Fisherman's Friends vs Bait

Fisherman's Friends (Chris Foggin, 2019)
Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019)
Also: Tin (Bill Scott, 2015)

You wait years for a film about bloody Londoners ruining Cornish fishing villages then two come along within months of each other. Fisherman's Friends and Bait are two sides of the same coin, portraying the effect of tourism and second home owners in Cornwall, one of the poorest parts of Europe, in very different ways.

Fisherman's Friends is partly based on the real life sea shanty group of the same name, based in Port Issac, a fishing village in North Cornwall. Pretty sentimental, it follows the familiar trope of British films of its ilk, from The Full Monty to Brassed Off without those films' originality, humour or warmth. Nevertheless, it has its moments, as it follows cocky London A&R music scout Danny (Daniel Mays), to Cornwall with some colleagues (one of who is the smarmy Henry – all the Londoner's are smarmy – played by Christian Brassington, no stranger to Cornwall, having played the hypocritical and hideous Reverend Osborne 'Ossie' Whitworth in Poldark. Brassington has also played similar roles in his depictions of both Boris Johnson and Tony Blair) for a stag do. They stumble across a performance by the Fisherman's Friends, a group of male fishermen/coastguards who, in between catching fish and saving stupid tourists' lives, sing sea shanties on the sea shore. As a wind up, Danny's boss tells him he has to sign the boy band – and drive off, leaving him high and dry.

At first, Danny is just staying on in the hope of shagging a fisherman's daughter, in the form of Alwyn (Tuppence Middleton), before he succumbs to the authenticity of the Fisherman's Friends and the charms of the fishing village. Anyway, despite the wind up, Danny signs the band and gets the record contract. And the girl. Oh, and buys the local pub.

Despite occasional digs at Londoner's and second home owners, and as you might be surmising by now, a film supposedly about a sea shanty band and Cornwall is actually more about Danny, a London 'tosser' (Alwyn's daughter's words), and his journey to finding fulfilment (that's because the Cornish have already found theirs, quipped H).

This fact was mentioned, actually, when we heard director Mark Jenkin give a talk after a screening of his film Bait, called "one of the defining British films of the decade" by the Guardian. Stylistically, it is world's apart from Fisherman's Friends (filmed with all the imagination of a BBC drama), shot as it was on 16mm black and white film on a Bolex camera (which I used at film school in the 1990s, already obsolete then – it's a loud, hand-cranked camera and can only shoot a few minutes of film at a time, but it is durable – on one film shoot the camera fell in a river; when we pulled it out it was absolutely fine). Jenkin's decision to film this way, as well as to hand develop the film and record all the dialogue post-production certainly helps give the film its unique look (and goes some way to explaining the lavish praise heaped upon it from the likes of the BFI – well, they funded it – and the Guardian).

The slight plot revolves around fisherman Martin Ward (Edward Rowe, a.k.a. the Kernow King and general Cornish Renaissance Man), eking out a living as a fisherman and struggling to save money for a fishing boat, whilst his brother makes money hiring out their late father's fishing boat to tourists wanting to party. To add insult to injury, they've sold the family's harbourside house to poncy Londoner's who use it as a second home. The seeds are sown for seething resentment, and the film is an intense experience, with its high contrast black and white expressionist cinematography, extreme close-ups and contemptuous glances between the social classes.

The film isn't perfect – characters are slightly cardboard cut-out and it's a little simplistic – but there's no denying it's a stunningly original work, and a breath of fresh air compared to the usual Cornish fare of Poldark and Doc Martin.

Fisherman''s Friends and Bait make an obvious double bill but how about Bait and The Lighthouse, with Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe playing 19th century lighthouse keepers in Robert Egger's black and white psychological horror, released in the UK next month.

---------------

The film Tin also deserves a mention. Released in 2015, it was filmed in as equally perverse original manner as Bait, maybe even more so. Like Bait, we also went to a screening of the film (in a church in Redruth) accompanied by a talk by the film's director, Bill Scott. The micro-budget film, shot for £100,000, is set in West Cornwall in Victorian times, at the end of the mining boom.

