Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

In keeping with the general theme of, you know, everything changing, I thought David Bowie's excellent Changes suits the theme perfectly. Just be glad I didn't go with Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne's trip to Abominationsville:



Right then, back to my main point. So it's all happening for me at the minute! Now that all my exams are finished and second year at the University of Stirling is officially over, I'm putting my new plan into practice! As you may or may not know, I've decided to leave Stirling, and move up to Dundee, in search of new discoveries. (Sorry, couldn't help myself. Thing is, I laughed to myself for about a minute when I typed this. Does that make me a bad guy?)

Anyway, I'm getting off-point here. Basically, I've decided to not go back to Stirling and finish the rest of my Accounts degree. And don't tell me I've made a mistake, because I've heard it all before, in many variations from many different people. My primary reason for moving is that I want to do the English & Film Studies degree at Dundee. "Why not just transfer and do it at Stirling, may you ask?" Because I didn't enjoy the Film & Media work at Stirling. Most likely because in two semesters of Film & Media modules, there was almost no mention of films whatsoever, apart from that one time we watched a film about Al Pacino making a computer-generated actress who happened to win an Oscar. It wasn't particularly interesting. Whereas in Dundee, the FIRST MODULE has you watching Citizen Kane, The Big Lebowski and a Charlie Chaplin film, which would suit me down to the ground.

So that's why I have no interest in just doing the degree at Stirling. It's annoying that I'll have to pay for the first two years of the degree if I get in, but at least I'd still get a loan. But now that I have a job up in Dundee (I transferred to one of the Asda stores up here) with more hours than I worked in Falkirk - I miss that place already and I haven't been away a week - I should work out fine financially after the initial struggle of paying for the set-up costs for the phone/internet/heating/electricity/firing range. (Might not need to worry about one of those costs, it should be warm this time of year.) But after that I'll be fine. I've learned to curb my unnecessary spending, as I've only bought one film in ages (Black Swan!), only paid £2 for Mirror's Edge on PS3 this afternoon (I know a bargain when I see one) and stopped drinking fizzy juice and other sugary nightmares. As a point of reference, I've drank 9 litre-sized bottles of apple & raspberry flavoured water since Monday. A fact of which I'm strangely proud.

We move into the new flat tomorrow (Jesus, it's more obvious when you see it written out before you're eyes), and it'll undoubtedly be an all hands on deck situation all day, and I probably won't get a chance to read a paper. This may sound very trivial, but I actually love sitting down and going through the entire thing, cover to cover. While wearing slippers. Also, on an unrelated note, I'm 70 years of age. Benjamin Button WISHES he could be like me - with the scarily dashing good looks of a young man about town, but the frequent munching of Rich Tea biscuits, newspaper reading and habitual complaining of a man almost four times my age. And now I'm remembering Benjamin Button was played by Brad Pitt. Goddammit.

AAAAAAAAANYWAY, the main point that you should have taken from what I just came up with in my mindbox there is that I like reading the paper very much and not having much time to read it is something that tends not to happen very much, so when it does, I'm understandably grumpy, which really doesn't do wonders for the old man image I'm making for myself. But it won't really take much away from the excitement of getting into the new flat, I can imagine, what with having the TV and PS3 eventually taking pride of place in the living room. Some things will never change. A good thing that's came from three weeks of not having my PS3 readily accessible is that I've been reading more again, which I enjoyed. When I say reading, I mean I've ran through my (admittedly quite small) comic book collection, having just finished Marvel's Civil War mini-series just this week.

I've also made some new discoveries in the world of music this week (another unnecessary Dundee joke - should stop before it goes too far), with three rather good bands, new and old: Passion Pit, The Vaccines, and most recently, Test Icicles, and here's the songs of each band I've listened to the most!







Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra) is delightfully short, so no excuses for having a listen, and Circle. Square. Triangle is difficult to describe, other than the drum beat at the start has you hooked from the beginning, the guitar sound is fantastic and it's just a song that I'd be happy to listen to over and over again. I have actually heeded my own advice, and if I hadn't put the song back to the beginning every time on the Spotify, I'd have ran out the 5-play count for the song about six, seven times over.

Little Secrets is possibly one of the happiest-sounding songs I've heard in a long time - a choir of kids tends to do that - and it's the sound track to a mash-up video of Donald Glover playing Troy Barnes in the best show on TV right now, Community:

Now try telling me you wouldn't want to watch that show.

