Notes:

1. Where to start? This is rather like standing at the checkout in Mr. Morrison’s establishment and looking at what the person in front has bought. Best to take each purchasee in turn:

a) No. 1 son’s soon to be good lady wife chose the kitchen paraphernalia, the furry gloves (a nice addition to the trousseau) and a book. All indicative of an ordered mind and a responsible approach to shopping at Poundland.

b) No. 1 son chose the educational toys, although why he has to be reminded of the true nature of clowns I do not know since he has been brought up correctly. He also bought three dvds, The Magnificent Seven, Dario Argento’s Profundo Rosso and a 4 dvd boxset of Bloodfist I-IV. The Magnificent Seven is my second favourite film of all time and to find it in Poundland (if one does not already own a copy) must spread joy throughout the land. Although this version originally came with a comic in one of those ‘partworks’ deals, it does have extra features. Profundo Russo I had to look up on imdb since I always get the titles of Dario Argento’s films mixed up and tend to refer to them as the one with Jennifer Connelly, the one with Karl Malden, etc. This is the one with David Hemmings and if memory serves has a very scary bit with a walking ventriloquist’s doll. The Bloodfist tetralogy I have no knowledge of at all but they look like tournament films, which I’m not that keen on. I prefer my kicking done within the confines of a plot. Still, if I came across a 4 dvd boxset in Poundland I would probably buy it too.

c) No. 2 son chose another copy of The Magnificent Seven, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a Vincent Price toy and an Indiana Jones toy. If one could choose, and by its very nature Poundland removes that option, rather than a decrepit Vincent Price from Edward Scissorhands, one would prefer a Tomb of Ligeia toy with Mr. Price in his wraparound sunglasses (possibly removeable as an accessory, along with his top hat).
   I seem to recall hearing that it was the worldwide success of The Magnificent Seven which led the Italian film industry to switch from making cod Roman epics and muscle man films of the Hercules variety to cowboy pictures. I saw a lot of both when I was growing up and they were generally regarded as rubbish. Then there was a sudden shift in critical opinion and now Sergio Leone is held up as a genius while John Sturges is largely regarded as a journeyman director, even a hack. This seems wrong to me. Admittedly No. 2 son reckons I like my cowboys to wear clean shirts, but it does go a little deeper than that. I like my cowboys’ lips to move in synch with what they’re saying. I also find Leone’s extreme close-ups and long takes extremely tiresome. So, give me Sturges any day. As well as The Magnificent Seven he also made Escape from Fort Bravo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Law and Jake Wade, Last Train from Gun Hill, Hour of the Gun, and of course, the ‘modern-day western’ Bad Day at Black Rock. Not forgetting The Great Escape, The Satan Bug, The Eagle Has Landed and Mystery Street, a neat little noirish thriller photographed by the great John Alton. So, all hail the hacks and down with the geniuses!

On the subject of lighters - not really. I watched State of Play the other day, and right at the end of the credits in that bit where they tell you that they didn’t harm any animals so you go through the whole film in your head trying to remember where there was any bit when there was an animal in danger, there was a bit about smoking, saying all the representations of it in the film (and there was only one when a character lit up in a hotel room and Russell Crowe told him he was naughty) were there for artistic purposes and were not intended to promote smoking because it was very bad for you. First time I’ve seen that. We’ve come a long way from the days when if the film was a bit rubbish you could watch the pretty patterns the smoke made in the projector’s beam.

Notes:

1. So, I struggled up to Hanley, mainly to get the lighters, but also to check out all the wonderful stuff that the Poundland of the South was selling, presuming some of it would have filtered up here. No such luck. One dvd stand of ‘real life movies’ - the made for TV kind that turn up on Channel 5 of an afternoon, people with diseases and the like - as if that’s entertainment. And two copies of The Magnificent Seven. True, I did pick one up and wondered whether I should buy it for a spare in case something should happen to my proper copy - but then I put it back, for that way lies madness.

2. The rest of the stuff we needed - sieves, batteries, sticky tape, maltesers. The only other thing was the musical decoration with 18 festive songs. I chose the snowman, pile of presents and teddy bear in a box, rather than the Santa Claus on a train, since the former says Christmas more than the latter, which says Santa Claus has changed his traditional mode of transport and raises questions, which you don’t need at Christmas. Speaking of which, when I got back to the car, which the good lady wife had pulled up outside the shop (to save my gammy leg, I should explain, lest you think I was planning a Poundland heist), she asked me if I’d seen the reindeer. “What reindeer?” I enquired, having seen a poster that Santa was due on the morrow, “a real reindeer?” “No,” says the good lady wife, “two men in a reindeer suit.” She’s on drugs.

£19 bag of rubbish.

rubbish.

The handkerchiefs are rubbish. They seem to have been made for a race of dwarven people, which explains that warning about fire on the back. Mordor Poundland must have got the mens’s handkerchiefs of the normal size by mistake. Heads will roll.

