The only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent

There is a chance that I'm the only person who woke up this week with the desire to see Revolver. 

Such is life. 

When I was younger - so much younger than today - I saw Revolver after it had come out because, as I think I've covered in some previous entry somewhere, I really used to be deeply into Guy Ritchie's films. 

If you've seen Revolver, you may find this funny, especially given the dodginess of Jason Statham's facial hair choices in the film. Seriously, that Fu Man Chu mustache / stubble combo is intense. 

Revolver is, however, an interesting film - in my opinion - if you take it apart and consider the pieces, rather than the way they've been smooshed together. 

Visually, for instance, it's fascinating - the colour palette is amazing, because it's more than just the orange/blue spin the colour wheel and pick two opposites school of thinking. (That said, Ray Liotta does spend a lot of time in blue light - or with a blue filter on the shot - while he's ostensibly tanning.)

There's also some innovative camerawork that needs paying heed to, also - especially during Sorter's very calm, very collected rampage towards the end, which is camerawork like you've never seen put together, where the camera never stops moving but the shot keeps changing (and the shots - a pun, or play on words - keep coming). 

It's also worth locating the film in the context of Strong's career, as an aside -  after revolver, it's less Prime Suspect Six and more Syriana, Stardust and Sunshine, so there's an alphabetical moving-on as well as a stardom-related moving-up. You could say the same for André 3000 - and it just feels wrong to refer to him as André Benjamin - but in his case, his film career... Let's just not go there. It'll take you all of two clicks to check it out in Wikipedia, if you're so inclined. I really like Idlewild, but the rest... 

Revolver is, however, not universally loved. I like to pretend that the criticism about the 'pretensions' and the 'plot' are just veiled digs at Jason Statham's facial hair, but the fact is that the plot is a bit pretentious, but this is only a bad thing because it keeps trying to ground itself in a gangster story. Ostensibly there are two plotlines; 

- Green is out for revenge on Macha because Green's sister-in-law ended up dead following the last time they were involved

- Green is trying to dissipate his id - which is named, I think, Sam Gold, although Sam Gold is a collective term for every character's id - by confronting his primal, fight-or-flight fight-or-fuck urges. 

Okay. Pretentious. 

The second one, however, is arguably the more interesting of the storylines, because it skips merrily away from consensus reality and moves the viewer into a world where two criminals - who may or may not exist - can vanish from their cells in solitary confinement without a trace, can predict the future (with a limited range) and can cure a man of a degenerative blood disease by making him donate his entire fortune to charity. 

It's all figurative, don't you know, because by ridding himself of his ill-gotten gains, Green is cleansing his karma (and doing so even more by displacing his largess onto his enemy for them to take the credit). Green, having spent his two years out of prison - 

- And yes, watching someone get released from prison then immediately cutting to black and Two Years Later is just plain cheeky - 

- making money using his ingenious con system taught to him by his maybe-cellmates, trapping the three people responsible for his sister-in-law's death in the web of their boss to their eventual detriment then demise and then walking up to his nemesis and winning a fortune from them on the flip of a chip, has technically rotten karma, and it's all because of his id. 

I don't know if I actually have to italicise id, but I'm enjoying doing so, so...

If Mr Ritchie had simply played it out as a straight revenge tale - Snatch meets Ocean's Eleven - then it would have been just another cockney-ish gangster tale in his canon of gangster tales. If he'd taken it all the other way and just went for full-on Kabbalah mysticism, it would, in theory, have had even less of an audience. So in a way - in a roundabout way, although as much of a roundabout way as a driving tour in Milton Keynes - Revolver is the ideal, crazystrange mix of 'Themes Guy Ritchie Knows How To Do" and "Themes Guy Ritchie Was Interested In At The Time", or at least the right mix to draw an audience, however small. 

Here's something final to ponder on - using my atrophied film information-finding skills, Revolver has a slight weirdness to it's statistics. For one, I can't find out what the original budget was. 

The last film I ever had this trouble with was The Spirit. Don't ask. Seriously, don't ask.

Spiraling out from this, consider that, according to my limited sources, Revolver had a box office of $84,738 in America, which is shocking. That's just under $1700 per state, or $0.0003 per person in the USA, although that's using the current population for the statistic, which is misleading. 