The film was originally a play performed by Miracle Theatre (based on a novel about bank swindling in Cornwall), and filming was shot entirely using green screen in the evenings after the play's performance over several years, with the backgrounds added later, giving the film a odd and distinctive feel. The film features Jenny Agutter, who ironically (considering the other two films) owns houses in London and Cornwall.

Previously on Barnflakes
Top 30 of the year
Encrusted
Random film review: Straw Dogs
The lost art of the double bill
Double bill me

The cult of personality vs saving the planet

Historically, the cult of personality tag was reserved for more obvious tyrants like Mao, Stalin and Hitler but the term applies today more than ever. We are surrounded by personalities in the media, both social and traditional. From Kayne West and Kim Kardashian to Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg (Time magazine's Person of the Year – with Trump Jr. Tweeting that the honour should have gone to the Hong Kong protesters; my immediate thought wasn't that dissimilar – it should have gone to the hundreds of environmentalists who are killed every year – I guess what I'm – maybe even we, as in me and Trump Jr. are getting at is that it's the anonymous people who make the difference, who are actually out there doing good, fighting, putting their lives at risk – it's not the leaders or the social media darlings), we have to endure daily these people's opinions and actions. I couldn't give a damn about any of them.

You may think Thunberg's name sticks out on the above list of morons like a sore thumb, and anyone who Jeremy Clarkson hates, I automatically love, but putting so much faith in a person is dangerous. If she died tomorrow, then what? We worship at her alter and say oh well, she would have saved the planet. There are books about her and by her – the whole of my local Waterstone's window is filled with books of her – her name, but not, you know, how to actually save the planet – believe it or not, the books are there to sell books. If you look around a shitty bookshop like Waterstone's you will see innumerable non-fiction books about nature, more than ever, perhaps, as we continue to destroy it (hedgehogs are about to become extinct – but hey, let's write a book about them, and do some cool illustrations of them to sell limited edition prints and t-shirts and mugs!). There's been non-stop discussions with nothing happening for the 50-plus years we've been aware of climate change (global warming, as it was called back then). Putting our faith in any political leader, pop star, anyone at all really, is not going to change anything. Look what happened with the once-lionised Aung San Suu Kyi and how the media turned against her.

Greta Thunberg is a brand, like Naomi Klein used to be (to a lesser extent), with, ironically, No Logo (25 years old this year – and a book which makes no sense at all to today's youth where brands are king, and even imagining a world without brands to the youth with their Apples, Vans shoes and branded coffee is not possible), The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (published 2014, before climate change became cool) covering, respectively, the power of brands; neoliberalism and the rise of disaster capitalism; and, again, the rise of neoliberalism in relation to its flagrant disregard for the environment.

Shock! Horror! These youth with their Apple Vans are protesting for climate change because it's cool and they get a day off school. They don't understand the effects of climate change, as their parents drive them to the protests in their 4x4s and they wear and use products that either exploit or destroy the planet, probably both. Neither parents nor their kids can envisage a life where they have to give up their brands, their jobs, their holidays, theirs cars, their lattes and their whole way of life in order to save the planet – but a peaceful protest once a month eases their consciences (but won't make a blind bit of difference). The parents vote Tory and applaud neoliberal values that have blessed them with a 4x4, a Victorian terraced house, a widescreen TV.

I don't think anyone actually wants to see the planet die, but ask these youth what they're actually doing apart from protesting, and they will tell you 'erm, nothing'. Even I, I who does so little, was planting trees the other weekend. I still argue we need to do less – i.e. nothing – for nature to make a comeback (it's at its best when left alone to do its own thing). Many writers on nature agree with me (sort of), believe it or not. In her 'landmark ecological book of the decade', Wilding, Isabella Tree argues that even conservation in Britain has done more damage than good to nature, citing hundreds of examples, including wrapping plastic guards around saplings to help them grow (actually it strangles them; believe it or not trees grew fine on their own for four billion years or so before us, and natural, thorny scrub did a great job of protecting saplings from rabbits and foxes – before we destroyed it all).

