Mr Malark

Europa. Io. Triton. Titan. Ariel. Charon.

It's odd how we've bothered to name the moons of all the other planets in our Solar System but our one? Oh no. The Moon. That's it. Named after a bare bum.

I've therefore decided to take an executive decision and give it a proper name. From this day forward, our moon is going to be called 'Jason'. Only, with a slightly camp lisp. Jaaaay-thin.

To avoid any uncomfortable moments, I'd be grateful if everyone in the world could adhere to my decision immediately.

It's funny, get two conspicuously good-looking people of the same sex in the same room at the same time, and, more often than not, they won't know how to relate to each other. It's like the 'who's-the-best-looking-now?' question short-circuits everything.

Imagine you knew someone called Nimrod? You wouldn't expect a lot from that person, would you? I mean, it's become a synonym for goofball.

I dunno, just a thought.

Anyway, I wasn't expecting a lot from Nimrod Antal's Vacancy, a horror that's so formulaic, you could probably re-construct it in your front room with a spanner, a cereal box and a dead hitchhiker. Warring couple? Check. Broken down car? Check. Spooky garage attendant? Check. Isolated motel? Check. Shit decor? Check.

However, this movie carries an unexpected gravitas. It's weightier than it perhaps has a right to be and all because the two lead actors turned up to work and, with some undoubted eliciting from the old Nimrod, decided to turn a workaday thriller into what is, really, quite a taut drama.

Luke Wilson and Kate Neckingsale star as an unhappy couple making their way across the country to an undetermined location. However, when their car develops a problem on a deserted country road, the pair are forced to take refuge in a motel that even Norman Bates would look twice at, and, once ensconced, slowly come to realise that their room has been the setting for more than just the odd bit of kip.

And so begins a familiar fight for survival. However, the performance of the two leads lend an authenticity to the movie that even the crappy motel manager, a piss-poor man's William H Macy, whoever the fuck he actually is, struggles to dent, and, all in all, it actually feels comparatively plausible.

That said, for all of that, it is still painting-by-numbers and when did you last see a masterpiece that was that?

Vacancy: 6/10.

According to a new NHS advisory poster, Alcohol Misuse now costs the country £2.7 billion a year.

That doesn't make sense. Alcohol Misuse? What are people doing with it? Washing their cars? Listen, if you're not going to drink it, give it back.

With the growing cult of celebrity in this country, I really think it's time we all just got past it and had a celebration.

Wait a second, I'm missing a hyphen there. A celeb-ration. One a year.

I stayed up the other night to watch the UFC 103 Main Event between light-heavyweight kingpin Lyoto Machida and his challenger, Muay Thai specialist Mauricio Shogun Rua.

I was buzzing with anticipation. When Machida won the title, he turned the game on its head because in a sport that had come to be dominated by wrestlers and jui-jitsu practitioners, he was a karate man.

Karate was discredited as an effective fighting technique during the early years of the UFC and was quietly discarded by mixed martial artists, but, unexpectedly, here was a man who, in 15 fights, hadn't lost so much as a single round. Fleet of foot and accurate of strike, his opponents could no more impose themselves on him than he could dispose of them. Darting into the pocket, he would unleash a barrage of deadly strikes before slipping elusively out of range. His beleagured opponents couldn't touch him. It was incredible to watch and everything you'd want from your karate master.

Now, as he waited to take on his latest foe, I found my mind drifting back to the period I practiced karate. The day an opportunity arose that was the stuff dreams are made of. The day a master saw my potential and decided I was the one to pass the torch to. To train and to groom. To pass on his wisdom. His knowledge. His skills.

The background to the request was rooted in a hundred-and-one kung-fu movies. Bloodsport, the Karate Kid, No Retreat No Surrender, Kickboxer... I devoured them all.

However, the omnipotent theme was not lost on me. A Master. A Student.

I constantly dreamt of the day a sensei would discover me, take me under his wing, and teach me mystical techniques that had been honed through centuries of combat and meditation. I would soak it up like a sponge.

