I recently finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austen (allegedly), which I’d found brand-new and mint condition in a charity shop for £1.50. That’s definitely worth a punt!

Overall, I found it a good read. I have read the ‘original’, and even seen TV adaptations of it, but to be totally honest that was in school and I’m not even sure there was any work or essay involved in it beyond just going through the motions of reading it as a class, and/or watching the television. I can sum up my total knowledge of it before I read this book as “Many Bennett sisters want to get married, there is a mean guy name Darcy who Elizabeth hates.” Which is probably the ground-state of knowledge, like what everyone knows about Superman, Romeo and Juliet, or Macbeth.

There were parts of And Zombies that made me think they were poking fun at or paying homage to the original in a way that is opaque to outsiders but absolutely obvious to someone familiar with the work. One chapter, which was only a paragraph long, summed up a whole journey as essentially not worth writing about. Does the original book go into lavish detail of the countryside passed and the entire trip’s trivia? I know Tess of the D’Urbervilles was far over the top as a traveller’s almanac, but I honestly can’t remember enough of Pride and Prejudice to say the same.

In some places, I had to scoff and thought it was going a little over the top – Elizabeth ripping out the still beating heart of a ninja in front of a noblewoman, for instance. But it was still entertaining, and as much as the action scenes were exaggerated and a little foolish, I found that I was getting bored and restless if it went too long between them. That’s the only thing that has stopped me from trying to find a cheap/borrowed copy of the original to read, because although my interest has been raised – I want to know how close this version is to the original – the ‘zombie-less’ parts of the book were, at times, a bit of a chore.

The only major criticism I have of the book is that the zombies are mentioned often, but always using one of a small handful of period-consistent terms. When used once, these terms are an interesting look at how zombies may have been seen in that sort of world, but each one is repeated over and over again. One of the least appealing is the word ‘unmentionables’ – since they are called that often, and while some characters talk of nothing else, Mrs Bennett is the only person I can think of off the top of my head that might not have mentioned zombies at all. They are far from unmentionable, people talk about them all the time! And while Mrs Bennett rarely (if ever) talked about zombies, she talked about her daughters fighting abilities – which is itself a direct consequence of the zombie plague.

Zombie references also feel shoe-horned in many places – the best uses are more subtle, like the fact that mail is expected to be delayed, as coaches must be more heavily armed when crossing the countryside, and even then may be attacked and require a better provisioned coach to recover mail and deliver it. The turning of Miss Lucas was most interesting when it was at a distance – the frequency and quality of her letters dropping, Elizabeth wondering when (or if) the next one would arrive, or whether her disease has been discovered and what fate befell her.

As promised last year, I’m going to try and post a review of the past year on the first day of the new year. This is how 2010 shapes up for me (see 2009 here).

Did you enjoy this year?
I did, quite a lot! Freddy stayed out of hospital almost the entire year, only visited a tiny bit for a double-check – and it turned out to be exactly what the GP had suggested.

What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
Played RuneQuest, drove a car without an instructor in it (ooh!), drove on a motorway, made new year’s resolutions, went on a medieval re-enactment weekend.

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I kept some. I proved (to myself, at least) that the secret is to have a plan of action – not just a goal. Goals don’t meet themselves. So my resolutions then (described in full here):

1. Filing
   Done! This had a weekly target to meet, and I made myself ‘catch-up’ if I got behind any week. This is by far the most successful of my resolutions.
2. Dark Elves
   I set vague targets that I never really tried to meet. Hence, I had to re-evaluate what I could realistically do, and toned down from ‘paint everything’ to ‘paint the Corsairs’, which itself isn’t complete (but is very very close!)
3. Driving Licence
   In the eleventh hour, I completed this one! I passed at the beginning of December, after failing twice this year (and once last year). Finally, a driver.
4. German
   I always planned to do this once I’d cleared a couple of other things off my list. I never cleared enough space in my week to do it.
5. Star Trek Cards
   Done! Selling things just means you have to do something, and get organised to do it. I very much enjoy the television I bought with the proceeds, too!
6. Family Tree
   There’s still a little more to find out (I need to confirm my records dive, after all) from grandparents, but I feel good about the progress on this one. Even though it can never really be called ‘finished’.
7. Wargame Tools
   Scrapped. Abandoned. Lost my motivation, and quit.

So ones to take on to next year – Dark Elves, Learn German, Research Family Tree. I’ll try to make a more definite plan on those later, so I can make more meaningful progress this year.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not this year, although a lot of people got pregnant – four of my cousins, and we’re expecting again!