The problem with humans is they all want to do something, good or bad (when it comes to nature – usually bad). Good people with good intentions feel the need to do something around climate change –  be it protesting or planting trees. All political parties are big on planting trees this election – who can plant the most? To me, it's still not the core of the problem – which is to change our lives and our relationship to nature. You can't actively pretend to save the planet whilst endorsing capitalism (i.e. having a job), driving your car, taking your holidays and then plant a few trees like it makes everything hunky dorey (besides, at least a quarter of those saplings are going to die before they reach maturity; those that survive, well, it takes decades to create a mature forest; meanwhile, vast tracts of land have been destroyed for housing or retail parks or car parks or roads or runways).

Presumably, we're still culling badgers, buying and binning plastic bottles, wasting food, building houses, car showrooms and retail parks, chopping down trees, using insecticides, making babies, buying wide screen TVs and everything else, eating avocados, going on holiday, driving cars, eating meat – and a million other things each contributing bit by bit to the destruction of earth. Well done you all!

So, Boris Johnson, who the Guardian say is "The man who doesn't give a fuck about anything is free to do whatever the fuck he wants", "the worst of men", "unfit in every way for any kind of office" and a "liar, racist, sociopathic, narcissistic, glutton for power" (and that's them being objective about him), wins the general election by a large majority. On Friday the 13th (not April Fool's Day).

Despite climate change being front page news every day for months now, the Green Party still don't get a look in. I pretty much despair. Labour had actually put out a great manifesto (to misquote Jerry Mcguire and its "you had me at hello" line – Jeremy, you had me at a four-day working week and free broadband), full of optimism and taxes for the rich and the energy firms, 1,000 Sure Start centres to open (I remember Gordon Brown opening them; I used to take my daughter to them regularly – then Cameron shut them all down), with a strong commitment to tackling climate change by moving towards green energy. Labour actually topped Friends of the Earth's climate and nature league table – scoring 33 out of a possible 45. The Conservative Party scored 5.5 out of 45, with environmental commitments "entirely absent or just plain bad".

The whole divisive election process is of course a popularity contest. The leadership debate took place in what looked like the set of the 1980s children's TV game show, Blockbusters, and indeed the whole affair has the immature atmosphere of school kids arguing in the playground. Leaders are compared and rated in terms like 'stronger', 'confident', 'likeable', 'trustworthy', and 'performance'. Some leaders lie and put on an act. Then a whole nation believes them. I'd like to see politics without leaders, where manifesto and policy comes first and personalities don't get in the way.

So the blame game starts – mostly falling at Corbyn's door, of course. A decent man who presents a fantastic manifesto with a strong green agenda – but perhaps he was never going to be forgiven, say, for not singing the national anthem in 2015. Because the Queen and the Conservatives have done so much for the country. It's probably a small amount of people who actually read all the party manifestos. We all knew who we were going to vote for well in advance, and it had little to do with specific policies and a lot to do with the personalities of the leaders.

Social media adds to the mix with fake news and getting so wrapped up in the small stuff – Diane Abbott's two left shoes going viral on social media or Twitter being besotted with Trump's latest obsession with, say, water efficiency or his attacking a 16-year-old girl. Thankfully Thunberg is more mature than the U.S. President.

If I was the Guardian, Friends of the Earth, Extinction Rebellion or Greenpeace (in other words, anyone trying to make the world a better place) I would probably just shut shop now. What's the point? You've got Johnson and Trump vs. a teenage autistic girl.

Previously on Barnflakes
Boycotting buffoons
The world's top ten environmental problems (and how to solve them)

Notes on dog poop bags

Don't blame us

Aspire to be average
In 100 years everyone in the world will be dead
Busy bein' busy
Blight of the plastic bag
Water as it Oughta

Womb vs world

Life is full of the internal and external battle. It starts in the womb – we don't want to leave and come out screaming, against our will. The womb vs world battle is the one we probably never grow out of, so to speak, and every subsequent battle is just a replay of that first massive jolt from inner to outer. We spend nine months in the comfort of the womb, with no idea of what's ahead in the outside world.

