Best movies of 2011: numbers 10 to 6

So far, my top movies of 2011 have included a bear man selling teeth, also some fannies and bums, and a collection of amazing mullets. Time to start the top ten, in which you will find aliens, wallpaper and dinosaurs.

[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. See also 2010 and 2009.]

10 - Attack The Block

Hoodies take on aliens in a funny and, yes, believable debut from the one who isn’t Adam from Adam & Joe. The yoots rob and prowl and ought to be the real villains, but once the terrifying shadowy claws start ripping them to shreds, our loyalties remain firmly in the four walls of the London tower blocks. A pleasure to see an 'urban' film where the protagonists are, beneath the hoodies, quite normal.

9 - Black Swan

Natalie Portman goes mental, or does she, and is she really Natalie Portman? Black Swan is full of directorial tricks designed to confuse the viewer and I hated it on first watch. But the feathery beast kept pecking away at me until it pulled me under. And now I think it’s the best ballet-masturbation combination of 2011.

8 - The King’s Speech

Colin Firth, on a roll from A Single Man and, er, St Trinians 2, takes the stutter rap as he walks into a delightful culture clash with straight-talking Geoffrey Rush. The Rush family wallpaper was worth the cinema ticket alone. All Firth needs to do now is to go back in time and do the same for Geoffrey in Shine. Oscar or no Oscar, this is the drama of the year: think Frost / Nixon with bluer blood.

7 - We Need To Talk About Kevin

The impossibly thin Tilda Swinton descends to motherhood hell as her impossibly thin offspring Ezra Miller turns from Damien into a high school killer. It's difficult to build tension when the foreshadows of the bloody climax loom larger than Miller's massive scowl, but this tale of painful alienation and archery sparks from the screen thanks in no small part to its photo-perfect arthouse cinematography.
   

6 - The Tree Of Life

The entire universe is created, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn think about stuff, the entire universe dies. Not one for your Twilight audience, Terence Mallick’s ambitious epic is more like a tone poem than a narrative - although there is a story in there somewhere. Absolutely beautiful, from dinosaurs to a depressed dad to dwarf stars. Just don't expect a Stephanie Meyer novelisation any time soon.

[This is part two. Click here for part one. Click here for part three. See also 2010 and 2009.]

Best movies of 2011: numbers 15 to 11

Welcome to my favourite films of 2011. First, let's start with some disclaimers so I'm not beaten to death by movie geeks brandishing cola straws.

[This is part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three. See also 2010 and 2009.]

I missed numerous 2011 films: this top 15 has more holes than the plot of Transformers. So Drive is safely parked away, while The Artist maintains a respectful silence. Neither is there Tintin, Harry Potter nor bloody Mars Needs Moms. And no shouty Nicholas Cage.

There were some films I did see that didn’t make it into the list. The Adjustment Bureau, about men in hats walking through walls, was entertaining if not original, while Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ticked all the boxes but failed to be greater than the sum of its parts. Kill List was my hands-down film of the year until the ending reduced it to a laughable failure. And Paul simply wasn’t good enough to be included.

Tron Legacy would have been in my top ten last year, but I saw it after I’d written my write-up and now it’s too late to join this year’s list. Yes, it was trash, but it was rezzed-up techno trash and I Daft-Punking loved it. Also, I finally saw Catfish (otherwise known as the other Facebook film) and was mightily entertained if a little paranoid about ever logging on again.

15 - Super 8

Part Stand By Me, part Close Encounters, this is JJ Abrams’ love letter to Stephen Spielberg. Which is a bit like The Hulk taking up needlecraft. The ‘berg served as producer for this wide-eyed adventure story, which is probably why the movie manages to soften the stupendously moronic storyline with a dash of nostalgia and more than a little warmth.

14 - The Inbetweeners Movie

Popular television comedy writ large for the big screen? If that idea of that doesn’t fill you with dread, then you’ve never seen The Simpsons Movie. As it is, the film delivers the requisite quota of fannies and bums and silly dancing despite the woeful near-absence of Greg Davies. Any film that gets Kylie to say "clunge" at an awards ceremony gets my vote.

13 - True Grit

For any other film makers, Bear Man (“I have taken his teeth: I will entertain an offer for the rest of him”) would be their best character ever. But these are the Coens and they play oddball better than anyone. True Grit is a solid remake shot with a slow and steady hand and is only slightly spoilt by an action-led last act that seems a bit unCoeny.