However, Stav wasn't your average sensei. A big, fat, middle-aged Turkish guy with a glass eye, I wasn't expecting a lot when I walked into his class as an eagar 13yr-old.

Nevertheless, I was itching to display the repertoire of moves I had learnt from the telly and, naturally athletic, I began to tear through his other students. I was fast, flexible and inventive, and I treated the dojo as my own personal kumite. However, the sparring sessions with overmatched peers became little more than a showcase to exhibit my flashy arsenal and I began to feel stymied by the lack of challenge.

But then, a month in, the call came.

At the end of class, Stav pulled me and one other student aside and told us he had seen something in us. He wanted to train us. To develop us. To hone us. One on one.

All my dreams were coming true...

Mark was a tough, little kid from my estate who had recently started turning up to class, and, as we went home together that evening, we were both elated. We knew what it meant. We had seen the films. It had begun.

The first training session was still a number of days away and during that period, we speculated endlessly about the syllabus. When would we be taught to perform gravity-defying spinning kicks? How to fight wearing a blindfold? Or, finally, to be passed that most solemn Holy Grail of Martial Arts. The Dim Mak. The Death Punch.

The first session, when it finally arrived, was a little more low-key than we had perhaps been expecting.

Stav was smoking a fag by the entrance when we got there and, when we went inside to change, we were surprised to find two older students, a guy and a girl, already limbering up. This hadn't been part of The Vision.

The session was also a disappointing series of katas followed by some unlikely stick work with a great big staff. A bit disillusioned, I quietly speculated as to the odds of being attacked whilst carrying a huge staff and was promptly scolded in a low, hissing tone by the older girl who warned me not to let the sensei hear me talking like that. This was shit. They were shit. This wasn't what I'd had in mind at all.

However, I resolved to see the session out and, at the end, the sensei offered to give us all a lift home. With the sun setting in the sky, we all clambered into the back of his car and set off for the first stop. It was the older boy's address. Which, unexpectedly, also happened to be the second stop. The older girl's. Which also happened to be the third stop. The fucking sensei's. All three of them lived together.

We all went in and Mark and I sat quietly as the three of them, a wholly unlikely triumverate, began making themselves at home. After a few minutes, the sensei, sensing our unease, offered to give us both a lift back to the Estate. I jumped at the opportunity, but Mark, cannily, had seen enough and decided he'd walk down the road to visit some non-existent relative.

He was jumping ship. He avoided my eye as he picked up his bag and left, and for good reason, the little cunt.

Still, it was what it was, and as the sensei and I set off in the car, he began talking a load of kung-fu mumbo-jumbo in an effort to re-engage me in the dream.

But I wasn't buying. Stav wasn't a mythical master. He was a fat, middle-aged Turkish man with a glass eye. And two protégés living at his house, in the most unglamorous of circumstances.

Nevertheless, the grinding rhetoric kept coming.

'If I could show you how to be a better martial artist but you would need to train five days a week, would you do it?'
'I suppose so...'
'And if I could show you how to kick harder but you would need to undertake a series of painful exercises, would you do it?'
'Yeah, I guess...'
'And if I asked you to do uncomfortable things to harden your spirit, would you do it?'
'I dunno. Probably not...'

It was about to come to a head. Stav suddenly swung the car into a roadside layby. I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

'Hold on, if I said cutting off your hand would make you a better fighter, would you do it?'
'Absolutely not.'
'Even if I could prove that cutting off your hand would make you a better fighter?'
'No way.'

He looked at me in resigned exasperation. Maybe he did have the best intentions but we had come as far as we were going to. I didn't trust him. He was talking in metaphors. Metaphors that were far too ambiguous for me. I was no longer sure he even knew kung-fu.

I looked out of the window and suddenly realised we had pulled up beside one of my relatives too. Yes, they'd welcome an unexpected visit from their, what, nephew, cousin, whatever...