Were there just no Ray Liotta fans who wanted to see his arse on screen in blue lighting out there enough to justify a ticket to the film? Was it just not marketed, at all? Don't get me wrong, it went on to gross nearly $7 million in Overseas Territories, i.e. Not The USA, but still, I'm assuming that it cost more than seven and a half million to make, because it's so damn sparkly. 

Plus, it only cost me 80p to buy. 

It was worth the price. 

I don't wanna cause any unnecessary stress, but I just came from Gleason's property and he seems to think there's a panther roaming the area.

It took a bit of time to get back into watching films. 

My attention span is not what it -

- Ooh! Shiny! - 

- Where was I? 

Anyway.

Part of my rehabilitation was watching so-bad-they're-maybe-good films. 

Another part has been trying to find out-of-the-way films. 

To explain this; I'm a huge William Gibson fan. Of his books, I'd put Pattern Recognition right up there as my favourite. Pattern Recognition's central character, Cayce Pollard, is fascinating on many levels, but one of these is that she has an allergic reaction to certain brands (in the primary instance, the Michelin Man). 

I don't claim anything as extreme as that, but I have started feeling less and less like going to see what you might un-ironically call 'mainstream cinema', partly because the story-lines tend to be... Guessable, I think, is the word. 

There's a whole debate to be had about the necessity of selling recognisable product - i.e. guaranteeing an audience with the promissory note that what they're going to see will fall within expected experience boundaries - which is fine and good. Really, it is fine and good, because you have to have a template that at least tries to guarantee a return on investors' money. 

It's getting a bit bad, though, because I now hate the idea of going to the cinema, and that makes me feel old. It also makes me feel like, say, a Methodist going to a Baptist church; the same religion, but completely different expectations. 

For instance; I know I'm not the only one to think this, although that doesn't help, but; is it so fucking difficult to turn off your smart phone in the cinema? If you're so in-demand and can't miss an email or your personal empire will crumble, why the fuck are you watching a film? 

Having a bright screen in your field-of-vision in a darkened cinema is just distracting as shit, really. 

Then there's your common-or-garden talkers, crunchers, and all-around depth and variety of humanity represented in the worst aspects of what people think they can get away with in public spaces. 

So cinemas are out, unless justifiable homicide has been put on the lawbooks here and I simply haven't noticed. 

This has led to me trawling my local CEX to find cheapjack films or less cheap films that are, in some way, off the beaten track. 

This is how I came to end up watching Red Hill. 

If you're looking for the short verdict - and if you're looking for the short verdict and you've read this far, what the hell - then Red Hill is well worth watching. 

The trailer does a good job of making it look like a horror slash western, however, when it's really not. 

Spoilers from hereon out, in case you needed warning.

The one main problem with Red Hill is narrative necessity. You have two divergent plot strands; a young police constable moving to the sticks for the quiet life, and a violent prisoner travelling back to the town to exact a bloody revenge on all the law therein.

These just so happen to happen on the same day. 

In some ways, this may be a budgetary fact; to film an extra, say, twenty minutes to half-an-hour of Cooper adjusting to small-town life, getting to know people, settling in but not always sure of the secret below the town's surface would probably have cost too much and slowed the pacing down. 

So, fine. Narrative necessity demands that the escaped murderer - well, 'murderer' - comes to town on the same day the new policeman arrives. 

Such is life. 

I would take issue with one other neat piece of narrative causality, however; for a small town, Red Hill has almost no visible inhabitants. The only time you see more than, say, ten people at once, is at a church meeting at the beginning used to establish the Sheriff's character, where a lot of lineless extras sit in the church hall and clap and holler. 

After that, the most crowded scene is where the Sheriff rounds up his posse, and even then I'm struggling to remember if there were more than ten people there. 

After that, the townsfolk disappear, because there's a storm coming - so the storm warning is issued and everyone is told to hole up and hide - although the storm is, of course, also a metaphorical storm in the form of Jimmy. 

Jimmy is, arguably, the most fascinating character, even though he doesn't say a word until the final few minutes. He's portrayed as this force of nature sweeping into town to exact revenge on the people who wronged him in the worst possible way and made him pay the price for it. 

There's a slight story-line schism around Jimmy, however. Cooper's plot is kind of TV-movie big town cop in a small town, with all the cutesy that implies; but when Jimmy rides into town, that's all shelved and Cooper's elastic-band stretches further away from the main story-line until the end where it snaps back and draws him with it. Put it this way; out of narrative necessity, Cooper is knocked out and left in locations far away from the action twice, and has to work his way back into the main plotline. 

