THE INDIGO PLATEAU

The Official Top Ten List of Vaguely Biscuit Related Films

What better way to express my interest in both the arts AND biscuits, then to create a top 10 list of biscuit related films? Many many ways you may cry, but I just ignore you and plough inexorably onwards. So here it is, the definitive list of biscuit related films. Enjoy!

(Warning: It is highly unlikely I will have watched any of these films. Review and placement will largely be based on what I could find on wikipedia and my own imagination)

10. BLACK BISCUIT (2011)

Black Biscuit is an epic bildungsroman following a young boy known only  as Chet as he grows up surrounded by the lights and colours of London’s infamous soho district. Earning his money and reputation as a filmaker, he struggles to leave this world behind, but it keeps pulling him ever deeper into the murky world of male escorting. Filmed by children and hobos on mobile phones, edited by the blindfolded director and made on a budget of £500 Black Biscuit seemingly has very little to do with biscuits. And is utterly bonkers.

9. LATTER-DAY NIGHT BISCUIT (2005)

THIS MAN IS AN IMPOSTOR! Not only is Johnny Biscuit ,the stand-up comedian documented in this film, not an actual biscuit but as if to add insult to injury he doesn’t seem to be a comedian either. In a perfect world, ‘Latter-day Night Biscuit’ would be a documentary following modern society’s changing attituted towards late-night snacking with narration from Simon Callow. Evidently, this is not a perfect world. 

8. THE BISCUIT BROTHERS (2004)

An adaptation of the classic ‘Blood Brothers’ story set in Austin, Texas; Buford and Dusty Biscuit re-unite after years apart, drawn together by identical biscuit shaped birthmarks. Buford struggles to come to terms with his brothers comparitive success, wealth and good looks and resorts to a violent addiction to heroin and murder, lots of murder. Has songs everyone can sing along with. 

7. THE LAST BISCUIT (2006)

A dystopian science fiction film set in a futuristic Britain. In 2027, two decades of biscuit shortage have left society on the brink of collapse. Clive Owen plays a civil servant/super-spy who must help a preganant West African refugee (who holds the secret to the biscuit drought) through the chaos. Also stars Juliane Moore, Michael Caine and no one else. 

6. DANGER BISCUIT (1969)

This film tells the story of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from eating large amounts of biscuits in public whilst shouting for help in a race against time to climax, I mean finish the biscuits,  before being discovered.  Very controversial.

5. SHE’S A BISCUIT (2005)

Evelyn has set his best friend, Jessica, up with a perfect blind date; he’s handsome, well mannered and gentle. But now Jessica has to return the favour! With little time left Jessica, an experimental baking scientist, concocts the perfect woman in her lab; out of gingerbread! Needless to say, hilarity ensues. 

4. TAKING THE BISCUIT (2009)

Taking the Biscuit is the straight to DVD sequel to the disappointing ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’. Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is shocked to learn that he has developed diabetes due to having too many nespressos.  He decides the only way to combat this is too steal the world’s supply of sweet snacks, developing a plot so convoluted and non-scensical that you won’t understand what’s going on until the end. And even then it won’t make much sense.

3. THE ADVENTURES OF CHIPMAN AND BISCUIT BOY (2011)

Welcome to Eugostavia, a place where genetically modified food has come to life! It is here that feuding twin brothers, Chipman and Chipler, run rival costume emporiums. In order to prevent his brother from making fun of him and taking all his business, Chipman wants to hire an assistant who can warn him each time he inadvertently tucks his cape into his underpants! The only problem is, the sole applicant is the hapless Biscuit Boy….I didn’t even make this one up. 

2. THE BISCUIT EATER (1972)

In this touching adventure, a remake of the popular 1940 film, two Georgia boys ignore their racial differences to team up and befriend a feral bird dog, whom they train to participate in a fence-jumping contest. The boys then shoot the dog in the head when it fails to win twice in a row, and sell it to a local homeless man who eats it in a segment lasting half an hour of screen time. The dog was called Biscuit. Didn’t see that coming did you?!

AND OUR WINNER……

1. HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT

Yes, that’s right, the winner of my official top ten list of vaguely biscuit related films is the Merseyside rock band Half Man Half Biscuit. I’ve never listened to a note of their music, but apparenlty they have a song called, ‘Joy Division Oven Gloves’.  If you imagine what a film called ‘Half Man Half Biscuit’ would be like then it is clearly streets ahead of any of the dross collected here. And if it isn’t, well then it’s your imagination that’s letting you down there, not me.  

