Interesting, watching this as an adult, to realise that most of Ferris’ adventures (the notable exception being the carnival float) really aren’t particularly extraordinary. They’re just grown-up ways to pass the time: fine dining, visiting an art gallery and a baseball game, borrowing a fancy car for the day. But they seemed impossibly sophisticated when I was a kid. As did Ferris, but he still does. Sorta.

Also interesting how dated many of the film’s props and gags seem, even though it was only made twenty years ago. Computers, trainers/sneakers, women with short hair, call forwarding, audio sampling, French cuisine, flashing cash – they’re not embarrassingly clumsy plot devices as they are in other films from that time, but they do add subliminally to the air of “cool”. What do teens today think of this movie, I wonder?

Oh, and I now that I’m an adult, I no longer envy Ferris very much. Except that I wish I could get my hair to form a Mohican in the shower.

(shrug)

In which a cast of thousands (of academics) attempt to demonstrate that the “show about nothing” is in fact about a great many things, citing influences from Jane Austen to The Jazz Singer to Jean-Paul Sartre. Mostly convincingly, so far.

There are twobooks I want to read whose plots rely on a knowledge of Jane Eyre. Which seems a bit like putting cart before horse, but never mind.

It is, of course, one of the most crucial decisions that we must all make, often before we are old enough to understand the lifelong obligations it carries: ninja or pirate? Unless someone makes a worthy successor to Crouching Tiger sometime soon, this kind of propaganda for the buccaneering lifestyle will drive an entire generation to opt for the way of cutlass, peg-leg and parrot. But that would be no bad thing. Yarr.

As with Hero, Jet Li’s last big domestic movie, Fearless’ threadbare storyline is alternately supported and undermined by its ideological subtext. Some of the symbolism is glaringly crass: the bout with a brutish American hulk is like a flipped version of Rocky IV. Some of the film’s other messages are subtle enough to make me wonder if I just imagined them. Was the discussion of tea varieties really an attempt to explain how competition could co-exist with communism? Was the presentation of the Japanese combatant as an honourable fighter manipulated by his Westernised superiors really intended to reflect modern China’s desire for detente with an old enemy? Who can say. Didn’t make for much of a film, though.

I’ve had my doubts about this series, but what a finale. Even if it did run on for two scenes past its dramatic endpoint …

Ended disappointingly, with the plot unravelling rather than tying up loose ends. Ashley, the central character, didn’t get the barnstorming climactic scene that I was expecting – she stayed a cipher to the very end – while most of the secondary characters’ arcs remain largely unresolved and, in true British-drama tradition, unhappy. The way has been left open for a second series, but I’m not sure that’s either likely or desirable …

The back cover of this book is irritatingly misleading. I can understand why the publisher would want to highlight quotes claiming that it’s like “Oscar Wilde crossed with H.P. Lovecraft”, but that’s not terribly accurate. It’s more like a sexually ambiguous James Bond adventure set in the Edwardian period, right down to the characters’ punning names, the megalomaniac techno-villainy and the protagonist’s bed-hopping approach to espionage.

Gatiss’ prose is more refined than you might expect from a comedian-turned-novelist (as with Charlie Higson – I may have to reconsider my prejudice on this) and the book rattles along, though the narrative strand gets a little tangled now and again and the climax relies a bit too heavily on characters and motivations that have barely been introduced. I’m curious as to how the graphic novel version compares; it’s certainly easy to visualise Beardsley-esque illustrations for the book’s more florid scenes.

Oh, and the blurb also promises that Lucifer Box will discover “which tie goes best with a white carnation”. Now I might have missed it, but I don’t recall that critical sartorial question being addressed anywhere in the book … and dammit, I need to know!

What it does, it does well. But that’s not saying much.