This means the pacing takes a knock here and there, but this is saved somewhat by the fact that the visuals are gorgeous. Seriously; any concerns about a tv-movie plot are taken care of by the cinematography. Occasionally the framing is a little weird, but otherwise it's amazing.

So the main problem is that the two story-lines take a long time to mesh, and because of this neither really has any room to properly breathe and evolve; they both just kind of happen and then happen together. It doesn't help that Jimmy's story is arguably much more compelling than Cooper's, although that's a function of the revenge story-line versus the pastoral story-line, and it's kind of inevitable. 

It was worth, however, the £2 I paid for it. 

I fear this cannot be said for the next selection, for which - like an idiot - I paid £6 for even though it was never going to be worth that much; 

In the desert in a house made of tin

So let's talk about something that I can actually say matters - well, 'matters' - to me. 

It's about my local comic shop. 

When I was a teenager, I used to travel to the town I now live in to visit one of two comic shops, which we'll call Comic Shop One and Comic Shop Two, just because I'm, like, so original. 

Comic Shop One was r-i-g-h-t on the edge of the main town area, and had, in the late nineties, a kind of scruffy chic; boxes full of back issues crowding the space, the rack of this weeks' comics up there, a few toys and associated bits of merchandise and whatnot. 

I did love it there, but I didn't really interact with the 'crowd', as such. 

After a while, the shop became uneconomic in the way that a shop ten minutes walk from the centre of town selling a niche product can do and, surely, closed down with a quickness. 

What was nice here is that the proprietor then started offering a service that you really, really wouldn't see these days; for customers in the local area, he kept ordering subscriptions and offered to deliver them to your home. Like I say, I can't see this working these days, because you'd just post the damn things, but in the same way that the summers were warmer and the winters were shorter and the rain was never cold when you were young, this was a really nice service. 

I can't remember how long I took that service for, but I think it was probably about six months before I went to university and it wouldn't have worked anymore. (Not least because I was seven stops from the Forbidden Planet where I moved to. Customer loyalty is a fine thing, but... It wasn't them, it was me, that sort of breakup rhetoric.) 

What I do remember is the niceness of this guy bringing round my order, laying it out on the table, then taking the cash - and I remember it being a fair price, although, summers, winters, etcetera - and having a brief chat before disappearing into the night to disperse further comics-related purchases to his loyal clientele (of which I was about to not be one.)

When I moved back home from university, I would still - on occasion - go to London to visit the Forbidden Planet and stock up. Or I'd go when I visited friends, etcetera. Or when I had a plausible excuse. Or anytime I could, really.

I didn't actually discover Comic Shop Two until about a year or so after I'd moved home, and, again, it was in an out-of-the-way place that I would never have found without my crippling sugar addiction and the sweet shop round the corner. (Sugar addiction is a real issue, kids! Trust me, I'm still trying to sort out the consequences now.) 

It was a small rectangle of comics niceness, which also sent out dandelion-like seeds to other towns on their markets, which I also found quite cool. 

Here's the pertinent thing, though; whichever one you went to, you were bound to bump into one of three Older Folks who liked to chat about, well, their personal comic-book fetishes in a somewhat creepy but ultimately harmless way. It was mainly about certain characters that had excited them in some way, which had provoked the beginnings - or, in one case, a full-blown example - of a fetish. 

Everyone has fetishes. (I think.) At least, everyone has different tastes, and if you're indulging them in the privacy of your own home without harming anyone or anything, then, whatever makes you happy, Spanky. Talking about them in public at the comic shop is a little far gone, maybe, but still, relatively harmless, if, seemingly, a constant presence. (I do, as we all do, though, wonder about Carrott Theory in regard to this.) 

Time passed, and Comic Shop Two closed down, although The Stalls Still Remained (to my knowledge, anyway.)

And then, like unto the opening of a beautiful flower, Comic Shop Two got new premises and re-opened in a nicer, sparklier, less nice location. It is, I confess, a really nice-looking place, now, all professional and whatnot, with racks, customer order sections, lots of merchandise, and a general aura of happiness and wonderment. 

So - now, in different circumstances - I started stopping by there again, and the owner was still really nice, and remembered who I was, and I thought, well, this is really rather cool. 

