This might well seem a bit out of date, but today I was delighted to find a DVD of Ingmar Bergman's "Fanny & Alexander" - the full, 5-hour, 2-disc, Artificial Eye deal - in our local HMV sale for 7 quid. And this put me in mind of a singularly badtempered and inaccurate attack on the said film written by Alex Cox, in a "Guardian" column last year.

In fact, it was nearly 2 years ago (see my Guardian clippings at http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1679921,00.html), which probably goes to show how sensitive I am to a grudge even at second or third hand. But it's worth noting, I think, that Cox - whose first major feature, "Repo Man," was both wonderfully imaginative and funny - has not managed to sustain either his inspiration or wit in anything he's done since. In fact, for all his punk credentials, his take on the 1978 Sex Pistols debacle, "Sid & Nancy", is a strong candidate for the worst film ever made.

Alex, I'm an even bigger artistic failure than you, mate. I love "Repo Man", supported the Sandinistas, and am grateful you gave the great Joe Strummer his break in the movies. But "Fanny og Alexander" (that's Swedish, that is) is a great film, by a director whose Doc Martens I would suggest that you are barely qualified to polish. To seek to discredit it for its theatrical structure, or the upper-middle-class milieu it portrays is equivalent to a member of The Lurkers having a go at Beethoven about the price of violins.

And I liked The Lurkers.

Some observations in a lengthy "Guardian Review" piece today by Doris Lessing that interrogate our online culture in a highly intelligent, sceptical - not to say devastatingly precise - way. They can be read at "Guardian Unlimited", and for ease of reference on my clippings page there at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/users/whitecat77/clippings

(I don't know if you have to register at the site to read the clippings, but it doesn't cost anything.)

Any thoughts ?

Back in July I spent a week at my mother's, accompanied by my 13-year-old son. It's always a strange experience for me, spending time with my Ma, because of all the usual difficulties & contradictions of being a son, particularly an eldest one. Therefore, of course, the presence of mine only compounded matters. One interesting aspect - and one I have yet to mention to my psychotherapist - is that while I was there I found a virtually-complete set of VHS tapes of Patrick McGoohan's legendary 1960s TV series The Prisoner in a charity shop, and, of course, bought them for a quid a copy.

The psychotherapist bit - The Prisoner - comprenez ???

Anyhow, I've been working my way through the series, which only ran to 17 episodes, ever since. A number of things have struck me, principal of which is the fact that, even tho' I cannot have been more than 8 years old when I first saw it, The Prisoner made a huge impact on me. But secondly, it's clear that the series, in its resistance to closure and easy explicability, is akin to the drama of Samuel Beckett, a great literary hero of mine, whose work eschewed easy psychologising in favour of the physical demonstration of daily obstacles facing human beings in their search for comfort and familiarity, with the clear implication that this might well be the sine qua non of being human.

Hmmm, that was yet another overlong sentence, but ya know whadda mean, dontcha ? Let me know.

Almost forgot - a great piece of "Prisoner" analysis in someone else's webpost:

http://killthesnark.blogspot.com/2006/05/patrick-mcgoohans-prisoner.html

READ IT !

Love this film !

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175880/trivia

Btw, why didn't Cruise get the Oscar for it ? Might've saved him from Scientology.

So we get a sitter, and wait till they're all in their own rooms, pretending to be going to sleep. Then we pretend to be there still, whilst sneaking out of the side door... To a restaurant. A very bad restaurant. Where the meat is undercooked, and the bread burnt, and the wine hardly worthy of the name, and the staff spend all evening talking among themselves, and anyway we're the only customers (hardly surprising, given everything else.)

But we have an hour to ourselves. No disputes to settle. No rules to enforce. No repeated viewings of inane videos for the sake of somnolence. Nothing that relates to anything except ourselves. And we even manage not to talk about THEM. In fact, we hardly talk at all.

Peace. Bliss. An hour's freedom.

This is what it does to you.

Think carefully.

...we just get bad backs.

I've been a fan of Alice Cooper (the man who taught Marilyn Manson all he knows - including the provocative feminisation of forenames - and has scared more horses and moral guardians than most of us have had chicken dinners) since... oh, way back. How, indeed, can any one with a sense of humour (all right then, a twisted sense of humour) not appreciate song titles like "I Love The Dead", a delicate paean to necrophilia ? About 6 months ago my mate Mick & I heard he was playing at Sheffield Arena tonight - supported by Motorhead no less - and each forked out 36 quid for tickets. We both figured that since Alice is well into his 60s now it might be the last time we ever get to see him. Alive, anyway.

An exact contemporary of mine, Mick has visual problems these days and can't drive at night, so I volunteered myself as transport manager. Unfortunately, about a week ago my back gave out, and I've been unable to bend enough to put my own socks on, never mind fold myself behind the wheel of a Volvo for a 60-mile round trip, ever since. Can't honestly say I'd survive a mosh pit either. So I've had to pull out. Mick's going by train. I'm going to bed with a hot water bottle. The really annoying thing is that I saw Alice Cooper on the "Paul O'Grady Show" yesterday looking fitter than I've felt since I was 30 ! Shouldn't be surprised if the bugger outlives me.

Pass the Ovaltine.

Just been watching the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" on TV and trying to codify my strong objections to the "Star Wars" films. It isn't that any of them is *per se* offensive (altho Jar Jar Binks comes pretty close) - it's just the sheer blandness of the content and the unimaginativeness of the filmmaking that gets me. I've expended a good deal of time & energy convincing the Heathen (i.e. a lot of literary types who recoil from 'genre' fiction) that SF has the power and the scope to explore issues that others cannot reach - and I'm happy to cite Lem/ Tarkovsky's "Solaris", Sturgeon's "More Than Human", and anything by Barry N. Malzberg in support of my case - only to find idiots like George Lucas peddling simple Good-vs-Evil shoot-em-ups to the ignorant, masquerading as the real thing. Frankly, I'd rather have "Dr Who", "Star Trek", or "Red Dwarf", all of which - on a fraction of the budget - have managed to to produce genuinely exciting, moving, and/or funny variants on the staples of interplanetary exploration, war & misunderstanding than the po-faced puerilism of "Star Wars." What really astounds me is how many people who claim to be serious SF aficionados go for it: you are being treated like children, folks - and even then, I wouldn't want my children to swallow the expensive simplicities you're prepared to pay for !