Did anyone close to you die?
I think I am a lucky charm – everyone’s still with me!

What countries did you visit?
None. The furthest afield I went this year was London, twice. Portsmouth a couple of times. Nowhere more exciting than that.

What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
I’m not sure of anything I lacked in 2010 in particular... maybe the time to go out and see people a bit more? A foreign holiday – I’ve not been more than a hundred miles from home in over two years now!

What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
December 2nd, passed my driving test. December 1st, saw our new baby on the scan for the first time.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Passing the driving test. Learning to paint ‘wet blending’ style.

What was your biggest failure?
Failed to keep some of my resolutions. Failed two driving tests. Not sure which is bigger, I think I’ve had an OK year, failure-wise.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Only a small bit of illness, and in general a very healthy year.

Did you have to go to the hospital?
Only once, to get Freddy checked. It turned out to be exactly what the GP thought it would be.

What was the best thing you bought?
The new television – 42 inch LCD Full HD oh yeah! Second place would be the car – quite lucky, that one.

Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Freddy, for being absolutely wonderful.

Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
The Pope.

Where did most of your money go?
Ignoring mortgage payments, it’d be on the car and the car insurance. Less said about that the better.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Everything Freddy does – running around pretending to be a dinosaur, learning his animals, he’s fantastic. Also, about getting ahead with my family tree stuff, that felt pretty rewarding.

What song will always remind you of 2010?
Probably something by Katy Perry. She has a really annoying ‘uwuh-uh’o’ sort of sound, it doesn’t sound very nice at all. But sticks in the head. Hopefully, it’ll end up being Candyman (thanks to Chris Evans for playing it every Friday morning on BBC Radio 2, it’s a nice song!)

Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder?
About the same. I was pretty happy last year, and I’m doing well keeping it that way!
ii. richer or poorer?
Almost definitely richer. More monthly expenses (I got grown up, and did life insurance, pensions, and of course the car now) but at least I’ve saved up a bit since buying the house!

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Gaming. Not enough games this year by far.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
I don’t really know. I’ve done a lot more grown-up things than I have in the past, but I don’t know about doing less of them... for the most part, it’s all done and won’t need doing again for a long time!

How did you spend Christmas?
At home, doing almost nothing. We had a few visitors, Freddy opened everyone’s presents, and had a really great time. As I write this, I’m awaiting a second Christmas with my family visiting me (2nd January), because the snow prevented them coming up the weekend we’d originally planned.

Where did you ring in 2010?
We had an uneventful night, went to bed then realised ‘Hey – it’s midnight!’. Then I heard people outside so I ran out and joined about half-a-dozen neighbours banging saucepans.

What was your favourite TV programme?
We’ve been indoctrinated into The Big Bang Theory and Firefly, both due to major nagging. Both were really good shows! We also finally got onto Deep Space Nine on DVD, I can’t wait to get a bit further with that one.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I’ve got a nasty feeling that as I’ve learned more about the Pope, I hate him more. Which is a bit disconcerting.

What was the best book you read?
I re-read a lot of old favourites. I finally got a box of books back from my parent’s loft, I’m looking forward to getting through some of those. I didn’t read many new books, and the only one I remember liking was Brave New World. But that was a good one!

What was your greatest musical discovery?
This year, I discovered... nothing. Not a specific band, anyway. My musical discovery will probably be the chance tuning in to Jack FM, a local station that ‘plays what we want’. It also has some hilarious one-liners between songs – “If we agreed with you, we’d both be wrong. That’s why we play what we want.” and “On Jack FM, we mostly play what we want. Sometimes, we play what we feel like instead.” A lot of the old stuff, like Blondie, Supertramp, Pulp, Oasis, Blur, The Lightning Seeds, and a whole load I don’t even know the names of. A whole mix, right back to the 70’s.

What did you want and get?
A driving licence, and we’re expecting a new baby!

What did you want and not get?
More of my new year’s resolutions complete.

How did you earn your keep?
Still programming. Still loving it. I funded a new television by selling off my old Star Trek cards. End of an era.

What was your favourite film of this year?
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That’s definitely my cup of tea! I missed a lot of films that I wanted to see, but maybe I’ll catch them on DVD next year. Iron Man 2 was also pretty good, but Scott Pilgrim just got me right there, you know?

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I was twenty-six, and I can’t remember a thing about it. Honestly. I think I bought the telly? I seem to have had a two-month blogging blackout over the summer. I have a feeling I failed a driving test around then.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Doing something memorable with the birthday! I think my year has been pretty good. Maybe passing the driving test earlier would have been good? We’d probably have missed the awesome deal we got with the car though.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
‘They still fit, I’ll still wear them.’ I might need to get something new soon though.

