James David Ward

• The schedule for this blog is mysterious and strange, especially to me.
• Spent three days in Warks &c, managed to show my face to both sets of grandparents, my parents, the sister, and the pets, thus fulfilling my obligations for another month or two.
• The three days away/Bank Holiday thing has messed up my schedule greatly, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.
• Watched Exodus: Gods and Kings. Ridley Scott is a great director, but his films are only rarely much cop. Exodus is very good, probably his best for a while. Surprisingly emotional, and an interesting semi-rational interpretation of many of the magical events. Worth looking up if you want to see Batman be Moses.3
• We have a mouse in the house, so I’ve had to spend some time sorting that out. The vegan housemate released it into the garden, the fool that he is, so we’ll have to rebait the trap and take him out to the countryside. I’m not for killing Gerald, despite advice. He’s just a mouse, doing his mousey thing.
• Bit of chorus, as per. Only two more rehearsals ever now, very sad. Not for them, of course, they tire of my pep and verve.
• Some pubbing, no running, bad eating. Still recovering from today’s fry up. Cheat week is in season, apparently. Must try harder.
• Actually saw some friends this week. It was nice. I like people who like me.  Shall try to track down more.
• I didn’t sort out a poem. This week!
• I became King of Ireland on Crusader Kings 2, then overstretched and became King of Denmark. This is turning out contentiously for me, so I’m giving it a break. Also, I caught up entirely with No Such Thing As A Fish, so I have to figure out a new podcast to pair with it.
• The latest New Statesman is fantastic. It’s edited by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, and has articles from everyone you want to read articles from. An absolute steal.
• I read it on the train to Manchester. Had a group workshop/chat concerning some ADing for the 24:7 Theatre Festival. Don’t expect anything to come directly from it, but it’s the sort of thing I’m trying to put myself in the frame for more often. I haven’t done any theatre since November, and such a long break is probably very unhealthy for me.
• There was a blues singer on the street called the Boogie Woogie Mancunian, which basically made my week. As did seeing Kirsty being a dinosaur in the Haymarket. What a time we live in.
• Inching forward on How to Build A Girl by Caitlin Moran. It’s a good book, I’m just not in a particularly booky mood at the moment. Articles I ingest constantly, even long ones, but extended prose is gliding past me at the moment. Must get back into a routine with it. Also, not stay up till midnight playing Crusader Kings 2 again may open up a slot for it.
• This evening, I have fuck nothing planned, which is probably what I need. People are nice, but so is locking yourself away from them. Work again tomorrow, so I have to recharge to face it. Yay adulting!
• What I will probably do is find something light to eat and watch Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The book is fantastic, and the telly version is ticking all my boxes too. Go watch it.

• This what you’re reading. (Hello!)
• Went work, obviously.
• Choir twice, the lucky things.
• Finished off season 2 of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..It’s the TV spin-off about the anonymous people in Helicarriers and offices that turn up in Marvel movies sometimes, and led by one of the few they bothered to name. I like the show, but I find it hard to recommend. Marvel-wise, there’s not much incentive to stray beyond the movies to here unless you have lots of free time or are a trainspotter like me. As a Whedon project, it does share a lineage with Buffy, but the show to compare it to would be the short-lived Dollhouse, since both writers and actors have turned up in MAoS. Dollhouse was about people who got their personality wiped from their minds and stored on file, so that their body could be rented out with an artificial one in place that could do the tasks the clients wanted. Dollhouse was great when it was a dark, twisted exploration of what humans do to each other, and when it was a full-on action apocalyptic thrill-ride. Dollhouse was dull at the beginning of each season when the show felt it had to be a mild flashy action show where attractive people in smart clothing hit each other for Reasons. Even though the stories are different, MAoS is the same sort of show. The flashy action is much better and much more diverting, and the end-of-season-everything-is-going-to-pot thing definitely works, particularly now they do it mid-season as well. The problem with MAoS is that it’s not really able to explore relationships properly. Rather than being the espionage show it acts like it is, where a character’s moral compass is defined by the jobs they are willing to undertake, or a Fortean Times-style “the freaky things the government don’t want you to know about” show like Fringe, it is in fact a simplistic superhero show. The goodies are good, and they might do bad things, but they’re usually doing them because they’re the best of the bad choices. And, of course, the baddies are bad, even the ones that used to be goodies – they’re the worst of all. This fits with the Marvel mythos, because Black Widow and Hawkeye are spies, and they’re definitely goodies, and Nick Fury is a spy, but he’s clearly got the best intentions at heart when he lies to your face. And Hydra is a Nazi organisation, and it would be pretty bold to portray that as anything other than a bad bunch of people to socialise with. But it means the show doesn’t really have anywhere to go. It always boils down to the white hats vs the black hats, and the black hats win. Even when it’s white hats vs white hats, it’s either a silly misunderstanding which ends with hugs and cake, or the white hats were really black hats in disguise. I have no problem with this formula when it’s men in tights, because their whole point is that they’re other than human. But when it’s a show about a bunch of people who work for a secret organisation with suspect jurisdiction, it’s a shame that they’re all such lovely people. Oh well, it’s entertaining.
• Spent too much money on and too much time playing computer games. I blame the Humble Store sale. Particular favourites include Audiosurf (cruise along a track generated by your tunes! Also match-3 puzzling), Towerfall Ascension (there is still no weapon cooler than a bow and arrow) and VVVVVV (winner of the Tucker Award for Swearing at a Game, May ’15). Bastion is pretty fun too, if you need a bit of lawnmowering your enemies to relax. And I will have to get back to Crusader Kings II and Cities: Skylines in particular, once I get over how badly I sucked at them. At least with the impossibly difficult VVVVVV you know what you need to do, it’s just that your ability to move a character is poor. Sims and strategy games require actual forethought and planning, and I am short on that at the moment.
• Read a lot of Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and some old Eurogamer reviews. I probably enjoy games criticism more than games, and I know that is weird but sue me.
• Costed a new proper gaming PC, figured it’d be around £900, cried. A £600 PC is easily justified, because that’s the cost of a budget laptop such as the dying one I’m using now plus the cost of a PS4/XBone, but more than that and I’m made sad. Plus, I can’t even afford that PC at the moment. A proper desktop powerhouse would be a 5-year investment, but I’ll need to save up to make it. ADULTHOOD.
• Finished the lyrics off on two songs. My creative output remains minimal, but that’s better than non-exist it. I like to believe I’m mostly doing R&D rather than real work at the moment, but that is of course bollocks. I am just lazy/paralysed by insecurity.
• Made a lovely lamb rogan josh curry and froze the excess, which spread the joy throughout the week.
• Ate all of my peanuts and cashews because I have no self-control and buying them was a bad idea in the first place.
• Ran thrice, poorly. My current playlist, however, is my hand-picked best thirty early (pre-Revolver) songs of The Beatles. I find I can only be inspired to move by damn good pop music, and I’m doing a band at a time. Previous artists have been The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons, mulling over the next choice.
• Went to Find the Right Words. Accidentally signed up to do a poem next month, instantly regretted it.
• Next week: off home for bank holiday weekend. Some writing at some point hopefully. I’ll definitely need to sort out a poem. Also, there are people I haven’t seen in weeks, and I should probably let them know I’m alive. Laters!