I got out and walked home.

And that was the end of the karate experiment. I switched to boxing for a short spell, then, the recent dalliance with jui-jitsu aside, knocked the combat sports on their head.

And as for Machida, the amazing UFC karate expert, he got battered silly for five rounds then somehow eked out a hometown decision. Perhaps he would've fared better if he'd lopped off a hand?

I've just signed up to David Lloyd, the uber-swish health club, and, you know, it feels like I belong... sniff...

But the deciding factor was the plush swimming pool.

It's curious how that came to be the big pull because I only really taught myself to swim during my recent sojourn to Cornwall. It was a long time coming and not helped by an early experience when an hirsute instructor decided to try a Trust Exercise with me on my first lesson and failed to catch me. As I foundered on the bottom of the pool, watching his feet back away, I avowed that that would be the last penny that man-beast extorted from my mother. I stopped thrashing and just laid there. If I could've, I would've sparked up a cigarette in resignation. I was five.

But it set me back. My confidence was shot and when I finally managed to develop a doggy-paddle that would get me across the 10m I needed for my first certificate, my peers were collecting their bronze, silver and gold certificates. The thought of going up to collect a certificate at the age of ten with a bunch of children half my age was too much to bear. I never did and I officially left primary school a non-swimmer.

In the years that followed, my exposure to the pool became even more infrequent until, eventually, the idea of ever mastering the art became an absurdity. I no longer needed to swim because I never intended to catch a boat that would sink.

That attitude unexpectedly changed a month ago. We hired a Cornish cottage for a week with its own pool and I suddenly realised I had a hitherto unquenched thirst for chlorine. I bought trunks and went mad. I spent longer in that pool that week than I typically do at work.

By the end, I still couldn't fucking swim properly.

However, I had re-ignited a flame. I had caught the bug and began pitching up to the local leisure centre with my newly acquired goggles whenever I had the opportunity. Unfortunately, my efforts were constantly inhibited by a programme that was dominated by schools and classes for just about anyone but me. The final straw was broken when I took my young son in to the Baby Pool and learnt it had been impromptly booked for a private party. Undeterred, I took him into the Main Pool where two grown chavs proceeded to have a big, scary fight.

But swimming was now in my blood. I just needed somewhere more civilised to practice.

When I learnt David Lloyd were running a promotion, I jumped at the chance. A huge state-of-the-art gym, multiple tennis courts, but, more than that, a beautiful, clean, uncrowded swimming pool.

Two weeks on, I'm still shit at swimming. My breast-stroke is about as progressive as treading water and I don't know how to breathe when I'm doing the front crawl. However, I've taken my weaknesses and turned them into strengths: I have a new discipline. I now do the front crawl underwater and try to travel as far as I can before my lungs give out and I float limply to the surface.

I'm almost there though. I've almost swum the full length of the pool and I'm going to keep going until I do. Those are my options now: glory or being fished out on a hook.




To glory.

I had a catch-up this morning with a candid, young gay colleague about our respective weekends and let's just say there was a marked difference between the two...

For instance, I couldn't be bothered going on three dates with three different men, two of whom I'd never even met before. And I couldn't find the time to have a dramatic bust-up with one of them either. And I completely forgot to put any cocks up my bum. No, instead, I stayed in and watched the X Factor...

It's funny how people equate shoe size with genital size. Because, actually, one of the two is always padded out with socks... You wouldn't accept that with the Other.

Westlife have now apparently tied with the Beatles for the most consecutive Numbers 1s. They actually surpass the Fab Four by having the most entries at Number 1.

Good for them! Really...

Yeah, I utterly, utterly loathe them.

