Eating Brian Blessed Review

Less existential fable, more endurance test, this new film from Director Christopher Cribbins explores the gluttonous relationship between public and celebrity, art and society, and ketchup and Brian Blessed's left thigh muscle.

Filmed in 0.02nanometer lipstick vision on a budget of 2 halfpenny bits and a gallon of tupenny rice (alledgedly gobbled and gurgitated on set by the ovalscular Blessed), Eating Brian Blessed was inspired in part by a series of womb paintings by Japanese artist Hi Ho, which depict the foetuses of car crash victims as a mangled assemblage of limbs forming symbols in Jap typography pertaining to futility and doubt. Cribbins also cites an obsession with himself as a motivating factor behind his imaginative forniformation.

How do these influences translate to the big screen (or, as in three pivotal scenes in the film- the tablespoon)? Well, first it must be said that the peanut butter smeared perpetually over 40% of the camera's lens lends this piece a certain self-indulgent intro-digestinal ambience, alongside drawing a fanatically sourced performance from Blessed, who delivers his to-the-camera soliloquoys with a hunger not seen since his earliest work with the RSC, or his still earlier work with the McDonalds corporation.

And who could fail to think of womb-mess spelling 'FUCK IT' when faced with the haunting image of a 26 year old mentally subnormal supermodel, on his knees in his Berlin kitchen, scraping bits of Blessed off the tiling with his daughter/lover's detached shin bone?

What are we to make of the, as it were, final course, in which Herbert finally recants his lifelong Islamism (which he has inherited from his father Dieter in his idyllic Sussex childhood) upon catching sight of his own face in a bloody ice cream scoop? Perhaps Cribbins is saying- faith is glut, but cannot permanently succour our denial of self; that at the bottom of every spoonful of Christ is a gobstopper of vacuous selfhood that really shits up the crucifixtion.

This is quirky, deft and stars that man with the face like an animatronic alien from Scrubs. It is a work that constantly either asks questions or elicits questions from its audience. In this age of braindead corpo fests, which push easy answers and fried chicken meat upon us with every ultrapan or CGI depiction of Ghengis Khan succumbing to rheumatism, it is refreshing for a critic to see an audience leave a screening asking themselves and others, almost uniformly ''what in the fuck was that meant to be about?''

What indeed, dunce?

Originally Appeared In My Copy of This Sunday's Observer

FWD 18/01/08 Review

Couple No. 1- These two star crossed pieces were licking each others gums next to the bin at the back. It's conceivable that halfway through one of their slurpings the bloke detected a clod of dried cum lodged behind her right incisor, removed it expertly with his own tongue and then discreetly spat it into the bin while pretending to spot Zane Lowe behind her shoulder. That was nice of him. I wish I'd bought him a drink.

Couple No. 2- I was quite happy to hear a bit of variety in the music at FWD, and apparently now it's a barn dance. I remember the good old days, in the 1930s, when me and Wookie would jump into the horse and carriage and gallop down to the local dubstep dance, then would stand at the back next to the gramophone smoking endless joints and stinking of microwave chicken, occasionally putting our hands on our knees and then rapidly crossing our hands over each other while clapping our knees together in appreciation of the latest dubs: what happened to all that? I was keeping my end up by standing at the back smelling of three days wanking but there were some goons in there who smelled like a girl's bathroom dancing around like it was a fucking school disco and they'd had too much Lilt.

The one good thing these two were a good thing for was that sometimes he'd grab her arse just as a low end parp fart came out of the speaker behind me and I could imagine that I was at some sort of sordid Berlin orgy/party-where-models-pretend-to-like-minimal-techno-night and me and all the other miserable looking blokes in brown Carhartt/Addict coats were really into watching women being forced into farting in time with basslines. I saw in my mind's eye a final all-surpassing scene on the DVD in which Flat Eric punches Jena Jameson in the gut dozens of times so that she farts Flat Beat perfectly. Would I clap? Would I admit to my perversion just so I could show my friends this feat, or would I pretend that I was enjoying it on a purely ironic level, just like that incest porn I showed them the other week?

Conundrum of the week: Who was the bigger bug at FWD, The Bug- a man of average height, well above average talent and a large amount of notoriety, or The Bug up my arse whenever a pillhead guffawed into me with the sort of face which says both 'Ooooh! Bare, Bare!' and 'Punch me now before we're both old and you're long dead of lung cancer' at the same time, proving once and for all that actions speak with more subtlety than words?

Music: Wall to wall rubbish. Where was the funky house? It's a wonder all the girls there didn't cut their own ears off and leave us men to lie down in the blood and pleasure ourselves with a the mythical half-grip wobble toss.

Southern Comfort and Cokes: The Bible is mistranslated- only Guardian journalists, women and 15 year olds drink wine. If Jesus had turned his blood into Southern Comfort and Coke I don't think Richard Dawkins would be complaining about diddly shit.

Tunes of the Night

• Geiom- Reminiscing (Kode 9 RMX)

• DJ Abstract- Touch

• Horsepower- Gorgon Sound

• Burial- Unite

• Martyn- Everything About You/Broken Heart RMX
  

• Ikonika- Please

• Roy Davis Jr.- Gabrielle

+ almost everything kode 9 played and almost everything Martyn played including that Miss Dynamite tune I don't know the name of.

Bring Back

Hanging - because Simon Cowell's insults are becoming tired and I want to see if hanging Pop Idol contestants results in the judgeing process turning against the thin and boney, who are less likely to snap a rope in half with their gigantic body mass/big fat faces. We should eventually come out with a Pop Idol who weights 423lbs, has an inneradicable layer of shit carpeting their calf muscles, and has a fairly good idea of what it feels like to die publically on stage, covered in shit and being jeered at by a horde of peasants.

The Cane- because something will need to be used to incapicitate those children appearing on 'My Super Sweet 16' before Dog the Bounty Hunter drives up in his Hummer and very kindly shoots them in the forehead 15 times with his fingernails. If they are still able to run when Dog arrives on the scene, they may only be rendered disabled and/or disfigured for life, which as we know is no barrier for the wealthy in their pursuit of more and more air and leopard print ball gags. Just look at Paris Hilton, the only woman in the world rich enough to afford a wheel chair so minute it can fit underneath a single vaginal lip.

Princess Diana- so she can be fired from a cannon at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games into a gigantic glass replica of a Parisian Tunnel, which explodes upon her impacting it to reveal a gargantuan LCD screen displaying the steadily rocketing bank balance of Sir Elton John, who then comes out of the ground eating dozens of fifty pound notes from a sack with a dollar sign printed on the side of it.

Dragon Stout at DMZ- No, seriously.