What kept you sane?
Freddy – he’s adorable.

What political issue stirred you the most?
The Pope’s state visit to this island. Enough to get me involved in my very first protest. That was a bit surreal.

Who was the best new person you met?
Mostly, I’ve only met people through work or through Freddy’s nursery. I think I might need to get out more.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
Toddlers will repeat anything you say to them.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I can’t remember the words, but I remember a Weetabix commercial which featured a driving examiner’s lament, to the tune of “I Will Survive.” That’s probably apt, in the circumstances!

*** BONUS QUESTIONS (thanks Lone Cow!) ***

What is the best thing that you were given?
I was given a revised salary in a ‘department restructure’ at the beginning of the year. After last year’s pay review, half the team left and the other half were looking for work – made for a powerful bargaining position. Yeah, I’m a greedy bastard at heart.

What is the best thing you have given someone?
I gave Freddy this toy kitchen, which he absolutely adores. I gave Jen a car. I shared my baby with the world!

Thanks everyone! That’s it till next year!

I saw a poster on the side of a bus the other day, advertising the film London Boulevard. I thought it looked a bit familiar...

It’s almost identical to the poster for Quantum of Solace.

Man standing protectively in front of woman, looking in different directions, no background details, gun held casually by the side, little or no facial expressions...

I get the feeling I’ve seen this poster for many other films too, I just can’t place it at the moment.

My reviews have spoilers. I make no apologies.

In short - I hated it. The style was jarring at the beginning, and mellowed out but still messed around, mixing up third and first person perspectives - most of the third person writing was in the first 15-20% of the book, then it seemed to forget that it was trying that and kept swapping around. This was incredibly annoying.

The plot can be summed up as "An arsehole moves to England, where he gets everything his own way." As far as I can tell, it's about a guy who sponges from his friends and treats his wife and child atrociously, never pays rent, then when it appears he can't live in Ireland anymore due to landlords chasing him, the wife (and the rent his parents were paying directly to her) disappearing to Scotland, he leaves for England. There, he meets up with some friends who treat him well, an old friend who has (gasp!) worked and treats him extremely well, and they set him back up with a woman he cheated on his wife with (one of three) who is working and willing to support him despite him beating her and treating her like crap.

So an arsehole moves to England, where everything comes up roses for him. He always gets forgiven, and no-one means it when they say "this is the last time..." – including the friend who is practically destitute every time he is bothered for a drink!

Our main character, for whom everything works out terrific, is a drunk, an adulterer and a wife-beater. His child is only mentioned a couple of times and he appears to take no notice of her at all. Although he has a bad life in Ireland, it is entirely of his own making - pawning household items to pay for drink, never fixing or paying for anything if he can help it, not studying as a lawyer (as he is supposed to be doing), and driving his friends out of the country.

I was much more interested in the characters who left our lead. The estranged wife who sided with the despicable man's father to leave him penniless and move firstly across to the nice district of Dublin, then to Edinburgh. His lodger – a devout Catholic taken advantage of, who regretted every time she (apparently willingly) let him have his way, and most of all his best friend who left for France to both make some money and lose his virginity. It appears in his letters to our star that he is having more adventures, including passing himself off as a cook to gain employment in a noblewoman's house in Ireland, leaving there and moving on once more (all without losing that darned virginity!). He's not succeeding, and probably not any nicer a person than the main character, but certainly had more interesting adventures and seems like he would have been more entertaining.

Even, and this is a stretch - the young girl beaten by her father who he extorted money from to move to London, who joined him later, left him because he was wicked then came back - after successfully losing weight, getting a job in the film industry, making good money for herself and all so he would like her more would make an interesting character to follow. She's able to take all his crap right at the end, yet stays with him and supports him!
I don't like books with characters like this lead. I want them to get their just rewards. There's no obstacle for him to overcome - or rather, there are obstacles, but he just drinks and slobs and walks away from them. He doesn't achieve anything, he gets lucky at the end due to his friends and a woman and gets the life he was trying to live all along - no work, no responsibility.

The only thing that I am possibly not understanding about this book is it’s humour. I could follow and like a book about a loser and a bastard if it was funny, but the only way that The Ginger Man is funny is in the Happy Slapper sense – not really very funny at all, on reflection.