12 - Arthur Christmas

Yes, really. A red-nosed Christmas classic co-written by Peter ‘Alan Partridge’ Baynham and with all the adult nuances of Nick Park’s more famous inventor and dog. A glittering cast helps: Laurie, McAvoy, Jensen, Broadbent, Palin, Staunton and Nighy (“right down the Rodney hole!”). It really didn't need the 3D, so leave those stupid specs at home.

11 - The Fighter

Christian Bale does crazy and Mark Wahlberg does Rocky in a film that ought to be a knock-off of an old idea, but is brought to life with two compelling central performances and a gaggle of Christopher Guest-style ensemble characters clad in amazing mullets. Empire Of The Sun and the Funky Bunch seem like such a long time ago.

[This is part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three. See also 2010 and 2009.]

I am not typing

I am not blogging at the moment. Instead, I am preparing new material for the book-of-my-blog which I promised you a couple of months ago.

10,000 is the word target I'm aiming for this week, which I should pass tomorrow. This does mean I have now spent three whole days indoors thinking and typing, thinking and typing. In the words of Sir Fredrick of Mecury, I'm going slightly mad. I've only spoken to the newsagent and the man who came to service my boiler.

That's NOT a euphemism.

Here are some of the words that now sit proudly in this week's first draft. I'm quite happy with it so far:

Belch, bucket, cloys, cocked, consolation, daaaah, dismembered, drizzle, entropy, fedora, fundamentalist, gaslamp, heroin, monochrome, neanderthal, nipple, oscillators, panda, psychogeography, putrescent, sable, sextet, slaughter, snog, swagger, tympanic, unicycling, vestibule, wolves.

"Our Future Books..."

It is a year, a week and a day since my patently ridiculous call to literary arms, The Beatoff Generation.

Since then, we've run reading events, pub quizzes and competitions, and even produced an anthology which was, let's face it, a hare's testicle away from being outright pr0n.

It has also changed this blog because much of my spare time is now about writing fiction rather than raving with the Aphex 'til the wee hours. In the past fortnight or so, you may have seen me read a story about a desperate shop manager at ReTale, try out my Brian Cox dirtiness at Exhibit C, watched me spew out my first 20-minute set at Blank Space and have authors spluttering into their beer at Word Soup.

The aftermath of my Blank Space set can be seen in this picture. This represents the fall-out of five stories told in my, um, particular style. Even the guitar is mine, although it only has five strings because I used the high E to floss my toes whilst high on envelope glue. You know. LIKE YOU DO.

My latest empublishment is a story called If You Were The Only Boy In The World, which I will read at this Wednesday's Bad Language birthday bash. The story can be found in their new anthology, to be launched screaming at the public on the same night.

And after that, I'll do something stupid at Say Something. An event a week. That's my plan. And if you want the full Fat Roland fiction treatment and you can provide a good audience, I'll do a 20 minute set for you.

Meanwhile, do pop your nose into the Manchester literature "scene". Some say it is somewhat self-regarding, but that's why we did the Beatoff Generation manifesto. It's welcoming and open and a lot of fun: why else would a natural outsider like me be involved.

I'll leave you with some lovely words about Bad Language, who have done so much to support new talent in this city. Katie Anderson writes about her literary open mic performance there (a story "sort of about ghosts, but not really", which is the best kind of ghost story), while Aaron Gow recalls his first stage performance at Bad Language as being "slightly addictive".

A year, a week and a day is a long time at Fat Roland towers. Here's to the next arbitrarily-chosen-time-period-because-it-was-meant-to-be-a-one-year-anniversary-but-I-forgot-until-now.

Richard Whiteley: off my anus

My computer exploded.

Imagine the 1996 Manchester bomb, but smaller and inside a power unit.

You may think that is an insensitive comparison, but there were 15 handsome badgers working the innards of that machine. Now my writing room is wallpapered with animal brains and wiry black and white hair.

The hair may have been there before.

I'm hoping the Nice Computer Man can save my machine. As long as he stays away from the folder marked Compromising Photographs Of Denuded Biscuits, I should be okay.

The worst thing about this calamatous event is how much I'm missing my music. Someone played me a bit of Laughable Butane Bob today and I nearly orgasmed into his cappuccino. The only thing I have left on CD are Echobelly's Greatest Hits, that collaboration between The Kooks and Kraftwerk, and Tina Turner tribute band The Nutbush City Mimicks.

I'm not sure if those CDs even exist. I'm not sure of anything any more.

