ATTENTION DB! KICK ASS MOVIE - THE VERDICT OF JAYE

I am addressing this blog to that staunchest critic of graphic novel to film adaptations... DB.


I have finally seen 'Kick Ass' the movie - having read the Graphic Novel (GN let's call it) so I did it in the right order and everything.  It took me a long time to see it because Lovefilm, my usual provider of filmic entertainment, has had some kind of spat with paramount or someone so you can't get some films from them now.


So I had to lay out my fiver and buy this DVD.


I believe DB considers it possibly the worst film he's ever seen - so presumably as bad adaptations of graphic novels go it must be right up there.... yes?


Well...   I liked it.  But then I also liked those other pariahs of the DB universe :  'Watchmen'  (the movie) and 'V for Vendetta' (the movie).


The first thing you notice about Kick Ass the film is it is much lighter than the GN - both in tone and literally.  So to be honest I can see why that might be annoying to fans of the GN - it doesn't capture the darkness and griminess of the original.  The humour seems less black - although it is still funny and has elements of humour the GN doesn't have.  It veers away towards becoming a comedy piece though.


Hit Girl - who is quite obviously the star of the piece in both versions - comes across as less abused in the film.  A little girl who has been turned into a killing machine?  The GN quite rightly asserts that this is not a morally justifiable situation - although it whispers 'yeah, but isn't it awesome?'


The moment Hit Girl asks Kick Ass for a hug because... well I won't blow the plot (DB knows the moment I am talking about) but that moment of vulnerability has been removed - I would have liked to have seen it in.  As it is, the ending of the film seems a little bit too air-punching - in the usual Hollywood way.


Also Big Daddy should be a lonely fantasist - rather like Kick Ass himself.  That's a central ironic device which has also been sadly removed.


BUT - I did say I liked the film didn't I?!


Yes - the content of the original is largely preserved and I do think it captures the spirit of it.


Hit Girl's first line 'okay you cunts...' is faithfully rendered and it provides a beautifully transgressive moment of cinema.  This just shouldn't be happening - but in Art anything is possible.  


This touches on the controversy - of both versions, but I suppose more keenly in the film because Hit Girl is obviously played by an actual little girl (and arguably, as I said, the intrinsic wrongness of her relationship with her father is played down in the film),


Let us not be so naive as to assume that a film like this would be made without protecting the actress and looking after her.  The controversy reminds me of the fuss over Linda Blair and 'The Exorcist'.  For goodness sake - there are ways to do these things in the movies.  So won't somebody please think of the children?  I'm sure someone did.


Also, we live in a world in which children are frequently sexualised and also, in some cultures, given guns and taught to kill.  Art will reflect that.  In fact 20th / 21st Century art has most reflected advertising, I would argue - the dominant mindset and vocabulary of the Western world.  Kick Ass, in both versions, makes a genuine comment about this fast, intellectually bankrupt imagery.


It makes that point directly because of Hit Girl - she is the axis.


By putting a child in that situation questions are asked - a reaction is demanded.  It occurs to me that the violent situations seem more wrong because a child is involved... but does that mean we condone violence among 'consenting' adults?   It is the role of Art to ask these questions - the answers must come from the viewer.


On a less cranial level I have to say - and I challenge DB to refute - that the scene in which Hit Girl kicks the fucking shit to the banana split theme tune just has to be awesome in every universe I can conceive.


Yes - awesome.  That Americanism is required to describe Kick Ass the graphic novel... and the film.  

The Mike Leigh blog 11 - Another Year

Well just for my own personal pleasure (probably) I have now written something about every Mike Leigh film.  Or I will have done in a minute, when I've finished 'Another Year' - that brings us up to date, with Oscar speculation rife.


I doubt Mike will get the Oscar he so richly deserves - one day it will come.  Another year maybe - ho ho.  Or maybe this year - why not?  It should be a lifetime achievement award or something.  Another Year doesn't deserve an Oscar more than Secrets and Lies or Happy Go Lucky - but maybe the tide is turning his way at last.


Although - I seem to remember I found it easy enough to see 'All or Nothing' at my local multiplex...  'Another Year' was very difficult to find.  So while Mike Leigh's critical reputation grows, his cinematic presence seems to dwindle.  Unsurprisingly, the Brits have little taste for a more continental type of film-making raised, as they have been, on Hollywood pap.


Anyway, 'Another Year' is another wonderful film with huge, glorious performances, laugh out loud moments and the alchemic process by which Leigh turns every day reality into something heightened, something epic.  Or maybe these are epics which take on the appearance of the everyday.


