Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Up (2009)

Beckettian.

Bob Frissell, Nothing In This Book (1990s)

You know the moment in Spinal Tap where St Hubbins boasts that he believes everything he is told, and that this makes him a more discriminating person than the average joe? This book is a chirpy yet entirely straightfaced version of that gag. Here's Jay Kinney's endorsement on the back flap:

Nothing in this Book Is True But It's Exactly How Things Are proceeds to thread together every New Age belief and conspiracy theory into a grand unified field theory of kookiness. They're all here: gray aliens, ascended masters, free energy, cattle mutilations, crop circles, rebirthing, earth changes, the Great Pyramid, and secret colonies on Mars. And yet, despite the sheer unbelievability of half the book, the author's goodwill and spiritual intentions are so infectious the book ends up being a heartwarming experience.

The project, in other words, is to redefine Truthfulness so as to put the emphasis on goodwill and spiritual intentions, and away from veracity and actuality. A project we can all get behind, I'm sure. More specifically, this book is a detailed, lengthy exercise in eliciting one of the following phrases from the reader: 'no it didn't'; 'no, s/he didn't' and 'no, they didn't.' For example:

As Lemuria sank, the poles shifted and the land mass of Atlantis arose. The thousand or so immortal masters of the Naacal Mystery School of Lemuria went to Atlantis, specifically to one of its ten islands called Undal. [39]

No, they didn't.

When the Martians came to Atlantis they imported the effects of the Lucifer rebellion right along with them. [43]

No, they didn't.

Babaji sat in this position without moving and without food or water for forty-five days. [210]

Er, no, he didn't. Occasionally, for variety, the pattern is changed. So:

There now exist free energy machines. [154]

No they don't.

There is another monument complex on Venus that NASA also knows about. [155]

No there isn't, and no it doesn't. Otherwise the book is a compendium of cultural cliche and gullibility. Or to quote the author himself:

It almost doesn't matter if any of this is true or not. Just the fact that all this information is falling around us, for whatever reason, is a clear indication that we have passed into a strange new epoch. [11]

I'm not fooled by that 'almost', there, Frissell; this is the understated setting-out of an awesome metaphysical position. 'The fact that I am so gullible is itself an indicator of a new age in cosmic affairs.' A Glorious New Epoch is indeed upon us.

Zemeckis, Christmas Carol (2009)

I can't help but feel that I have a particularly close relationship to Dickens's Christmas Carol. I have, like millions of people, read it many times; and like millions of people I love it. Like many more (not millions, perhaps, but many) I have studied it, and like a slightly more select group, I have taught it and written criticism about it. Less typically, I have even rewritten it. Now I'm not saying that this gives me anything after the manner of proprietorial interest in the title. But I feel I have the same right as any fan to say that the last thing I want to see -- really -- is a film version containing a scene in which Jim Carrey's plasticated Scrooge simultaneously humps and fellates a gigantic chess-pawn with an expression of blissed out ecstasy upon his face.

Robbie Williams, Reality Killed The Video Star (2009)

I've listened to this album a fair few times now, I've been trying to pin-down the effect it has on me: the 1970s melody and guitar stylings; the sticky-slushy orchestrations, a splash of film-soundtrack, a splotch of George Martin's Pepperland; the technical facility, especially on the production, coupled with a larger sense of emptiness. Williams' ego-lyrics (now with added UFO/Jesus references!) make something out of the vacuity, of course: that's the 'point' of him as a popstar, and probably also the ground of his sex-appeal, the hunk with a chunk missing in the middle of his heart. We're probably now at the point where we'd be disappointed if Williams didn't re-rehearse his It's Empty At The Top schtick. But then, listening to the two-part opener/closer 'Morning Sun' it struck me: Wings. That's what's gong on here. Wings is all through this album like the message in a stick of rock. Listen to 'Won't Do That', to 'Somewhere', to 'Starstruck', to 'Superblind', and you could be in the front row of a Williams McCartney-tribute concert. Even the slightly more modern songs ('Bodies', say) sound like Wings songs handed to 21st-century producers. So: what is Reality Killed? It's a more-melancholy-than-usual Wings album.

As to whether channelling Wings is a good thing (whether, in other words, it can ever escape the spectre of Alan Partridge enjoying himself): that's a whole other question.

I sometimes like to imagine McCartney, in the 1970s, looking around him thinking 'the Beatles were cool; I'm doing exactly what I used to do when I was in the Beatles -- so why aren't I cool any more?' It's a puzzler, it really is.