Once into adulthood, most of our battles are firmly in place. Getting out of bed in the morning is the first of the day; the morning alarm disrupts the womb-like feel of the warm bed and we go from that dark warmth, comfort and absolute bliss into the cold, blaring light of day. Going from home to work is the next battle – the comfort and sanctity of the home is in marked contrast to the sterile, impersonal environment of the office. Even having to wear clothes is a kind of battle for me – the freedom of nudity and the cost, hassle and uncomfortable, constricting feeling of clothes.

People's move from country to city is another kind of womb vs world battle: now, for the first time in history, more people live in urban areas than rural (54%). Country is nature, spirituality and freedom; it's our natural habitat. The city is crime-ridden, over-populated, cramped and dirty – it hardly feels like a natural environment for humans. Obviously there are many reasons for the move towards urban areas – jobs being one of the main ones, but the move from country to city is such a seismic shift of the hundred years.

If given the choice, I wonder how many of us would choose to ever leave the womb. We should be given the option as we're about to exit the womb to either stay or go.

Kim vs Kim

There's a new Kim in town (Istanbul in this case – Carrie Mathison: be afraid). At first Kim (Mills) appears to be another clueless Kim Bauer (lying by the pool; more interested in her iPhone and iPad than one of the world's most fascinating cities; wearing skimpy outfits in a Muslim country) but suddenly she ups her game and starts chucking grenades, driving like a nutter through Istanbul's cobbled streets and rocking up in the American Embassy by crashing through the barrier in a stolen taxi. Yup, turns out Kim Mills is even more dangerous than Kim Bauer.

Taken 2 features Liam Neeson reprising his role in Taken as ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills. His daughter, Kim, and ex-wife, Leonora, join him in Istanbul for a short break after Leonora realises her new husband has left her, and possibly wants to get back with Bryan. Leonora, it turns out, is the new Kim Bauer – she gets lost, kidnapped and collapses for most of the film from a minor scratch on her neck. But Kim rises to the occasion, evades capture, hands dad a gun, destroys half of Istanbul and manages to laugh it off with mum and dad when it's all over.

Kim vs Kim? No, let's have a new spin-off series Mills & Bauer, the deadly daughters of destructive dads.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Kim Bauer vs Dana Brody

Chips vs French Fries

Things prefaced with the word 'French' often sound far more sophisticated (even if they're actually not): French Toast (ie eggy bread), French Kissing (ie tongues), French Letters (ie condoms) and French Fries (ie the American name for chips. Confusingly, Kiwis and Aussies call chips crisps and chips hot chips. Kiwis call Kiwi fruit Chinese gooseberries but the rest of the world call them Kiwi fruit. Jerusalem artichokes are neither from Jerusalem nor artichokes).

The traditional British chippy is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. On a recent trip to Brighton it took us over half an hour to find one. Though I have no aversion to French fries, the skinny little things can't hold a stick up to our traditional thickly cut chips, drenched in salt and vinegar (ketchup optional; unlike with French fries where it's de rigueur) and eaten in the lashing rain and wind.

French fries are doing a similar thing to what coffee has done to the UK's taste buds: making us believe we enjoy something we don't. Tea is obviously nicer than coffee; chips are obviously better than French fries. But both tea and chips occupy the old-fashioned past of British culture we want to forget; they belong to the old generation. The old-fashioned tea room can't compete with the modern, upbeat coffee shop; the old-fashioned chippy, full of old and/or poor people, looks obsolete compared to fast food joints. Coffee and French fries have that American, on-the-go lifestyle feel to them. Due to the lower surface-to-volume ratio, chips have less fat than French fries.

Baths vs showers

The idea of total immersion in a bath is an attractive proposition during these cold days, so I've taken to having the odd one. It feels like such an indulgence, I love it. I remember the days, years ago now, when my bathing ritual (and it is a ritual) used to involve lots of bubble bath, lighting numerous candles, having a book and music playing, a G&T and cigarettes on the side of the bath. This proved annoying for housemates when I had four of them and only one bathroom; I liked to spend over an hour in the tub.

But the bath has fallen from favour and been replaced in popularity by the shower. Who has time for such an indulgence as a bath nowadays? The shower is symptomatic of modern life: quick, practical and efficient (it uses less water than a bath). The bath is a quaint anachronism, something to take ones time over, to lie down, reflect, indulge, a retreat from the outside world. Yet it has powerful ritual and religious significance; babies in the womb are surrounded by liquid; once born, babies and children are always bathed not showered. In Christianity, the baptism is a rite of admission.