And this is why. Their hits include Phil Collins' Against All Odds, Sarah McLachan's Angel, Michael Buble's Home, Abba's I Have A Dream, the Jackson 5's I'll Be There, Barry Manilow's Mandy, Cliff Richard's Miss You Nights, Diana Ross' When You Tell Me That You Love Me, Bette Midler's The Rose, Extreme's More Than Words, the Temptations' My Girl, Sara Evans' No Place That Far, Terry Jacks' Seasons In The Sun, Mr Big's To Be With You, Billy Joel's Uptown Girl and Daughtrey's What About Now...

No-talent fucks.

That said, my Other Half made the legitimate point that, traditionally, Irish artists do have a history of recording other artists material, and I guess no one's stopping me from setting up my own boyband and doing nothing but covers of Beatles, Elvis and Michael Jackson hits...

Apart from the fact I'm in my mid-Thirties, and look like I'm in my mid-Forties. I dunno though, you could have ten-year old girls with posters of a hairy old boyband, who look like they haven't slept in three days and smell of coffee and cigarettes?

State Of Play is a complex political thriller about murder and high corruption in the American corridors of power.

Directed by Kevin Macdonald, he of Last King Of Scotland fame (fame's probably overstating it...), it's a film that follows Russell Crowe, an investigative journalist, as he peels back the layers on the murder of a Congressman's young female aide. The Congressman, played by Ben Affleck, is an old friend and his attempts to bring an enormous private security firm to book turns the spotlight on the company's role in the woman's death. However, there's a little more to it than meets the eye and the investigation is muddied by the personal relationships at play.

It's a reasonably good thriller and Russell Crowe, who after American Gangster and The Insider, seems to be making a living out of playing the scruffy deadbeat that you underestimate at your peril, turns in another solid performance. However, Ben Affleck looks a little young to be playing... a good actor... There's something slightly off with the Affleck role. I think it's him.

It's also quite a long film and I understand it was based on a six-part television series. Unfortunately, it labours and I found myself checking my watch on numerous occasions and being constantly surprised at how little time had actually passed. It's a long film that feels twice as long again.

In fact, State Of Play is one of those films that you'd watch if you were given 24 hours to live. Just because it would feel like you were getting good value for your time... -ha, in your face Death, that felt like a fucking eternity.

State Of Play: 5/10.

Drag Me To Hell is a vibrant Sam Raimi horror that bears all the hallmarks of the auteur behind the Evil Dead, Darkman and Spider-man films.

With a contemporary setting, it's a film that follows Christine Brown, a mild-mannered bank clerk, who, in an effort to impress her hardline boss, turns down a request for a loan extension from an ailing gypsy woman. However, miffed at the refusal, the gypsy goes on the attack and throws a curse on Brown that'll see the lowly clerk dragged to hell within three days unless she's able to reverse the imprecation.

Luckily, Brown, played by a likeable Alison Lohman, isn't long in finding her Inner Kick-Ass Heroine and sets about her task with gusto, dragging fiance Justin Long and medium Dileep Rao along in her wake.

It's a really good film that, with its bright, colourful hues, carries a comic-book sensibility that lends well to the material. It treads a fine line between scares and cheers, and is, to all intents and purposes, a Family Horror that's likely to appeal to those who aren't typically fans of the genre.

Unless you're planning on sitting down to watch it with a gypsy Human Rights campaigner? Cos that could be awkward... they're not all evil...

Drag Me To Hell: 8/10.

It's curious, in the past fortnight I've watched District 9, Drag Me To Hell, Michael Clayton, State Of Play and the superlative In The Loop, yet here I am, writing a review for an obscure car chase movie from the Seventies that no one's heard of.

Vanishing Point is a movie about a man and his car. Except the man's ex-rally driver, Kowalski, the car's a Dodge Challenger, and there's about a thousand police on his tail as he tries to drive from Denver to San Francisco in record time to win a two-bit bet. A moody Barry Newman stars and his journey takes in typically contemporary references of the day. An old dude who collects rattlesnakes, a blind, black DJ, a hippy on a chopper, and a naked chick on a motorcycle. A'right...