Until I started trying to get anything regularly through them, as a, let's say, 'regular customer' would. 

If I wanted to go in and drop, say, £30 to £40 on random trade paperbacks, well, that was fine. 

If I wanted to actually try and order anything, hilarity. In the not particularly hilarious sense. 

To be honest, I don't like talking about things like this. But I give up. I really do. 

The first instance was the basic act of trying to get them to 'subscribe' me to an ongoing Marvel series. I'd bought the first two, came in to buy the third when I didn't hear anything about it on email, asked to be put down for the rest of the run, and never heard anything again. 

Meanwhile, I'd bought a couple of other trades, and - credit where credit's due - they had managed to hold back a copy of one trade for me. Except that I'd already bought it from one staff member, who hadn't told the other member of staff, so they'd already sold it to me and kept another copy that they could have had on the shelves for a couple of weeks. 

Which was a bit odd. But just a mix-up. 

So last week I asked if they could order in a trade paperback of a series I was interested in, and was told, yes, no problem. I later emailed to ask about a series that was coming out this week that I was interested in, and was told, again, yes, no problem. 

Except, problem. 

If you consider not hearing anything further again a problem. 

So I popped by on Monday to ask about this, and was told, yes, no problem. 

You can kind of see where I'm going with this.

Except that I'm starting to feel like maybe I don't like the atmosphere in there. 

I'm starting to think that I'm not actually that welcome. 

I'm starting to think that they're expecting me to start talking about my wacky comics-book fetishes and sexual proclivities at any time. 

And I'm not. 

I'm really not. 

But it's time to face facts; I'm just not the right target market anymore. I'm not young enough, don't have enough disposable income and, well, I'm just not worth the hassle, given how irregularly I can actually afford to buy anything.

This is a little sad. Back in the days of Comic Shop One - which, funnily enough, the owner of Two derided once it had closed down as cannibalising their market, how we laugh - although I didn't interact with anyone in the shop out of crippling shyness, I felt like I was somewhere where there were other people 'like me', i.e. into something a little different. 

Now, there's probably a rant here about how comics are now accepted, acceptable, mainstream, whatsoever, but that strays dangerously into this kind of territory, which is somewhere we don't want to go. I like that comics are mainstream, and that book shops now have massive sections of manga and graphic novels, even if, for some reason, The Boys is massively popular in every single one. (And, seriously, sidebar, that makes no sense to me.) 

There's a concurrent rant to be had about being pushed out of the mainstream because I now can't afford to keep current, keep cool, keep calm and carry on and whatnot. 

But the simple fact of the matter for me is that it's now easier, less degrading, and above all cheaper to just order comics online. 

This means missing the feeling of being a part of something, reducing it instead to reading comics in isolation at home, and not being able to discuss them with anyone unless you feel like braving the flaming waters of the internet and expressing your opinion. 

The title of this post therefore is - believe it or not! - relevant, because I recently finished reading Three to see the King, and the parallels - man in a house of tin in the middle of nowhere ends up involved in a community which then disintegrates, to summarise it up really quickly - feel very similar to how I feel about comics at the moment. For a while, I was involved in a community, then still kept a line open to that community, and now, frankly, I'd feel happier going back to my house of tin in the middle of nowhere where, at least, I don't have to feel uncomfortable about walking into a shop. 

So if you need me, I'll be here, out of the target demographic by a long way. 

Old pair of shoes the same place they were left

I have to be honest; I thought about not writing, any more. 

This is one of those tricky situations, because if I start harping on about how nobody cares, it comes across as just, well, harping on at best and fishing for complements at worst. 

I like this blog. I like how it's hit a hundred and fifty entries over time.

I just don't know if anyone's actually reading the damn thing! 

The best of we had a couple of posts ago highlighted that certain titles seemed to bring in the readers - mostly Moby lyrics, really, which is kind of funny in a way - but it's probably time to just admit that this blog is not made for stardom, really. 

Then again, 2152 pageviews over three and a half years isn't, maybe, so bad. 

It's time for the second admission; I don't know if I actually have anything worth saying, or, at least, writing about. 

Shocking, I know. 

But I've been running this blog on the fumes of talking about the experience of being a mature student in the arts and humanities along with half-informed film criticism consisting of personal historical statements and half-formed analysis. 

This in itself isn't unusual - I like to think that there are many other blogs out there, some less informed or less well written or less prone to long, run-on sentences that tire you out just by having to read them - but it's not what I'm after. 