The bath vs shower debate (which is non existent, I realise) reminds me of the coffee vs tea debate. Coffee, like the shower, appeals to people on the go, whereas tea has a more ritualistic, quaint, old-fashioned aura to it (like a bath). However, as no doubt I've mentioned before, coffee actually takes longer to make than tea, and the huge cup sizes in the like of Starbucks take about an hour to finish (and tend to give me an upset stomach). In sexual terms, the shower is the equivalent of a quick screw; the bath is like long, sensual love-making. Remember the Flake bath advert from the early 1990s (pic above)?

The public bath, most popular during ancient Greek and Roman times as well as during the Ottoman Empire, was the inspiration for the Islamic hammams, which translates as 'spreader of warmth'. The bath took on religious significance, with cleanliness being next to godliness (a phrase not actually found in the Bible). But also the hammam was – and still is – a place to socialise. Men and women have separate hammams, naturally, and especially for women in strict Islamic countries, perhaps, it remains one of the few places for them to gossip without men around. So important was this for women that a husband not allowing his wife to visit a hammam was grounds for divorce.

But over time the public bath became a private, individual bath. In recent times, this has been a common general trend in society, mainly due to technology. Once communal events such as music, performance and film have become individual, even anti-social (even, or despite, the rise of social media), and we immerse ourselves in our inner world with our laptops, smartphones, iPods and iPads, where we listen to music, watch film and TV, read books and newspapers, and supposedly communicate, somehow thinking we are being more social and more informed by glaring and typing into a small, electronic device.

Cigarettes vs. smartphones

A recent eye blog post by Camilla Grey about never being alone (or bored) with either a cigarette or a smartphone struck a chord with me, perhaps because I acquired an iPhone quite soon after I quit smoking (over a year ago now, apart from *cough* a cheeky one last week). It was handy to have something to replace the cigarette and initially fascinating to get apps, use them once, then forget all about them.

As a smoker I was rarely bored or alone if I was smoking. Smoking was a great time to reflect or relax, but also, if smoking in a public place (which more recently meant standing outside a pub or restaurant), a conversation with a fellow smoker would usually be struck. As I've mentioned in a previous post, the most interesting people at any gathering were always outside, smoking.

There are still a lot of smokers around but it's lost its cool factor. The cigarette I smoked last week was actually shared with a Spanish woman who referred to herself as a 'social smoker'. I thought that term had vanished and was now a contradiction in terms. Even a couple of years ago I was referring to myself as an anti-social smoker.

As the eye post mentions, people locked into their smartphones actually look unapproachable and anti-social rather than cool and popular, even if they are doing something perceived as social such as checking Facebook updates. But by constantly checking their phones they're not really connecting with their immediate physical world. This may mean they're missing something interesting (such as seeing a man with two blue parrots on his shoulders, perhaps) but mainly it's just seeing the world go by and people watching. Indeed, the more I see people glued to their phones and tablets, the more I see them as devices to block out the world, not interact with it more.

When I first got my iPhone a friend said to me, 'You'll never be bored again!' Which made me cringe. I like being bored; I've virtually made a career out of it. There used to be a time when I liked nothing better than to stare into space (smoking, naturally). Nowadays people can't be bored for a second. If they are, they'll just switch app. But being bored is good for the soul and the imagination.

I admit that smoking and smartphones is a somewhat tenuous link, but who knows, like with smoking, maybe in twenty years time we'll find that all these phones and tablets also cause cancer.

Camilla Grey's eye blog: You're never alone… with a smartphone

The title for this post is a twist on George Orwell's essay Books vs. Cigarettes.