The positive side of being computerless is I got off my anus yesterday and had a lovely Sunday lunch. From now on, this blog will be dedicated to lovely Sunday lunches. Cooked by Wetherspoons. In exchange for £6.99, or £8.49 if you want inexplicable cauliflower cheese with it.

I went for the cauliflower cheese. This is my new life. My new computer-less life.

(PS - if you want to see me read an interative story about Richard Whiteley, come to a night called Exhibit C tomorrow. I may do three stories, each obsessed with the idea of celebrity.)

Bezerking automaton: ReTale happens this Thursday

Six writers. Six stories. One shop.

Next up in the wonderful world of Fat Roland Making It Up As He Goes Along is a unique site-specific story evening called ReTale.

This Thursday, November `17th, my good self and five of m'colleagues will perform six brand new stories in the Triangle shopping centre, or more specifically, in the ladies clothing shop Jigsaw.

With ReTale, we hope to bring a little bit of theatrical nous to the imprecise art of live fiction performance. My fellow performers are the irrepressible Bad Language gang, my Flashtag cohort Dave Hartley and mumblin' Nick Garrard.

My story will contain this line:

“He wants to remove her empty skull above its equator, sit inside  the recess then ride her around like some bezerking automaton.”

It starts at 7.30pm sharp and there will be drinkies. Grab your tickets now, or risk it and pay on the door.

And if you don't like our stories, you could always pick up yourself a little silk ballet dress. Red. Off the shoulder. It'll look nice on you.

Fat Roland at Blank Space, November 13th 2011

As a tribute to the contents of my head, the name "Blank Space" seems a suitable place for a Fat Roland performance.

So join me tomorrow at Blank Media Collective's fifth birthday celebrations where I will be spewing 20 minutes of my half-brewed pot of fiction stew. It all kicks off from 4pm on Sunday at Blank Space in Hulme.

They're aiming for a speak-easy vibe, with spoken word, poetry and music courtesy of any old sops that turn up to the open mic. Why not be a sop yourself and come and take to the stage? Some time before 7pm, I will headline proceedings along with performance poet and installation artist Rebecca Joy Sharp.

I'm billed as "spoken word", which is an anodyne phrase which is a bit like saying "sounds like Coldplay". Then again, I dislike the phrase "flash fiction", but if it's a wording I've got to wear to persuade you to turn up and listen, then pass me the tattooist needle.

It's my first proper fiction set. From me, you can expect comedy, horror, sadness and my first ever performance with a guitar. It's all hosted by the lovely Blank Pages, who were kind enough to publish my scribblings recently.

I got the pop song, I got the melody

Earworms.

I think that's what they call them. Earworms are those snippets of melody that lodge themselves in the tissue of your brain.

At the moment, I have a merry-go-round of cacophony in my head. Part of the noise is a disco record that I can't quite put my finger on. It may be the Jackson 5. There's a bit of Womack and Womack in there too. It then morphs into Sydney Youngblood's If Only I Could. He's a cheery German Texan who raised the ire of dance music rival Soul II Soul back in the late 1980s with his chippy cheerful rip-off soul pop.

But not the chorus of If Only I Could. Oh no. Just the start of the verse and the few bars leading up to that.

Which is my problem with earworms. The sign of a good producer or songwriter is their ability to make even the innocuous bits of the song sound as amazing as the obvious hooky bits. Everyone from Trevor Horn to Timbaland is good at this, and it means that a wriggly little earworm can crawl from anywhere in the deep depths of popular music and surprise you with its catchy little hooky teeth.

What I'm saying is, really, that there's too much melody out there. It would be nice for everyone to have a lovely chorus, something-- y'know-- really smashing, and for the rest of the song to be a tuneless, forgettable dirge. It worked for the likes of Echobelly, Oasis, Aliyah, U2 and pretty much any artist beginning with a vowel.

East 17. Adele. Elbow. Every artist beginning with a vowel. Every single one. It works. Try it.

The only way to rid your mind of an earworm is to scoop your cranium empty with the digger your Uncle Dave nicked from the local university building works last Tuesday. Or have a reputable pop impressario such as Gary Glitter, jonathan King or Michael Jackson's corpse do one of those worm-charming things on your skull and tap your bonce incessantly with a long stick.

I call them earworms. What do you call them? What's in your head right now? Am I just asking this to give the impression of interactivity on this blog? Yes. I'm not interested, so bog off. Unless you want to sing me a song in the comments. A lovely, smashing uncatchy song.