So yes, I should probably get back to helping out with packing, I didn't expect to take so long writing this as I did, but I rather enjoyed doing it, I must say, since it's been a while that I actually wrote something original that wasn't based on a film I watched or something that other people were doing on Facebook. The last original, non-listy post was in November, hence the good feeling I'm getting at the minute. Also, quick question: If I'm going to be living in Dundee, should I change the title of the blog from Fear and Loathing in Falkirk?

I'll leave you with that question, and this Arctic Monkeys song - that in my opinion could easily feature Chris Cornell singing vocals and you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a Soundgarden song - Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair...

Catfish: Too Good to be True?

"They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They'd keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn't have somebody nipping at our fin."

Recently, More4 showed the 2010 documentary Catfish as part of its True Stories season, which is also featuring, among other films, Waltz With Bashir, Burma VJ and the recent documentary Tyson -which has interviews with the man himself - and the Oscar-winning documentary (which I think is about dolphins), The Cove. Here's the link for all of the films in the True Stories series, and some of them are still available on 4OD, but Catfish isn't one of them: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/themes/true-stories

Now the fact that Catfish has been screened by More4 along with these other factual documentaries (which is obvious, otherwise they wouldn't be factual in the first place), I'd reckon that puts the argument over whether the film's fake or not to bed. Because I went into watching the film knowing that there had been a lengthy debate over the film's authenticity for some time, I often found myself throughout the film trying to cross-reference parts of the story and making sure that it all added up, which annoyed me. Granted, there's nothing I could do about this, since I couldn't exactly forget what I'd heard, but it didn't really make any difference. I'm utterly convinced that what happened in Catfish is real, all of it. The only thing I can see that might call the film's authenticity into question is that things develop very quickly and everything seems to come into place a bit too well, but who cares? Are we so concerned with things going wrong or taking ages to happen that when things DO happen with relative ease, it's so difficult to accept? Now I'm not going to spoil any of the film, because luckily no-one spoiled it for me, so it'd be harsh for me to do the same. On that note, I can't remember who did it, but I'll never forgive the person who spoiled Empire Strikes Back for me, even if it was just a passing mention on the TV. Everyone should see that film.

Now, back to Catfish. There are events in this film that will astound you. Astounding because you have no idea what's going to happen, and when it does, you didn't expect it at all. Yes, it was marketed on the premise that "are people who they say they are?", but MY GOD! Seriously, I can say nothing without spoiling the film - which I, again, have no intention of doing, but you just need to find a way to watch it. It's out on DVD if it's not repeated on More4 again, so give it a look.

While I'm sure it's definitely a documentary and not a scripted film, it seems to be part of a trend that's  been happening in cinema over the last couple of years: Found-footage/documentary-style films. Another prime example, and the film that's attracted the most comparisons to Catfish, is I'm Still Here, the Casey Affleck-directed "documentary" about Joaquin Phoenix's short-lived rap career, which gave all the impressions of being real before its release, but all notions of that quickly faded after it came out, when I'm sure Affleck pretty much said it wasn't real. After Phoenix's appearance on David Letterman, you'd think he was being serious enough:



I haven't seen it yet, and to be honest, probably never will, but it's an intriguing concept. But having Phoenix say on Letterman a year and a half later that it was a critique on the media's reaction to celebrity and reality TV, or something like that anyway, seems a bit pretentious, especially when the film made less than half a million dollars, given its wide release. Unfortunately, Paranormal Activity's definitely part of that trend as well, and with a third instalment on its way this year, it seems to be a very profitable trend indeed.

And on a bigger scale, J.J. Abrams' Super 8 is being released on June 10th in the US, but it's not coming to the UK until August 5th, which is annoying. The addition of Steven Spielberg as a producer will undoubtedly help its chances at the box office, since Cloverfield, a very similar found-footage monster movie - directed by Matt Reeves, with Abrams receiving a producer's credit - made $170million worldwide over a $20million budget. I can imagine that because Spielberg's on board, the studio behind Super 8 might expect a fair bit more. I had envisioned myself writing about Cloverfield's box office grosses not expecting much, but $170million is a massive amount of money for a film like that! But then again, it got some heavy marketing behind it...