Herein, then, is - having written the one hundred and fiftieth post a while ago - the new-fangled, quality-controlling, Eton Crow pledge; 

From this post forward, I'll only be publishing anything if I actually believe it merits publishing. 

So there you go!

But my eyes, dear, they see only you

In an odd kind of a way, it's probably time to actually do that BEST OF 2012 post.

Well, MOST READ OF 2012, anyway. 

See, I know y'all out there are reading. I have, like, pageview statistics to show that that's actually, don'tcha know, happening. Because most of the time when I'm writing for this blog I feel like this: 

I know I'm not actually writing this for any one particular person in the world, and it's not groundbreaking stuff that opens up the doors of people's perceptions, nor is it current or topical or useful, but hey, after this comes the 150th Entry, which means - yes, folks, that's right - that I've been writing this for a bloody long time. 

We've been through several transitions, here, from it starting out as a quasi-film company blog for the actual Eton Crow thing - and yeah, not much came of that because I suck at setting up an actual website even though I own the domain name, I think. After that came a lot of the Diary of a Mature Student section, which had some entertaining moments but devolved into complaining - a lot like being a mature student, in fact, so the parallel is strangely relevant. 

Then there was the ill-advised Each Day, A Film section, which I managed to keep up for a couple of months before the rising waters of deadlines overwhelmed it - and me - and it sunk. 

Since then, it's just been my ill-advised but grammatically correct - for the most part - columns. 

Lucky you. 

But let's have that best of, shall we? 

PLEASE NOTE: PAGEVIEW STATISTICS ARE ACCURATE AT TIME OF WRITING. 

Of course, if you click the links, they won't be any more. Deal with it. 

With Thirty-Five (35) views, we have: The Scott Pilgrim Column! 

My Weapon Jammed And I Got Stuck

AKA Don't Send Your Single Men To The Cinema, Mrs Worthington. I wish I'd had more to say about the film, and I also wish I knew why using Stan Ridgeway lyrics in article titles means more pageviews.

With Forty-Seven (47) views, we have: The End Of The Degree Post!
It won't be very long - you will look for me, and I'll be gone

This dream must end this world must know Your guess is as good as mine, frankly. That was written at the end of a long and difficult course, and it was, really, venting. Perhaps venting works. Perhaps Moby lyrics as post titles work. Perhaps venting accompanied by Moby works. Perhaps, as Martinson (1974) stated, Nothing Works.

With Sixty-Seven (67) views, we have: Idle TV Speculation!
This dream must end this world must know

If you want to get pageviews, Quote Dr Who in the title. Seriously. Go try it. I'll wait. Especially entertaining considering the column was about a different show entirely.

But the all-time winner, with One Hundred and Six (106) views is this:
When I wake it's kaleidoscopic lime

Which kind of confirms the Moby hypothesis. Maybe if I start using Moby song lyrics for every post from now on we'll reliably hit double digits and maybe even triple digits. 

Here's the fun thing, though; that's actually a halfway decent, interesting, thoughtful, well-researched column. So hey, quality - and Moby lyrics - apparently sell! 

It's been an odd year, folks. No doubt about it. That gets written up in the Last Column Of The Year, though, so for now let's just celebrate the fact that one of my columns actually hit TRIPLE DIGITS this year. 

Let's focus on that because the idea that I have a silent group of readers who simply read, and judge, is slightly disconcerting. 

Look at my hopes, look at my dreams, the currency we spend

I'm having one of those weird moments where I've just spent money on something I shouldn't have, except that I feel a complete lack of buyers remorse. 

Not to harp on about it, but right now I'm broke as fuck, so it's lucky for me and my three readers that words are, technically, free. But this thing I decided to buy was

(A) Unique
(B) Part of a set I have one of already
(C) Not exactly expensive by normal standards
(D) Cool. 

The problem, really, is that I'm in a kind of weird situation at the moment with regard to money. Where I'm nominally 'employed' doesn't pay me, and no matter how much I try asking nicely, sweetly and politely, they keep dodging the question and throwing me back. 

At the same time, to find paid work that chimes with what I'm doing at the moment - and I should really talk about that more later, and would but for the fear that they might actually have the nous to read this blog, connected as it is with my youtube channel, and connected as that is with what I'm doing now, so, hi!, I guess - seems to be almost completely impossible. 

