Despite the box office records it’s no Wonder Women don’t rule Hollywood
A WHILE back, I went to see a film in which Batman and Superman decided, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear, to have a fight.
The very idea is preposterous, of course, because Superman can make the planet spin backwards and pick up a train, whereas Batman is an investment banker in a rubber suit.
It’d be like putting Tyson Fury in the ring with Philip Hammond.
But on and on the film went, for hour after hour and day after day. There were explosions and some terrible mumbly dialogue, and then some CGI, and I decided I’d never see a worse movie in all of my life.
But now, I have.
And it’s easy to see why, because this is the first crash, bang, wallop comic book epic with an actual woman in the lead role.
She can fight and kick and bite and throw stuff as well as anyone and then at the end, it turns out she can create an atomic explosion using her bangles.
Meanwhile, her adversary — who is a man — can only fly about while making lightning. Nope, I don’t know why either. Or how.
But whatever, after a fight sequence that goes on for about ten years and is even less easy to understand than the fight between Batman and Superman, the film is over and he’s dead.
Or maybe he’s not dead. I can’t say for sure because I’d gone into the kitchen to see if there was any bleach I could drink.
This film is being held up as a shining example of how Hollywood is getting its act together as far as women are concerned.
No it isn’t. It’s terrible. Wonder Woman is given no funny lines, like you get from Robert Downey Jr in Iron Man. All the comedy comes from her male co-star.
She just stands there whirling around in front of a green screen while a bunch of dweebs make merry with the CGI machines.
The fact is that 95 per cent of Hollywood movies are directed by men. And that the lead is almost always a man. And men are almost always given the funniest lines and the best scenes. And this is just plain wrong.
The fact is that 95 per cent of Hollywood movies are directed by men. And that the lead is almost always a man. And men are almost always given the funniest lines and the best scenes. And this is just plain wrong
For me, the funniest film I’ve seen in many years is Bridesmaids, which was written by women, the most gripping was Gravity, which was virtually a one-woman show and one of my all-time favourites is Lost In Translation, which was directed, wait for it, by Francis Ford Coppola . . . ’s daughter, Sofia.
Hollywood is important. It reaches people in ways that no politician or spiritual leader can.
It can make fiction into fact, and the other way around. It genuinely shapes how we think and makes us aware of stuff we didn’t know.
And it’s time it grew up, apologised for Wonder Woman and made Mrs Incredible.
Cars can p-p-pick up penguins
SOME sad news I’m afraid. Only two penguin chicks at a giant colony in Antarctica have survived the breeding season.
Environmentalists say it’s catastrophic but when asked what went wrong, they all disappear quickly, mumbling something about being late for a meeting.
Well I’ve done some digging and it turns out that the winter was so cold down there at the bottom of the earth, there was much more ice than usual, which meant the parents had to travel further for food.
Hmmm. This is hardly in keeping with the ecomentalist line that Antarctica is getting warmer. Which is why they haven’t exactly been making a big song and dance about it.
So I will, with a simple slogan. “Save a penguin. Buy a Range Rover.”
I’VE only just put my watering can the right way up after the horrors of Hurricane Ophelia and now it’s almost certainly going to get blown over again by Storm Brian.
When will these catastrophic events stop, for God’s sake?
Beeping hell, it's torture
A TEAM of men in hard hats and yellow jackets came to re-Tarmac the car park outside my office this week. And straight away, the beeping started.
“It’s OK,” I thought, after a minute or two, “it’s just a truck backing up. It’ll stop soon.”
But it didn’t. After ten minutes, I was starting to foam at the mouth with rage. After half an hour I thought they were holding the world reversing championships and went outside.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were actually driving the steamroller backwards.
“WHY DON’T YOU GO FORWARDS?” I shouted to the foreman. But he couldn’t hear because of the beeping. Which went on solidly for two more hours.
It’s strange. Back in the late Eighties, a central American dictator called General Noriega took refuge in an embassy, and the CIA bombarded the building day and night with The Clash, Van Halen and U2 until eventually, he came out.
It was called music torture and it’s now banned by international law. Which is one of the reasons why Julian Assange is STILL holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
I tell you what though. If our security services reversed round the building in a steamroller, I swear he’d be out after ten minutes.
INTERESTING news from the heavens.
A study has found that in bed at night, people born under the sign of Aries like to have their hair tousled.
This must be troubling news for David Furnish as his husband, Elton John, above, is an Aries. And at night, I’m guessing his hair is usually in the washing machine.
IT HAS TO BE BROOK
FIRST, it was the Canadians who decided to elect as leader a man of just 43 but the French thought they could do better and went for a chap of 39.
Then along came the New Zealanders who voted for a woman of 37 and now we have the Austrians who’ve decided they want to be led by a boy of 31.
This trend can’t be very comforting news for Jeremy Corbyn, who is 107, because at this rate, Britain’s next prime minister will be Brooklyn Beckham.
A shock not awe for Hills
THIS week, Hillary Clinton was in London to make a speech about something or other and from the moment her plane touched down, my Instagram feed began to fill with various friends who’d been invited to meet her.
They were all pulling exactly the same face, standing there, slack-jawed with love and respect and awe.
Instead of pointing a finger and asking, in a loud voice: “How the bloody hell did you manage to lose to Donald Trump, you hapless halfwit?”
The 'thin' blue line
It seemed unusual in this day and age that a tribunal would listen to the plight of a woman who claimed to be disabled and then side with her employers.
But I’m afraid I didn’t get to the nitty gritty of the case because I was consumed by the picture of the woman in question. She was, how can I put this politely? Quite large.
And all I could think was: Is this the main reason so few crimes are ever cleared up these days? Because officers are too busy rummaging around in the biscuit tin.
