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Month: December 2010

I Heart: Grosse Pointe Blank

'Always keep a gun handy'

 

  Since John Cusack made his name as the face of the 1980s teen rom-com, it is fitting that Grosse Point Blank is, at its heart, a high school movie. Martin Blank, (Cusack), is a hit man facing something of a midlife crisis; he has recurring dreams of his prom night sweetheart; he no longer derives satisfaction from his job; and he’s being pressured to join a union (yes, apparently professional killers have those), led by union chief Dan Aykroyd. When his final “job” is booked for the same weekend as his high school reunion, he decides to kill two birds with one stone, (pun intended), and re-evaluate his life. Needless to say chaos ensues, including, (but not limited to), death by fountain pen, convenience store shoot outs, long lost romantic reunions and god-awful poetry.
  What makes this film the perfect dark comedy is its ability to truly blend the two genres together. The script is infinitely quotable, (even more so than Withnail and I or Anchorman – and I stand by that), and manages to weave bouts of brutal violence with genuinely likeable, funny characters. All this and an impossibly hip ‘80s indie soundtrack to boot. So for all you fans out there, say it with me now; “I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?”.

Mark Pettit

I Hate: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

Mia Wasikowska as Alice

 

 The classic, quintessentially British story continues 13 years on, as Alice, 19, returns to find that her once magical Wonderland, (now war-torn Underworld), has fallen under the tyrannical rule of the Red Queen. Aided by a few fan favourites, Alice sets out on a quest; to find the Vorpal Sword, liberate her friends, and lead the White Queen’s army to victory against the Red Queen, her legion of cards and the fearsome Jabberwocky on the Frapjous Day. An avid Alice fan, I was deeply disappointed with Burton’s rendition. Though plentiful at first, references to Carroll’s original text are treated with reckless abandon. A fast-paced start sees the story flit from idea to idea, in a seemingly desperate bid to cram as much Wonderland as possible into Burton’s ‘Underworld’; never dwelling on one idea long enough to fully establish it and with no regard for the context in which it is shown. These sporadic glimpses will, no doubt, delight devoted fans, while serving as a confusing distraction to those unfamiliar with the text.
  Mia Wasikowska’s Alice is petulant, dim-witted and at times, more than slightly irritating; while Depp’s portrayal of the deliciously deranged Mercury-addled hatter, appears at first glance to be nothing more than a combination of Captain Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka.
  In typical Burton style, stripy socks, unnervingly twisted flash-backs, and Helena Bonham Carter are in abundance; (no one could mistake this for any other director), and Tim makes the almost unforgivable mistake of detailing the ending at the start of the film.

This film is ‘almost Alice’, and most certainly not ‘absolutely Alice’.

 

Beth Cook, Film Editor

Fees debate splits the coalition

Last week the Browne report, commissioned by the government, suggested that the cap of £3,290 on tuition fees should be lifted, and a free market of tuition fees should be introduced. Vince Cable, the business secretary, said he agreed with the “general thrust” of the suggestions to improve the financial health of Universities. However, opposition to increased tuition fees was central pledge in the Liberal Democrat’s election campaign, opening up the possibility of a backbench rebellion. As well as prizing open some clear divides, this issue is acting as an interesting insight into the inner workings of an unlikely coalition.

The Coalition Government is currently carrying out wide ranging spending cuts to tackle the budget deficit but there have been suggestions that Liberal Democrats MPs and supporters oppose the severity of the cuts. Recently, the Energy Security, Chris Huhne, said in a newspaper interview that the cuts could be altered “if economic conditions changed”, suggesting he opposed the nature of reduced spending. As a result he was rushed into a TV interview insisting that he “very much” backed the government’s programme.

Higher Education Funding is likely to cause even deeper divides in the government. The Liberal Democrats rely on a large student vote, which they cannot afford to alienate. Vince Cable said that he was still considering a cap of £7,000, but it was not clear weather this would be a ‘soft’ cap, where institutions can exceed the limit but are penalized by the treasury, or a full cap, but insisted that a free market for fees would be “unfair”. This issue could easily cause a large political standoff unlike any in recent British political history.

Coalition politics is a very alien concept to the British political system. Our system delivers all or nothing; if your party forms the government you can expect all the policies you supported to become law, however, if your party becomes the opposition then you have a grim five year experience where nothing you want passes. This is a very poor democratic process, the government needs to be pegged back, and compromises must be enforced over the course of any government’s life.

Britain is now in the unique position of having a relatively weak Coalition government with a strong democratic mandate. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians are representing a far larger proportion of the electorate than any government in recent memory. The last Labour government won 35.2% of the vote in 2005, compared to the combined 59.1% secured by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats this year.

The question for students is whether coalition government can forge a more moderate proposal for Higher Education Funding than the policy proposals of the Browne Review. There is still some way to go before a final decision is made. A coalition reform of Higher Education funding will be more favourable for students that any ideas proffered purely by the Conservative Party.

The Browne Review: Where Next for the Student Movement?

The recent publication of the Browne Review will not only have lasting consequences for higher education funding and the wider university landscape, but will have massive repercussions for the student movement.