It needs to be part time, and pay okay, and be relatively understanding about the odd demands of my time that pop up here and there at the moment. 

And there simply seems to be sweet fuckall out there at the moment. 

Which means I'm eating into dwindling savings that will soon be gone, and I should really not be buying things online. 

And so we're back to the beginning of this article. 

Honestly? 

I give up. 

Can't get work means can't earn money, which means not being able to do... anything. At the same time it means mooching off of my family, which basically takes any kind of self-respect and throws it far, far out the window. 

And yet... There's this nagging voice at the back of my head that says stop complaining and the test of your character is what you do with what you have, and, well, it's right. 

I just get frustrated when people say "Oh, you need to get some bar work / administration work / clerical work" as if it's the easiest thing in the motherfucking world. Let's not forget, too, that because I'm doing what I'm doing I'm apparently not entitled to any benefits of any sort (other than the most tangential ones which, to be fair, I really appreciate like you wouldn't believe). 

This is all just idle, itinerant complaining, complements, frankly, of the season. There's a hell of a lot I need to be getting on with that doesn't cost money in particular other than the coin of the soul and, so, I guess... 

... Time to get on with things. 

I should have said it when I had credit

When I was looking for something in the loft earlier, I was confronted with something like sixty glasses of varying shapes and sizes - 'hi-ball', pint, tumbler - along with a lot of other receptacles that could, conceivably, be used as holders for candles.

A while ago, I became interested in a character called Jenny Everywhere for no real reason other than I found the idea interesting. As Inception tells us - repeatedly - an idea is the world's most resilient parasite, and I couldn't shake this one off, so I decided to make a film about the character.

I know I've featured this film on the blog before, and it's been touted around a few places as proof that I'm not just an idle dilettante - well, not completely an idle dilettante - when it comes to filmmaking, 'cause this was my show from script to nuts. Assuredly with the help of people who should have known better than necessarily to get organised in the weirdness that I brought to films - this one features quarter-second cuts of Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef along with an extended excerpt of Il Triello that I'm dearly dearly hoping is covered under fair use.

It was what I'd call a qualified success - there's some really student-y stuff in there, but that's to be expected, given that I was, well, a student. I'm not a hundred percent happy with the credits, or the makeup job that would have Bergman reach for the cavalry sabre, but as films go, it's... Not too shabby. 

And that's the problem. 

I've come to accept that not too shabby is about the best I'm ever going to reach for when it comes to films, because I don't have the requisite strength of will to drive a film from beginning to completion. It'd be nice to think that maybe I might develop that, but given my experiences, I know now that I'm a student-film level producer - a procurer of actors, locations, costumes and creator of spreadsheets and call sheets, not that nebulous person called a Director, who powers on on the assumption that all that stuff's been taken care of, baby, and we'll see you at the wrap party, yeah? 

That's where we come back to my loft full of candle receptacles; while the bloom was still on the rose and the scales still over my eyes, I wrote a script for a short sequel to the above. Actually, in point of fact, it was a prequel, designed to explain how Jenny Everywhere's teleporting powers functioned - moving from location to location via The Corridor. Jenny, you see, tends to travel between universes as well as just between locations in the same world, so every Jenny uses and experiences their own version of The Corridor, a subspace area (and granted, Scott Pilgrim kind of got there first on that one, but... well... damn) filled with - you may have guessed it - candles. 

The candles were set up to mourn the passing of other Jennys from other worlds, and 'our' Jenny, being new to the whole teleporting thing - was going to be taught by another Jenny the 'lore' and the way in which it all, well, worked. 

The reason I'm writing about this now is that I'm beginning to think the number of failed, incomplete or otherwise FUBAR-ed projects I have in my bag of wishes is actually probably more in number than the number of completed projects, and that worries me, really. 

There was the film about the jewel thief and the standover man, which ended up being filmed on a dopey little SD handicam and which was impossible to cut together, and the music video for the star of that film that I never managed to get together. There was the superhero western-style stand-off, and... Actually, come to think of it, those are the only ones I've really fucked up (and no black bars on this one, because it's true as the day is long). 

I guess it's as true for any creative person as another that there are as many failed projects as successes, if not more so, but I'm just... feeling it now for some reason I can't put my finger on. 

Plus, I'd love to make a Jenny Everywhere feature film, but can you imagine the copyright problems?