The Beauty Queen of Leenane - New Theatre, Nottingham

‘May you be half an hour in heaven afore the Devil knows your dead’ – scrawled on a tea towel hanging from the wall, this message could not seem more pertinent as the audience take their seats in the New Theatre to watch Martin McDonagh’s black comedy The Beauty Queen of Leenane.

 We are ushered into the claustrophobic conditions of Mag and Maureen Folan’s decrepit kitchen, complete with actual sink and oven. Seated in a thrust formation, this Irish tale of a bitter and twisted old crone and her long-suffering yet flawed daughter is an intense insight into the pressures and difficulty of living in a deeply rural community.  Maureen is desperate to escape her demanding mother Mag, a woman who delights in disposing of her nightly chamber pot in the kitchen sink, and is offered a ray of hope in the shape of Pato Dooley, a local suitor. His brother – Ray- acts as an unwilling conduit between the pair, and is easily manipulated by the jealous Mag who undermines and confuses Maureen’s plans; cementing her own fate in the shocking conclusion.  

The cast expertly command the razor sharp script, particularly Cressida McGill and Liz Stevens who play Mag and Maureen respectively. Their thick Irish brogues delivered at blistering speed makes the first five minutes of the performance almost incomprehensible. Insults, grim tales and discussions on the merits of Kimberly biscuits are mentioned within the same breath, emphasising the collision between the humorous and deeply unsettling which makes this play so affecting.   

Ellie Cawthorne as director truly brings the very essence of rural Ireland into the New Theatre, faithfully creating a snapshot of a life filled with fear, isolation and familial violence. Alex Hollingsworth and Ben Williamson give solid performances as the irresponsible male figures; Williamson in particular exuding the air of an arrogant schoolboy with better things to do. 

It is the women in this performance however who truly shine. McGill and Stevens both seem to completely inhabit their characters; Stevens with the aid of a top class ‘Croydon-facelift’ and a lolloping gait; and McGill with an impressive display of vocal and physical ticks. The pair are both in turn painfully frail and empowered.  Maureen and Mag arrive on the stage as an institution and, supported by the rest of the cast and the excellent set and lighting design, proceed to instantly envelop the audience into their created world.  

Forget Kony - we need to protect the children from One Direction

One Direction are the epitome of everything that is wrong within our society. Now let me explain why.  

Firstly, let’s look at that number one single, ‘What Makes You Beautiful’. One of my ‘Fresher’s Week Songs’ that dominated The Best Week Of My Life™, not through the lasting friendships and tastefully themed evenings it became the backdrop for, but more for the glaring awfulness of its lyrics. Just look at them, ‘You don’t know you’re beautiful; that’s what makes you beautiful’. In this strange paradox, One Direction tell you that it is your very obliviousness to your beauty which makes you beautiful; forgetting of course that now they’ve told you and you know you are beautiful, you are rendered through their twisted logic, no longer beautiful. It’s cruel! One minute you’re beautiful, and then you’re destroyed by your own self-awareness of this fact, it holds an almost epic sense of tragedy.

Even to the untrained eye then, this music is invariably pretty shit. However what worries me more is the effect it is having on the younger generation. One Direction’s music seems to have a demographic consisting solely of children and fuckwits, and appears to be just the latest in a long line of music performed by and aimed at Tweens . This is surely going to have a seriously adverse effect on the youth; they’ll think that driving around the coast of America in an orange camper van with great haircuts before going home and partying with Usher is completely the norm.

It’s about time we introduced children to the crushing disappoint of life and love early on. Inform them on things such as erectile dysfunction, awkward post-sex silence and STDs before it gets too late. One Direction, with their boyish good looks and immaculate chinos are simply a cog in the machine; but if we join together, if we fight the good fight and believe, we can save the youth. Now, all together….

I AM A BELIEBER! 

Oh shit….

‘Becoming a Jackal’ - Review

Just discovered this review of my show ‘Becoming a Jackal’ last night. Absolutely over the moon. I was worried that having only being able to do one performance we’d missed out on the oppotunity to have a review, so this makes all the hard work worth it. 

