're pinching something from the local store, or say partaking in a night of idiotic vandalism. The next they're sliding underneath your grandmas back door with a screwdriver or machete, looking for food or cash or fingernail clippers, or whatever the hell else they need to survive.

Do we really think by taking peoples benefits away, in the midst of the worst financial meltdown in a goddamn century, while youth unemployment is stratospherically high, it's going to turn them directly into honest work? Really?

No.

I'd say this'll be a bad move, on all fronts, at the most basic and blindingly obvious level. The deeper implications are even more disturbing but I'm too tired and lazy and nauseated to go into it.

People are saying sign the petition.

I'm saying don't.