Boiler-plate introduction warning: This film review is going to be heavy on spoilers. Move along if you’re not into that sort of thing. I will warn you to start with, I am a nit-picker of films. I will latch on to something and unravel it, and try and understand how the world of a film works. This often makes it look like I hate a film, or at least think too much. Sci-fi films set 10 minutes into the future are perfect for this – a lot of things can be assumed about the way the world works now with that one big difference.

We picked this one up from our Sainsbury’s bargain bin. It’s too easy to walk out of that store with a handful of new DVDs as they’re all pitched at that perfect ‘try-me’ price.

Now, it’s hard to nitpick funny films. So much of humour these days is based on the fact that these things do not happen, can not happen, are bizarrely unlikely or physically impossible. And superhero films fall on that same sort of side – how can you really nitpick Spider-Man’s web travel dynamics when you’re talking about a guy who shoots selectively sticky, instantly replenished super-strong webs out of his wrists?

In general, this was a good film. It made us laugh. Not as much as Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which we’d watched just before it, but it was definitely entertaining. I thought, by the end, that the acting was in general fairly good for this sort of thing. The relationship between Mary and Hancock kept us guessing all the way through, and we just couldn’t work out what the story was there.

Which actually brings me to the big nit-pick – Mary (Charlize Theron). She never answered any damn question sensibly, or without introducing at least a dozen more! Almost entirely down to her character, the plot unravelled itself until there were dozens of loose ends, no real resolution, but all the characters just wandered off fine and dandy. Big questions she failed to answer include...

What are we?
To which she replies:
We have been known by many names – angels, gods...
So... what are they? Not expanded upon.

She tells our man Hancock:
We were made in pairs, but as we get closer to our opposites we lose our powers.
There are lots of questions he could ask, including “By who?” and “For what?”, and none of them really bad choices. He chooses:
Why?
And is told:
So we can live human lives, and love and blah blah blah.
That doesn’t answer any of my questions! Not one!

While Hancock lies bleeding in a hospital, she sits on him and tells him that the closer they are, the weaker their powers. The further away, the stronger those powers get. Like the power to heal. To heal those dangerous bullet holes in him. The woman sitting on him tells him that the further away he goes from her, the better those wounds will heal. So MOVE, woman!
It’s at this point that she reveals their true history – where he got his scars from, how he got his skull hit and got amnesia, and why she left him there. This would have been totally fine if she’d not then added:
They always get to you through me.
WHAT??? Who always gets to him? Different people, in different ages of history, in different countries and cultures, just randomly attacking people makes sense, as does ‘ooh, they’re angry because we’re demons/witches’, but suddenly she makes it a They and an always and makes it seem like there’s so much more occurring beneath the surface... Why are people after him? Do we have to guess?

She fails to answer any questions to her husband when confronted by him about Hancock and her flying ability...

I have to fault Hancock himself though, when learning that Mary knows all about him (they’ve been together three-thousand years or more) but he has no recollection of anything eighty years before, that he didn’t ask her what his name was. There’s a cute story about a nurse asking for his ‘John Hancock’ and him being so addled from the skull wound that caused his amnesia that he thought it was his name.

This is a film about questions. People not asking the right questions, and people not answering the questions asked. I expect we’ll watch the ‘Unrated’ version (we got the 2-disc special edition) at some point, and maybe it’ll answer something. Then again, maybe the answers I want are hidden somewhere in the bonus disc. Either way, it’s a funny film that’s worth a second viewing, even if it’s a little short on absolute laugh-out-loud moments – but as I say, that could be because we had it straight on the tail of Zohan.

This film review is going to be heavy on spoilers. Move along if you’re not into that sort of thing. I will warn you to start with, I am a nit-picker of films. I will latch on to something and unravel it, and try and understand how the world of a film works. This often makes it look like I hate a film, or at least think too much. Sci-fi films set 10 minutes into the future are perfect for this – a lot of things can be assumed about the way the world works now with that one big difference.

To sum it up right here, I enjoyed this film. It’s a fun action flick, Bruce Willis is good as usual, and the style and appearance of everything in the film helps to sell the story. When people act as their surrogates, they are slightly off, but not entirely ‘uncanny valley’, if that’s even appropriate. The ‘cheaper models’ shown in the film are definitely sitting in the uncanny valley but everyone appears to have the equivalent of a Ferrari, as far as I could tell.