This is just the tale of a happily married couple and the strange people who orbit them like elliptically like moons.  Lesley Manville hits it just right in a performance which is a masterclass not just in acting - but in Mike Leigh acting.


Real - with just a little piquancy, a little of the spice of unreality.


I would urge you to see it - but I think I've done too much urging here.  Either you will or you won't.  I just know what these films do for me, and to me. 


I can't explain it to you - it's like whistling about sex.  I'll just leave it up to Keats to encapsulate my feelings about Mike Leigh :

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Insecurity ...

I don't actually know who Beth Moore is, or what she has to say about insecurity.  Probably something about discovering the power inside or being true to yourself.


I've been thinking about female insecurity - it's weird isn't it?  It's obviously appearance based and mostly to do with weight.  I don't think it's anything to do with vanity - to me it feels more like a desire to please and be loved.


So where does it come from ?


I think what I said before about a desire to please is important.  But then I suppose there's an element of competition, just as there is in all areas of life. This is where I am possibly lucky, because I am kind of exempt from the competition - I don't think any women look at me as competition because I used to be male and am therefore not in the running.  I'm not really expected to look gorgeous.  I am bound to look odd.


Do I sound a bit insecure?


It's a different insecurity from 'regular' female insecurity - I think.  I am honestly not sure if it's better or worse.  I have known lots of beautiful girls who are convinced they are hideously ugly - so what good does the beauty do them?   None really - and yet I can't help feeling it would be better to be beautiful and think you're ugly then be ugly and think you're beautiful.


A paradox.


I suppose we all find it rather hard to believe that those girls really DO think they are ugly.  We think they are just being falsely modest.


I know the feeling of insecurity now anyway - even if it's a modified kind.  I am tall and skinny - and sometimes I am insecure about that, although on the whole I use it psychologically to my advantage.


I try to think :  'most women want to be tall and skinny - and I am.  So why should I feel down about myself?'


But then we get to the face.  I think my face is hard and angular and pointy - and worst of all male looking.  I don't think I look like a woman, not enough anyway.  Maybe I look androgynous.


As my hormone treatment progresses my face should become more girly and soft because of fat redistribution but that won't help the nose.  Women usually have a smaller nose - in pictures of trannies or transgenders it's actually the nose that 'gives them away' more than anything, I think.


Still, I have found a reasonable proficiency with makeup and decent hair helps hugely.  I often use eyeliner 'flicks' because it pretties your face up instantly.  Decent hair... and OWN hair is a bonus.  Loads of trans-women are forced to resort to wigs because their hair isn't up to it.  I am pretty lucky there.


See me analysing my appearance...   am I so different from any other woman?


Nah.


I could give you a raft of sociological theories about why women feel the way they do - but really, at the end of the day, would it make me - or you - feel any differently when we stand in front of the mirror?


Or in front of the camera perhaps more importantly.  Because the mirror I can control pretty well - the camera has it's own ideas about what I look like... and I definitely don't agree with it's opinions...

Working Girl

oooh you've gotta love this haven't you?


It's a time machine that takes you straight back to the 80s.... not that I grew up in New York but the clothes, the shoulder pads, the enormous hair and the makeup was just the same in...er... Hoo.


People whine on about it being a hymn of praise to capitalism and the American Dream - I suppose partly because of Carly Simon's (fabulous) theme tune which is literally about the 'New Jerusalem'.  Subtle as a brick but really, who cares?


It's the pioneer spirit, it's no different to Harrison Ford pretending to be a space cowboy and overcoming the odds - except in this film it happens to be the world of business which is the battlefield and HE gets to be the bit of fluff while Melanie Griffith rides out on her titanium horse.


If you get me. 


Sigourney Weaver is such a bitch in this film - what a great actress she is - she must be because you really hate her 'bony ass'.  And Joan Cusack is hilarious : 


'Can I get you anything?  Tea, Coffee, me?'


I must try that one.  But then Harrison Ford-alikes don't come into the office where I work much.  

Can someone pass an edict or something that will bring that hair back into fashion?   It's insane and wonderful.


And let's not forget : 

raaaaaaawwwoool!


When I feel sad 'Working Girl' makes me happy.  Simple as.

Another letter...

These scissors are my idea of a joke - sorry.


Another letter today - this time from my shrink to my doctor updating him and... well you'll see if you read it.  In case you are wondering I do edit these letters and take out the personal bits!!   I just think getting this stuff out there increases people's knowledge of the trans experience.


