Russ Meyer has died. One of the great shlock film makers of our time has left the building. He was responsible for such esoteric classics as “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill”, “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “Supervixens”.

Of course, none of these are exactly guilty of literature or, indeed, art but are more renowned for being exploitative and violent, softcore ‘adult’ movies featuring copious amounts of female flesh but very little sex. His later films certainly embraced the liberal censorship guidelines of the early-mid 70’s and I think many people would struggle to find any redeeming features in his films in this P.C. day and age. But his films featuring could be described as juxtaposing the action films of the 80’s, with his female being the big-bosomed ying to Schwarzenegger and Stallone’s over-muscled yang. But the obscenity and smut that Meyer is renowned for hasn’t stopped his films being adopted by the art house circuit and playing at annually at film festivals around the world not becoming the subject of many film studies courses. Expect to see a retrospective on BBC2 sometime soon!

The man has died, but his legacy lives on.

While in HMV deciding whether or not to spend ?35 of your Earth money on the brand spanking new DVD incarnation of ‘Star Wars’ or to save a whopping 40% and buy it from that virtual wonderland that is Amaon where they are selling it for a mere 26.99 I noticed that they have released a set of DVDs featuring the early works of feature film directors who started out in music videos and advertisments, namely:

Spike Jonze (who directed ‘Being John Malkovich‘ and ‘Adaptation‘ as well as the Fat Boy Slim videos for ‘Praise You’ and ‘Weapon of Choice’)
Michael Gondry (who directed ‘Human Nature‘ and ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind‘)
Chris Cunningham is also featured and while he hasn’t directed any feature films (yet) he has done amazing work in special effects for films such as Judge Dredd (shite but his Mean Machine make-up was outstanding), Alien³, A.I. and others. He used to do the art for some 2000AD strips as well I believe.

Somehow I managed to keep my wallet in my pocket.

Under the first of the fallen autumn leaves, a couple of letters caught my eye. I kicked the leaves away and lying discarded on the pavement was a card, slightly bigger than a business card and laminated. It read:

WARNING! An irritant poison applied to banknotes could destabilize the western economy

I picked up the card and wiped some of the grime from its surface while musing that the word ‘banknotes’ should be replaced with ‘keyboards’. I pocketed this random treasure and headed on.

I ate’nt dead.

I ate’nt hiating either.

I just don’t have anything to say.

I’m going back to bombing the living bejesus out of terrorists instead.

Go here, read him. He’s very amusing.

Go here, read him. He says it better than I can.

Go here, sell drugs. It’s a great game and highly addictive (but fortunately can only really be played for 10 minutes at a time a couple of times a day.)

The dust, exercising its right to free assembly, gathers. It’s unnoticeable at first unless you look closely and see that the bright colours of all the baubles and bobbins strewn around are not quite as bright as they once were. Undisturbed by human hands, working, playing or otherwise, there’s no contrast between the shiny surface and the thin veneer of greyness that is starting to build that would otherwise give an indication that nothing much is happening.

Tumbleweed meanders uncommitedly along the corridors, huffed along by the arid airs of maladroitness, rising from the once flowing lakes of creativity that are now deserts, starved of the waters of inspiration and drained by the oppression of apathy.

Dallaglio goes…

Woodward goes…

…it’s going to be an exciting year for English rugby!