Sex and the City 2 Vs. Greenberg

Or: The Female Population Vs. The Film Critics. Sex and the City 2, released recently in the UK, has had the most atrocious reviews of any film in recent memory. Crass, embarrassing, tacky, ugly, racist, depressing – critics have really got their teeth into it (with Metacritic, which collates an average score from numerous magazines and newspaper reviews, rating it a 27 (out of 100) – one more than Garfield), and it hasn't mattered at all. Nothing, not even the Apocalypse, would have stopped Women Of A Certain Age flocking in their droves to see SATC2. I was at a cinema the other night (waiting to see Greenberg) and watched an endless parade of women in their 30s, dressed up as if going out in Manhattan (and not suburban Wimbledon), clutching strawberry daiquiris (yes, you can take alcohol into this cinema) ordered from the Sex and the City cocktail menu, go charging in to watch Carrie et al. SATC has become crass branding (even the acronym looks like an STD).

Coversely, Greenberg, the new mumblecore film from Noah Baumbach starring Ben Stiller, has had largely great reviews (76 on Metacritic). It's a sort-of comedy (maybe even a romcom), but with Stiller as an unlikeable, introvert, neurotic and possibly sightly crazy forty-something loser*. The humour is more Woody Allen than Greg Focker (or Carrie Bradshaw). In the States, popcorn-munching audiences started going to see it, and then promptly walked out mid-way. Then demanded a refund. It wasn't a usual Ben Stiller film. It wasn't funny. It wasn't gross-out. It was too depressing (delete as applicable). Audiences obviously hadn't done their homework and seen it was directed by Noah Baumbach, who made The Squid and the Whale, which although also funny, was somewhat neurotic, and dare I say it, intellectual, arty and indie.

So do professional critics, in this age of blogs and Amazon reviewers, have any sway any more? It would seem not. Now everyone's a critic, and everyone knows what they like (whether they like it or not), and whether it's good or not, doesn't matter at all. Just as long as it's fun.

(*There's a trend of lightweight actors attempting to expand their range and be taken seriously by taking 'daring' roles in films made by decent directors. The eternally over-rated Adam Sandler went arty in Punch-Drunk Love, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (audiences stayed away, though it may be the only half decent film he'll ever be in). Tom Cruise acted in Magnolia, also directed by Anderson, where Cruise shouted just as loud as he has in every film he's been in. Jim Carey gave an understated performance (for him) and possible career-best in The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir.

It's actually quite refreshing to hear Jake Gyllenhaal, star of indie cult hit Donnie Darko, express his wish to act in more lightweight films such as Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time. "I think it was about time I stopped taking myself so seriously", he says.)

Music Vs. Film and CDs Vs. DVDs

Take a cross-section sample of society and ask them what their tastes in films and music are. Chances are they will all have seen similar (ie Hollywood) films, either at the cinema, on DVD or TV. But take these same people and ask them about their music tastes and a more personal taste will emerge. For musical taste seems so much more idiosyncratic than film taste. Film has about five main genres (comedy, romance, horror, action, thriller); music has hundreds. Films mainly follow a well-trodden formula in terms of narrative and technique which has changed very little since the days of DW Griffith, who sort of established the language we know today of long shot, medium shot, close-up. Music can be anything – and has a history lasting thousands of years. It's almost hard to think of Miles Davis and Britney Spears and Mozart and Basement Jaxx all being called music, but there's not a huge leap from films made today to those made a hundred years ago.

So it's surprising to me that CDs are being phased out (and yes, I realise it's because people are downloading it rather than going off music but it's now just as easy to download films yet DVD sales are still rising). UK Music shops such as HMV and Fopp now have about 50% DVDs and 30% music (and at least 20% 'other': games and books). But there's a few things I don't get. Firstly, your average film needs only to be watched once (unless you have more free time than me), so owning them seems a waste of time, money and valuable shelf space, whereas CDs are played on average at least six times. Second, plastic DVD cases are ugly things (though I'm quite partial to a nicely put together boxed-set). I know vinyl enthusiasts think CD jewel cases are ugly too but at least they can have cool booklets with artwork and lyrics. DVD cases just seem so generic and cheap. The days of pouring over lyrics and artwork of a newly-bought LP are no doubt over, but there's still some pleasure to be had from a coolly-designed CD booklet.

Independent experimental music labels such as Ghostbox, Entr'acte, Dekorder, Tomlab, Delaware, Squint Fuck Press and Constellation are still producing challenging and beautiful artwork for CDs. Even mainstream labels are making a bit of an effort with some releases by giving them deluxe fold-out packaging, extra tracks, bonus DVDs, etc. And digipaks seem an almost nice alternative to jewel cases.