Geoff Ryman (ed) When It Changed (2009)

I can't review this, more's the pity, because I'm in it. But you shouldn't let that put you off: the stories, mine aside, are all good and some are superb. Don't you consider Geoff Ryman's name, editorially, there, a gold-standard of sf-lit quality? Are you crazy? Here you go:

How much of Science Fiction is genuine science? Take away the fantastical clichés of space-travel, time-travel and artificial intelligence, and how much of what remains accurately represents contemporary scientific thinking?

When It Changed is an attempt to put authors and scientists back in touch with each other, to re-introduce research ideas with literary concerns, and to re-forge the alloy that once made SF great. Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research fields, be they in nanotechnology, invertebrate physiology, particle physics, or software archaeology. From Planck's Length (the smallest indivisible distance) to Plankton (potential saviours of the Earth's ecosystem), from virtual encounters between Witgenstein and Turing, to future civilisations torn asunder by different readings of the Standard Model, together these stories represent a literary 'experiment' in the true sense of the word, and endeavour to isolate a whole new strain of the SF bug.

WRITERS: Justina Robson, Paul Cornell, Sara Maitland, Ken MacLeod, Gwyneth Jones, Adam Marek, Geoff Ryman, Michael Arditti, Simon Ings, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Kit Reed, Chaz Brenchley, Liz Williams, Patricia Duncker and Adam Roberts.

SCIENTISTS: Dr Andrew Bleloch, Dr Rob Appleby, Dr Jennifer Rowntree, Dr Richard Blake, Dr Kai Hock, Dr Vinod Dhanak, Emmanuel Pantos, Dr John Harris, Dr Matthew Cobb, Dr Tim O’Brien, Dr Steve Williams, Dr Sarah Lindley, Dr Steve Furber, Tim O’Brien and Dr Rein Ulijn.

The book was, last time I checked, the 19,759th bestselling amazon-dot-you-'kay title (what a number! And this despite being on sale at a cut-comma's-own-throat £5.99!). We can do better than that, people! Move it up the rankings!

Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)

I found this more charming than I had anticipated. Lily said: 'it's good, but why did they have to different-it from the book?' A good question, actually.

There's something distantly unnerving about the way all the native English animals are deadpanning wisecracking Americans, but the humans all have English accents. Plus, looking back on a slight but pronounced sense of nark I felt whilst watching it, I realise that I've been innoculated against the fiction that a feckless, con-man, charismatic, fantasist Dad can ever be, in any way, a good thing from the kids' point of view by reading, oh I don't know, just about every story about such a character, from John Le Carré on. This film, by peddling its 'fantastic' angle straight, and getting George Clooney to purr the lines in his best come-on voice, ends up in a pretty solidly mendacious place, actually. Which is a shame, because a Willy Loman take on the 'fantastic' element of the title might have made a more interesting picture.

Other than that: it's visually very attractive indeed. Some of the left-field humour is nicely done; I liked Kylie the Oppossum, and especially his swirly eye moments; and I laughed at the Jarvis Cocker onscreen rebuke. Then again, I have a high tolerance for left-field humour. And, actually, only about a tenth of this film's field is left. A quarter is way over to the right (the poisonous pseudo-babble about how being 'different' is good, 'different' here meaning 'mildly eccentric mannerisms'; the reactionary class narrative inherent in this fable of a bunch of lawyers, pediatricians, landscape painters and journalists as the victims, no really, of three farmers with grating, parvenu-y, estuary accents -- or the wincing, self-serving material about how these bourgeois popinjays actually embody a 'wild animal' nature). But the rest -- what is that, 65%? -- is solidly in the middle, and neither offensive nor brilliant, merely entertaining.

Andrew J. Offutt, Evil is Live Spelled Backwards (1970)

As regards bad cover design, I've pretty much yielded the field to Good Show Sir; but every now and again a book primps my interest and stays, like a retinal burn, with me. This is a click-the-images-to-enlarge-them case in point. And there's little to say here, beyond idly framing unguessable pub-quiz questions ('what links Black Sabbath, Miles Davis and Andrew J. Offutt?'). Sure, the the title is awful but at least the cover art is able to achieve a matching level of awfulness. Yes those ladies look like they've overbalanced and are about to clonk into one another. Yes, the title is very bad. Yes, the couple in the right-hand circle look like the Chemical Brothers. But more than all of that, the title is awful. Look how awful the title is! Before you so much as open out the front cover the novel is already haunted by its ghostly other, a book called Gateman is Nametag Spelled Backwards, or Straw is Warts Spelled Backwards, or Maps is Spam Spelled Backwards. Any of which would have made for better novels than this.

What's it about? Oh, this:

Those darn Satanists. Moving more daringly, eh? That's typical of satanists, that is: daring movement. That and bellowing 'Let There Be Licence!' What a powerfully evil slogan! -- so evil it's almost ... live ....