Blogging is dead, basically. So why am I here?

So it turns out I haven’t posted here for half a year. The last post is dated July. This partly because I neglected to get Internet in the bedsit I was living in for that period (a mistake I won’t make again) but also because I wasn’t in a communicative place due to far too much personal life and general exhaustion. 

This is not a review.

I’d had a grey and muggy morning, the type where the same thoughts that have been running around your head for weeks reoccur, and you proceed to become even more angry and upset by the hands you’ve been dealt and the other people playing the cards. It being a morning where I wished to barricade myself in my room against these storms, despite knowing it would be no help, in the afternoon I took myself out to the cinema.

I like film, but I rarely go and watch them, but a recent paycheck, my need to get out of my own head, and the close proximity of the Phoenix combined to make it an inevitability. I assumed that there’d be something on that day I could watch, and, since the Phoenix is Leicester’s premier arthouse cinema, I naturally chose to watch How to Train Your Dragon 2, in 3D.

If your next two questions are why a kids’ film and why go to the pictures alone in the first place, let me dismiss them for you. Per the second question, the level of focus I bring to any sort of culural activity, be it film or theatre or whatever, means that the only time I tend to interact with people I go with tends to be pre- and post-show discussion. Even though I’m missing out on that by going alone, I have this blog, and I have friends who have already seen the film and I know are always interested in discussion.

As for question one, to me a film is a film is a film. I’m a student of animation anyway, and luckily Dragon 2 had more than enough emotion and thematic interest to hold the attention of even the nerdiest of film snobs, if they dared open themselves up to the experience. Dragon 2 is an interesting case, because for years I found Dreamworks films, save Shrek and Shrek 2, to be cheap knock-offs of the far superior Disney fare. There are many I’ve refused to watch. However, from about the time of Kung-Fu Panda, but especially from the original How to Train Your Dragon, they’ve begun making films that actually compete, and in some cases even beat, those offered by Pixar and such.

Dragon 2 is definitely in this more illustrious company. It uses the familiarity a sequel brings to tell a story that possibly has too much going on in it. This isn’t a Pixar-perfect film, where every single part of the story inevitably progresses from the part that precedes it, where every character and conflict illuminates an aspect of the simple theme that runs through the entire film.

The story of Dragon 2 is, to be honest, fairly irrelevant. The culmination of the plot is simply to reassert and emphasise the status quo at the beginning of the film. However, ending where you began is unity, and this allows the film to move through a variety different yet interesting emotional areas.

I don’t understand people who say they watch a film as escapism. I don’t leave myself or my situation when I watch a film, at least the films that matter, I burrow deeper. I discover new angles on problems I’ve had or have, I see my personality reflected in characters and situations, and most importantly, the progression of a plot to a conclusion provides the closure that life so rarely provides. The notion that you can sort these sort your life problems out is an attractive one, and often it’s entirely accurate.

I spent this film thinking about my relationship with my father. I spent the film thinking about my stubbornness, the times I’ve led, the times I’ve done what I think is right whatever the consequences. I spent the film thinking about my friends, and my family, my dog, and the communities in which I have placed myself. I satisfied myself intellectually by picking up on the socially conservative subtexts of the film – Dragons as living weapons, that only do harm when directed, and the troubling yet unsettlingly appropriate decision to have the villain of a film about Vikings (albeit Scottish ones…) be the only black character in it.

I left the screening, and was hit by blazing sun. The film served its purpose – not to give me time to deny the inevitable hassle life throws at you, but allowing me to process things from a different angle. Most importantly, the film left me with a desire to create. I’ve been having problems deciding what the next thing after Nando’s and Nandon’ts will be, and while this film hasn’t whittled the list of projects as long as my arm down to the one I should be doing, it has left me with the certaintly I need to burn through them, and see what’s on the other side. Sometimes, the follow-up to something that was planned turns out to be more interesting than the original. I’m off now to meet a friend unexpectedly in town, and then I’m watching Python at the pictures. The day has certainly become a lot better than it started.