DVD covers and booklets (if there is one) are usually Photoshop by numbers, simply shrinking the bland poster artwork to fit the box. Film posters themselves are so dull nowadays, simply consisting of film title, credits, pictures of the stars, quote from a tabloid. Nothing wrong with that, you say. Okay, fine, but album covers can have an iconic quality rarely seen on film posters; often it's not necessary to have the band on the cover, and the name of the band or title of the album may not even be on the front. DVD covers could never get away with this.

I guess what it boils down to is music is essentially abstract and film is concrete. Even though the medium of film is only 100 years old, it hasn't changed since the early 1900s – and the prohibitive costs of making them means it remains in the hands of big business pandering to the lowest possible denominator (obviously cheap experimental films exist but are little watched; even with the 'democracy' of YouTube people watch either clips from X-Factor or 'amusing' home movie clips). Music is ethereal, constantly changing with new genres and techniques emerging – and a lot cheaper to make.

Banksy versus Bristol Museum

Banksy is now officially a British institution. From being chased by police for illegally spray-painting walls to having his paintings and prints sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds, a best-selling book published and his works hung in art galleries, Banksy must be laughing all the way to the bank(sy). He's now been given permission to run amok in his home town, Bristol, in its fine museum and art gallery.

His rise has been gradual and somewhat surprising, since we still know very little about him – not even his real name. Is he still wanted by the police or is it a marketing ploy now? Whether he even exists at all – like William Boyd's hoax Abstract Expressionist artist, Nat Tate, who some critics believed real when a monograph about him was published; even a party was held in his honour – is a moot point. The work is out there in the street and unavoidable, iconic and accessible to all. The public loves the underdog done good (but not too good).

Banksy's – attack is too much of a word; exhibition too little – new event, titled Banksy Vs Bristol Museum is a lot of fun, if nothing else. My three-year old daughter enjoyed it immensely – especially the caged chicken nuggets hatching out of egg shells. It appeals to the child in all of us – being able to poke fun at such a stiff, stuffy, elitist institution. Some of it is like a game – spot the Banksy – once you've seen the main Banksy rooms, there's the rest of the museum to explore and find a Banksy-defaced Old Master in between the boring real art. This is a partial shame – none of the other art in the museum gets a look in (unless it's been 'defaced' by Banksy). Having not been before – in fact, not heard of the place – it was great to see some of the other art – I will return when I'm not being swamped by teenagers taking photos with their phones of every Banksy in the building (one hundred, apparently). Old fart, me?

As much as I like Banksy, much of his work is didactic and gimmicky, poking fun at (now) obvious subjects such as big business, capitalism, fast food, the environment, fox hunting, zoos, CCTV, police, apathy, vandalism, art... every picture is a different target. Did I read he's like the Chapman brothers without the intellect, or did I just think of it? I think I probably read it somewhere but I do agree. His work is immediate, in your face – but is it art? Who cares – it's great fun. When was the last time you heard people laughing out loud in a museum or art gallery?

We got there early – having read we'd have to queue for an hour. We did queue for about an hour (well, I did; partner and daughter drank milkshakes in a nearby cafe), but on our way out there was no queue to be seen. Arrive late. No related merchandise in shop – Aarghh! The exhibition is free and runs until August 31st, 10am-5pm.

Blogs Vs. Diaries

When blogs first started appearing, people were worried about their loss of privacy. Couldn't anyone access a blog, and potentially read someone's innermost personal, private thoughts? Well, yes, but how, exactly? If they don't know the person or the URL, it's unlikely they'll come across their blog by chance – considering there are now some 70 million blogs in existence.

In the case of Barnflakes, where I can't even get friends and family to read it, THERE IS MORE CHANCE OF SOMEONE BREAKING INTO MY HOUSE, FINDING AND READING MY DIARY THAN THERE IS OF SOMEONE STUMBLING ACROSS MY BARNFLAKES BLOG AND READING IT. There, I've said it.

If anyone is reading, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I'll see y'll in the new year.