Dear Dr Davies


I saw the above named in the Gender Identity Clinic on 13 December 2010 where she arrived early and was seen 30 minutes late owing to an administrative error.


[ strange bit of detail ? - jaye ]


I understand she continues to prosper at her job with Maidstone Borough Council and her revenue and benefits department is due to merge with that at Tunbridge Wells.  She thinks her job is still to remain secure.


Her relationship is intact and her son continues to prosper at school, particularly since she became a governor at the school that she attends  [ ?? ]


She is due, as I understand it, a thyroid cartilage reduction, which hasn't yet come to pass and I will ask the ENT surgeons to make haste with this since, given her long thin body shape, it is something that is going to be very useful to her.


She is very pleased with the results of hormone treatment, paricularly since Decapeptyl started.  She describes her emotional range as fuller...


She is pleased with breast growth, aware that it will always be fairly small given her build.


She describes occasional trouble with teenagers but otherwise appears to be prospering in her life and given that she now has a hormonal milieu which will most closely reproduce that after gender reassignment surgery, I would for my own part be supportive of such surgery, particularly given that she has worked as a woman for at least the last 2 years and more, most likely.


Her next appointment will be a second opinion with regard to that surgery.


James Barrett BSC MSC FRC Psych
Consultant Psychiatrist / Lean Clinician




  

The Mike Leigh Blog 10 - Happy Go Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)


I've decided to try to finish this Mike Leigh blog thing because I am a completist.
Nearly there anyway...


Ah!  Happy-Go-Lucky!  I almost can't find the words with which to praise this film - I think I might just have to show my appreciation with some kind of dance.


It's about a woman called Poppy who is a primary school teacher. She has some driving lessons, her instructor is a bit of a weirdo, then she meets a bloke and, er, that's it.


Oh but there is so much more.


Poppy is an optimist.  Poppy is THE optimist - not at all cloying, the performance is not mannered or OTT, Sally Hawkins plays it straight down the line with honestly and realness.  I don't think I've ever fallen in love with a fictional character so instantly or deeply.  I defy you not to do the same.


The driving instructor, Scott, is the exact opposite -  a paranoid pessimist who is secret and closed to life.  The collision between the two of them is archetypal and intense.  It's a simple situation but it feels somehow epic in that car.


Eddie Marsan plays Scott - and his performance is equally immaculate.  It's terrifying and harrowing.  In a lesser film he would have been a serial killer - a much lesser film - there is nothing so banal here.  He is a real monster from a real street with a real life.


I watched this film for the first time when I was suffering from labyrinthitis - which seems quite appropriate really as it did make me pretty spiritually dizzy.


It's glorious.  See it.  See it.  See it.  See it.

My letter to the court...

This is my letter I will be sending with our divorce papers - I thought you guys might be interested, if you are following my progress : 


Dear Sir / Madam


Please find my completed divorce petition and arrangements for children forms.


I am writing this covering letter as my situation is rather unusual and you may require further explanation.


I am transgender and have recently been granted an interim gender recognition certificate (copy enclosed).  I have not been granted a full certificate because I am currently married.  In order for me to gain full recognition my partner and I have to get divorced, although we are still a couple and will continue to live together as such.


There is a ‘streamlined’ process whereby couples in our situation, who have to get divorced so that one of them can change gender, are able to obtain their decree absolute and register a civil partnership on the same day.  This is what we hope to do.


Obviously the divorce process as it stands is not exactly applicable to people in our situation so I hope you will be understanding of this.  It may be that the ‘arrangements for children’ form is not necessary as our son, Freddie, will continue to live with us and we will still be a family.  I have filled it out just in case.


The notes provided by the Gender Recognition Panel, who award the gender recognition certificates, say that a paragraph should be included to give the reason why we are seeking to annul the marriage.  I have included this paragraph in section 12 of the petition, I hope you will find this acceptable.


I have been informed by my contact at the GRP that the court where the divorce is filed should contact them and request the full gender recognition certificate be issued.  They will then send out the certificate to yourselves and it should be stamped and issued to me on the day I collect the decree absolute.


I hope this process is as smooth as possible.  We are struggling to find the costs for this and I really hope to avoid any further expense.  It does seem iniquitous that we have to pay to end our marriage, which we have no desire to do, when we are still in fact a couple and still love each other.  We have been married for 13 years and this marriage is ending through no fault of our own - simply because one of us has a medically diagnosed condition and wishes to live her life as normally as possible.


I know, of course, that you are unable to change the law but your continued understanding and help would be greatly appreciated.


I look forward to hearing from you in due course


Yours Faithfully


Jaye Butler-Moore