This is, ‘Thanks to modern technology they can flee the smog of the city and work from laptops in the clean mountain air. 2002-2004′.

My first reaction was irritation. It looks like a Thunderbirds set, that is, at first sight it strikes me as a 1960s vision of the future. That’s an optimistic worldview; affluent and confident. Yet the legacy of 1960s architecture is crumbling concrete and urban decay. By the early 1970s we had Roxy Music’s ‘In every dreamhome a heartache’ lamenting soulless ‘penthouse perfection’.

Maybe this critique is here in the reference to smog and the use of found materials, like the stuffing from an old settee (I imagine it was landlord brown). Houlding is emphasing that this is a facade, perhaps. But it’s still an idea whose time has been and gone. Why bother with it now?
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large).

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When I began blogging I imagined I’d rant a lot more about Prince Charles than I do. Feudal Creep was to be a theme. But like most of my themes it went by the wayside. I clearly don’t care as much about the monarchy as I thought I did. Nevertheless, that Prince Charles sees himself as a dissident is something I have to comment on.

But what to say? The Daily Mail, whose sister paper published extracts from the fool’s private diary, is right. And I’m delighted to see it’s the Mail Group he’s fighting. They’re instinctive monarchists, but they hate him all the same. So it’s interesting to watch the Mail attack the soft target, but then suddenly hang back as it realises the monarchy’s being damaged.

The Metro gives us a taste of Prince Charles’ dissident lifestyle, as the Telegraph coincidently reports the story of a Chinese dissident, who threw an eggshell filled with red ink at a Chairman Mao portrait. After seventeen years Yu Dongyue has been freed early because he must be spoon fed. Prince Charles insists on eating with a silver spoon.

Charles is a man who can’t squeeze his own toothpaste but criticises those who make decisions, ‘based on market research and focus groups, on the papers produced by political advisers and civil servants none of whom will have ever experienced what it is they are taking decisions about.’

Sadly, the victim of that critique, Tony Blair, is predictably supportive. He’s not interested in picking a fight on the constitution and would rather it all went away. But if I were Tony, I’d trust the collective wisdom of a properly selected focus group over that of an incredibly privileged individual who can only drink from his own crystal any day.

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Featuring, as it does, characters like Mr & Mrs Fonckyerdoder and assorted bachelorettes, Date Movie isn’t a film I’ll be going to see any time soon. I’ve no doubt it’ll go down well with the target audience, but I’m fed up.

At first sight, all this Deconstruction is ever so inclusive. The audience is made to feel it knows as much – perhaps more – about the movie making and marketing processes as the filmmaker. That kind of devalues the science and art of filmmaking, but more importantly it helps perpetuate the myth that everyone has a great film inside them. If that were true there would be no rubbish films out there, but more than that it perpetuates the worst aspects of celebrity culture.

There’s a sense that the celebrity to which so many aspire is actually within easy grasp and we could all be famous if we put just a little effort in. Yet that can never be true. Should we all blame Jacques?

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