However, although it's very much of its time and was apparently a big hit on release, it hasn't aged well. It's just slightly silly, and the fact the car's the star goes against it when you realise its dialogue is restricted to broom, broom...

All in all, it's pretty interminable stuff and the denoument, when it finally comes, is the only climax I've ever known where I've been thinking about the shopping.

Still, my car-crazy toddler loves it. I appear to have inadvertently fathered James Dean.

Vanishing Point: 3/10.

I sponsored a child in the Third World at the weekend but, well, I'm still waiting for him to run a half-marathon in a chicken suit, so... I'm not giving him anything.

Awake is one of those films that comes and goes without anyone noticing. Released to no fanfare and then left to wither and die, before being quietly buried in the backyard. A mutant kitten. No one remembers it because no one's ever seen it. The only evidence of any involvement is the actual film. It's like a glorified CCTV tape.

But the odd thing is, Awake isn't altogether terrible.

I mean, it's not great. Let's get that out of the way. This isn't a surprise sleeper. Not by any stretch. But as far as filmic wallpaper goes, it's pretty watchable stuff.

Written and directed by rookie one-off Joby Harold and starring Jessica Alba and Hayden Christensen, this is a tale about a wealthy young man put under the knife for a heart transplant. However, as the operation commences, the anaesthetic fails to put him under and, conscious but unable to move, he learns that some members of the operating staff are plotting to kill him.

It sounds worse than it is. Only slightly, but still. And the bonus is, you can get on with other things while this plays in the background.

Awake: 5/10.

It has been announced that President Obama has just won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, less than a year into office.




How utterly ridiculous. When are we going to stop treating this guy like the Fonz? Fucking, panel full of Richie Cunninghams.

I'm not sure whether this is an urban myth but did you know that it's apparently impossible for a son to be shorter than his mother? Apart from when he's, like, six... that's acceptable.

But you'd almost expect that principle, even from a mathematical perspective, to see a population's average height shooting through the roof. However, it doesn't have the same effect on women, so, it's all offset...

I'm not sure whether I believe this.

That said, I work with a freakishly tall woman and, boy, let me tell you, she ain't having no children, tall or otherwise. Poor thing's way too big. Built like a big man. Bless her. A big, strong man. Strapping. Powerful.

Does anyone else get an inexplicable buzz from ignoring Limos?

I booked my first dental appointment in five years earlier after waking up with not one but two toothaches.

Five years, man. I hope she can find the teeth under the dust.

But I think the length of time that has elapsed between visits is largely attributable to my last experience.

I was booked in for an extraction and a clean and I was pretty tense tense about the former. However, I needn't have been because the tooth was whipped out with the minimum of fuss and no small degree of efficiency.

Somewhat relieved, I moved from the hard world of needles and drills into the softer world of fuzzy brushes and smiles.

The hygienist was a pleasant-looking woman of middle years, not unattractive, with a sunny disposition. I immediately felt at ease and, with the edginess of the previous session dissipating away, I settled down into the chair and began making happy small talk. She set to work and, as the brushes tickled my gums, I reached up in content satisfaction and grasped the back of the headrest. The hygienist smiled down on me and I, with a mouthful of benign instruments, smiled up at her. All was well.

At least it was until, some fifteen minutes later, I lazily pulled my hands from the headrest and felt it collapse away beneath me. It only took me a nanosecond to realise I hadn't been holding the headrest at all. I had been holding her thighs.

I had to lie there for another five minutes, flushed bright red with a harsh, inescapable light in my face, as she finished off. I've never missed a drill and a pair of pliers so much in my life. Who knew all that poise and decorum had been condensed into that one wisdom tooth?

Did anyone see that photo during the week of the estranged wife of a tycoon as she seeks to contest his claim that he is now actually £27m in debt? Trying to turn on the puppy eyes in the newspapers? So she can pick up a hefty settlement and continue living in her £10k a month Regency house?

Ha, someone needs to tell her puppy eyes only work when they're on a puppy. Not an old dog.