2. Onto the DVDs. Rendition is a proper film so you feel obliged to buy it if you find it in Poundland even if some unscrupulous people might already own a copy (aaargh Jim lad). For such transgressors are the scum of the earth and fully deserve to spend eternity in the fires of Hell, for if their activities are not checked then the music industry cannot hope to make fortunes from back catalogues of dead musicians or promote new artists like them soldiers who sing songs about coming home (dunno why they went in first place, silly beggars) or that daft woman with a good voice, and where would we be without Hollywood to give us new films where people pretend to be in cartoons
and, heaven forfend, what of the poor independents? I managed to sit through 40 minutes of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky on Channel 4 the other night until the total lack of any semblance of a plot made me switch it off. We then watched Premonition which I’d taped the night before and that was pretty much rubbish as well (turned out it was all Sandra Bullock’s fault and if she’d just kept her mouth shut then her husband wouldn’t have died at all (warning: spoilers! sorry) not that she seemed to realise that and seemed quite happy at the end to have got a new baby out of all her time-travelling shenanigans - is that feminism?) but at least there was stuff happening and somebody had sat down and written it all out on a sheet of paper, or at least the back of a fag packet, rather than just gathering all the actors together and saying find a funny voice then talk rubbish for two hours and we’ll just film it. Anyway, Rendition is one of those Iraq films that did so badly at the box office and weren’t liked by the Americans at all, and admittedly you do have to choose your Iraq films carefully, but this is a good one.
     I mentioned the problem with Dario Argento films before, and it turns out I have got this one on tape, but aside from making a list and checking it twice when you’re standing in Poundland, which is probably not a good thing to do, I can’t see any way around not getting swops. Besides, this is a DVD, and if memory serves, it’s quite
good.
     Terrestrial television gave up on the Stargate universe a while back, so I have no idea what’s going on there now. According to Stargate Atlantis No. 70 (presumably from some series with a comic), there seems to have been a siege which lasted for three episodes. Looking forward to remaking the acquaintance of the guys and gals from Stargate Atlantis - dunner recognise the bloke in the middle at all.

Colm Toibin’s name should have lots of little marks over it like it’s raining but I can’t be bothered.

Update: 28th December 2009.

3. Mint Imperials I got because Mr.Morrison hadn’t got any and the Toblerone and the tealights are part of the festive ritual (I think the fourth wise man brought them - his name was Shemp).

4. And finally, the Buffy book, without Buffy in it. I miss Buffy. I watched the sixth episode of Dollhouse the other night, the one where Joss Whedon wrenched control from his masters at Fox, and yet again I was reminded of the BBC’s decision not to let him make a series over here about Giles (not the cartoonist, another regular Christmas present from the 50s). And yet the BBC can make Paradox. For that matter the BBC make Dr. Who and Torchwood. And Bonekickers, although that was funny. But they said no to Joss Whedon. Presumably because he hadn’t written any episodes of Eastenders. ’Tis beyond the wit of man. So, even though it came up as ‘Kids book’ on the till receipt, I thought I’d give it a go. Although I still haven’t got round to reading Colm Toibin’s The Master. He was in Buffy as well.

Talking of gnomic statements, I reckon you could stick a little ^TM on ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’ (John 14:2). You’d think Jesus, being a carpenter, would have got that one right, but presumably he just stuck to tables and chairs and never fitted a kitchen. What he obviously meant was ‘many rooms’ but now everybody going to heaven thinks they’re going to get their own house, whereas they’ll end up in a bedsit and begin eternity feeling hard done by and a little
resentful. Serves them right for being good.

1. These are the Poundland presents. Mostly for the good lady wife, but Megaman NT Warrior: Gutsman vs Torchman was for No. 2 son and bought mainly because it featured someone called Gutsman, which makes one immediately imagine the scene in the planning department of Megaman NT Warrior Co. Ltd. and wonder what names were discarded.

2. The good lady wife is a Robert Redford fan, so A River Runs Through It is a nice addition to her collection, although Mr. Redford does not appear in it, merely directs.  It is about fishing, so, one for completists only.

3. In Love and War is about Ernest Hemingway’s adventures in France during the First World War where he got all his ideas from. Apparently he met Sandra Bullock and thought what would happen if there was a bomb on a bus which exploded if it went below 50 mph. The rest, as they say, is history.

4. You can never go wrong with a scented candle.

5. The Kaleidoscope Classic (Essential Edition) was bought on the age-old principle of standing in the shop staring at it for half-an-hour and still not understanding what it was. It is some kind of puzzle thing where you have to arrange various blocks to make prescribed patterns. I do not know what “the challenge that everyone can solve but no one can conquer^TM” means. I also doubt that one can take a random sentence and put a little ^TM at the end of it implying that no one in future can utter those words without paying a stipend to the Kaleidoscope company. It is a gnomic statement and I have spent many a night since purchasing the product ruminating on its meaning. Surely if the challenge is solved then there’s an end to it and it is conquered. Unless we are meant to take it in more of an existential sense, that all challenges can be solved, but since we all die in the end such success is meaningless, and nothing can be truly conquered unless one has discovered the secret of immortality. However, I doubt that the makers of the Kaleidoscope Classic (Essential Edition) are inferring that the box contains the means to defy the natural order of things. Although the image of God sitting there playing with His Kaleidoscope Classic (Essential Edition) that He has just purchased from the Heavenly Poundland, ordering our fate by placing little blocks in patterns, then getting cross when He can’t do it and chucking the thing across the room so we all go tumbling about in tsunamis and earthquakes and the like, is a neat one. No, I think we’re back to the planning department at Kaleidoscope plc where someone comes up with a meaningless sentence and someone else thinks it sounds good so they put it on the box and stick a little trademark sign on it to give it some extra weight.