The review itself was headed up Lord Browne, the former Chief Executive at BP whose cost saving cuts and subsequent health and safety corner-cutting there had him accused by some pundits as “the man most responsible for the BP oil spill”. It should come as no surprise to us that his review, which was instigated by the Labour Party, would follow his trend of maximising savings by slashing expenditure. The question remains, will his proposals be as devastating to the student movement as the oil spill was to the Gulf of Mexico?

Within a context of a 25% reduction in education funding, the clear winners in the proposals will be the elite universities who will be able to claw back their funding from the pockets of students paying increased fees. Other winners include part-time students who will finally be allowed to access some reliable form of education funding. The losers in the proposals are the less prestigious universities who can’t afford to put off students with a hike in fees and arts and humanities departments who are likely to be decimated by the proposals. Needless to say, students lose out on these proposals by paying more, but working class and some minority students will be worst affected by grants and scholarships not keeping pace with the increase in fees and living costs and being able to rely on the parental handouts.

Whether Lord Browne’s proposals get the nod through Parliament largely depends on the whim of whoever is holding the party whip; but it is clear that the student movement needs to look beyond traditional party politics for it solution. The Liberal Democrats, once the darling of liberal students, are set to betray the movement by voting for an increase in tuition fees on top of their support for a 25% education budget cut. Whilst the Libdems might make a show of a small back-bench rebellion on the issue; it is proof, as if proof were needed, that the Libdems were never the “progressive” party they claimed to be.

With the Labour Party’s ranks swelling with Libdem defectors it seems likely that students will increasingly turn to Labour in search of a saviour. But, as the inventors of the Browne Review, can they really be trusted? It seems that a slash and burn approach to education funding would also be on their agenda if they had managed to make it into power again, and whilst they can (and no doubt will) criticise the ConDems from the relative safety of the opposition benches, they do not represent a viable, progressive alternative for us.

So, where next? With the National Union of Students flagship graduate tax seeming more and more like re-branded tuition fees, the rank and file of the student movement will have to look elsewhere for support in the fight for fair and genuinely free education. How we respond to the current attacks on our education will be key, and its clear from looking at our movements’ history we never got anything without fighting for it.

Is the Big Society just a Big Con?

In times of political uncertainty great politicians have been able to ease the concerns of their subjects by indulging in a little bit of harmless populist nationalism. For Conservatives the chance to use a little Winston Churchill-style rhetoric is always too tantalising to pass up, yet as we saw in David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, the use of populist nationalism can backfire.

When introducing his concept of a Big Society to a bored and sceptical looking party faithful, the Conservative Party leader called for political power to be taken away from government and put into the hands of the British people. “Your Country Needs You!” was Cameron’s mantra; and moments after he’d uttered these words, across the country hundreds of nerdy amateur political commentators, like myself, were busy on Photoshop trying to convincingly transfer David Cameron’s face onto the famous Lord Kitchener poster.

These stirring words were meant to inspire the Conservative Party into some kind of spirit of national togetherness yet, as many have pointed out, his use of the World War One propaganda catchphrase seems somewhat unfortunate. After all, a man who has become so associated with policies that are widely seen as being unnecessary and destructive should probably not look to evoke the slogan of a government which spent it’s time in power embarking on a policy of unnecessary destruction; no matter how stirring he thinks their slogan may be.

So first of all, what is the Big Society? Well that is a difficult question. Despite his rhetoric about ‘small government’ and ‘people power’, David Cameron hasn’t spent very much time detailing what his Big Society idea actually involves and this lack of detail has left the idea open to heavy criticism from the left. The new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has savaged the idea saying, “People in the voluntary sector know that, for all the talk of a big society, what is actually on the way is cuts and the abandonment of community projects across Britain.” This view echoes those of many who believe that the Big Society is just a cover for the draconian spending cuts about to come. But is the Big Society really just a Big Con?

At its most basic level, the Big Society promises to give communities more powers, to transfer power from central government to local groups and to foster new relationships between public services and their users. In practice this should mean enabling parents to take a more active role in the running of schools and allowing cooperatives to take over failing public services (i.e. local post offices, library’s etc). What’s more it promises to do all this while also saving money. How very grand.

Indeed the concept, in principle, should be lauded by everyone on the political spectrum, after all who would really stand up and say that they were against strengthening families and encouraging greater community involvement? Meanwhile, those on the left who deride Cameron’s idea of letting community run co-operatives take over failing public services would be well served to remember, as Dianne Abbot has pointed out, “mutual societies and co-operatives (were) the bedrocks of working class self organisation in the nineteenth century”. Yet perhaps the greatest criticism one can have of the Big Society is that its principles seem so palatable to so many.

If Tony Blair’s time in office taught the British electorate anything it taught us that policies that seem to promise the best of everything generally deliver nothing at all. Blair’s ‘Third Way’ principle which promised to combine strong, free-market driven, economic growth with social justice and a strong welfare state, ended up giving us an economic crisis, the largest prison population in western Europe and a partly privatised welfare system.

Ultimately only time will tell whether the Big Society will prove to be the big con that so many people think it will be. For now the best question to ask David Cameron and those in charge of formulating the government’s spending cuts programme is whether, ultimately you can strengthen communities and families through cuts to jobs and benefits.