It does, however, suffer from a few rather wacky assumptions and simplifications. In no particular order:

Surrogate distribution
”Surrogate technology became cheap enough that 98% of the world’s population have surrogates.”
Really? 98%? Half the world can’t afford to feed itself, let alone buy a complex robotic device with two-way high speed permanently active (and highly reliable, since it’s their whole life being lived) broadband connection. By world, I think that they meant to say ‘Western world’ and quite possibly ‘USA’ only, since…

FBI Monitoring
It appears common knowledge in the film that the FBI watches through the eyes of every surrogate. Privacy advocates aren’t shown in the film, but I can imagine a vocal minority refusing to use surrogates (but also refusing to move to the primitive ‘low-tech’ reservations) simply because they don’t want the government – or anyone, for that matter – looking at whatever they look at, whenever they want to. I can’t say I’d be thrilled about it. I would also be fairly confident that the UK government would be a little wary of Americans watching what every British person is up to, and that’s a shadow of what the French would feel!

Military Applications
The moral and ethical problems of using disposable soldiers are quite huge – war would be won and lost on a financial basis. “Oh, we lost more surries? Best call up the factory.” There isn’t such a downside to declaring war, if all you need to do is send thousands of surrogates into your neighbour and shoot everything that moves. You don’t lose men, you only lose tax money – and since surrogates are so cheap, there’s not even a lot of that lost.

The other major military implication is that if surrogates are used to fight wars, why would they be exported from the country? Any of the more advanced models could be reverse-engineered to create the more basic (cheaper) military version, giving other countries equal footing on the military basis.

Are they Communist now?
The economic clue in the ‘cheap’ surrogates makes corporations seem less realistic. All surrogates are on the same network – but not everybody in the world is on the same internet service. Likewise, if everyone can afford this extremely expensive piece of equipment (and the requisite maintenance, energy cost, etc) are iPhones treated like confetti? There’s obviously a demand for surrogates – a huge demand, since they apparently make things safer and solve society’s ills – so any capitalist corporation would sell for whatever they could get, especially in a market that seems devoid of competition.

In addition, inequality has been solved. Crime is much lower now everyone’s using surrogates. Surely, violence against surrogates will increase because the consequences are less severe? Early in the film, a surrogate is destroyed by a car and it’s written as ‘criminal damage’ – possibly vandalism, I don’t quite remember. A human would be classed as ‘hit-and-run’ or ‘attempted murder’. Perhaps that’s how crime is reduced – all crime is declassified.

Meatbags!
I don’t remember exactly, but I believe the film is set 15-25 years in the future. And people seem to have become allergic to people, some even go as far as to call the real humans ‘meatbags’. The anxiety of being out without your surrogate and the slightly concerned, off-kilter reaction from surrogates to humans is good, but people using surrogates calling others ‘meatbags’ I just don’t understand. I can grudgingly admit that violence against humans would happen just for being without a surrogate, because people will find any excuse to hurt each other, but the actual revulsion shown is… well, stupid. Sooner or later their meatbag is going to have to meet someone else’s meatbag and mix their meat together to have a family. Maybe they put a bag over each other’s heads and make tiny motor noises.

Space in the future
Families might even be getting smaller in the future – buying a new surrogate when your kid grows out of theirs? Wow. That’s going to suck. Plus, since no more unprotected sex (unless your surrogate is really basic), the birth rate will drop dramatically. With people not getting out of the house, obesity will rise… And of course the surrogate control beds. They’re enormous! We have, I think, a good sized house for three people. We could easily squeeze another child, maybe two in here. But in the world of surrogates, we would need to convert the loft into a surrogate room or else lose our dining room to put up two of those beds. Any kids will have to move out young so they can have a place to put their own surrogate bed. Houses will need to be a lot bigger, and I don’t know that their price will come down in line with surrogate prices.

Endgame
Taking these points into consideration, the end of the film makes things look very interesting. No surrogates connected to the FBI network… but every other country presumably still has theirs. Would military surrogates even be connected to the FBI? Perhaps. Are other countries military surrogates? Hell no! America is at war with someone, they’re almost definitely going to lose it now thanks to Bruce. Unfortunately, his brave new world of human connection doesn’t get past the fact that the world was apparently safer, with less crime, and there’s all this infrastructure set up to build, sell, modify and run surrogates just lying around… Plus the fact that the engineers know how to improve on the old system, and the dangerous terrorist leader leading the anti-surrogate movement is dead (and soon to be exposed as a surrogate himself). It’s not going to be too long before people slip back to their happy network beds and plug in again.

To summarise, the premise could have been a little more realistic or thought out (a lot of it just by cutting scenes showing military surrogates!) but it’s an interesting idea and a good plot overall.

On my own personal meter, I would watch this film again – probably with friends and beer – but I doubt I’ll actually get it on DVD.