As a whole, the blend of audience-participation and horror is by no means an extensive genre in most contemporary theatre scenes. We are used to sitting politely in the dark, laughing at the right times, clapping at the end and only leaving our seats at the interval. However, Becoming a Jackal, part of The New Theatre: Uncut, is an entirely different experience. Written and directed by current student Alex Mawby, the plot seems simple enough on the surface; the disturbingly manic Jack (Matt Miller) abducts his three old school ‘friends’; arrogant Rich (George Holder), aggressive Gabby (Laura Gallop) and heartthrob Lola Rose (Emma Clark) in order to seek revenge for his childhood miseries. Throw in some gory torturing, some aptly physical child play flashbacks and dimmed spotlights, and a piece of theatre is created that would usually just be stored in the sadistic guilty pleasure department that usually contains the Saw movies and Stephen King novels. But the staging and direction of the play completely changes its meaning and places you in an uncomfortably surreal environment, unique to most other theatre experiences.

On simply arriving at the performance you know all is not well. Jack is stood waiting for his audience at the back of the Portland building, shaking hands and politely introducing himself to each member of the growing crowd. I am asked what my interests and hobbies are and shamefully become a giggling wreck along with my friend. But Miller stays fully committed to his character, his eyes boring into yours, the soft voice conveying delight at the turnout. We are all led down in the performing arts studio, Miller all the while in character, insisting that we all “meet his friends”.

The set is simple but effective; there is no need for a clutter of unnecessary artefacts, with the audience sat in the round. Jack proudly presents us to a large bed with dirtied sheets; Lola Rose is flung across it and Gabby is perched on top of a high stack of blocks, both girls limp like rag dolls. Rich is introduced later; in a startling discovery to the audience, he sits amongst us and cries out a quarter of the way through in desperation. Cue uncertain laughter. But the audience participation is not quite over yet; members of the audience are dragged up to become part of the ‘choo-choo-train’ of Rich’s 7^th birthday and are invited to dance with the actors during the flashback of their secondary school prom night. This involvement is light-hearted and comical, but at other moments, it darkens. Jack encourages us to clap and chant Rich’s name as he forces him to rummage in a box full of syringes and broken glass to find the key to escape their prison.

All of the cast give chillingly twisted and uninhibited performances of their characters; the alter-ego of the spiteful childhood bully is always present within Gabby, Lola Rose and Rich. However, some of the reactions to the horror of their abduction seem jarringly heightened and so the distinction between the eerie reality created by Jack and the surreal world of the physical theatre flashbacks become unclear.

Considering the piece was entirely student written and produced, Becoming a Jackal is refreshingly original and its audience participation would thrive in an ‘Edinburgh Fringe’ environment. Even though the thought of an actor having direct eye contact with us can make the usual audience member squirm uncomfortably, I think it’s time to break through the fourth wall. Just sitting in the theatre and obeying the etiquette is starting to get a bit old!

Louisa Clack  

http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/02/new-theatre-uncut-becoming-a-jackal/

Are comediennes as funny as their male counterparts?

No. I’m sorry but, categorically, ultimately and eternally; no.

Actually I’m not sorry, because it’s their fault entirely. I don’t like female comediennes for the same reason that I don’t like Omid Djalili, Stephen K. Amos and missionary position. They’re dull, repetitive and upsettingly safe. These comedians take one aspect of their personality, race or background and run with it. Then jog with it for a while before sort of doing a few keepy-ups with it and ending up just strolling along, lazily bouncing it against a wall.  They squeeze the single joke they ever wrote for everything its worth, flogging the dead horse ad nauseum. If you’re Omid Djallili, it’s the fact you’re an Iranian with a British accent, living in a predominantly white, middle-class and conservative country. K. Amos works on a similar proviso, replacing Iranian with ‘Jamiacan’ and occasionally ‘Gay’.  If you’re a woman, well, it’s the fact that you are, a woman (unless of course we are referring to Shappi Khorsandi who is both a woman and Iranian. Two for the price of one!) . 

Female comedy is for some reason dominated by middle-aged, overweight housewives, writing comedy for middle-aged, overweight housewives, about middle-aged, overweight housewives.  They tell jokes about hoovers, husbands who fart in bed and, as far as I can tell, that might be it. There’s none of the ingenuity and creativity prevalent in the comedy of their male peers. You’d never see a female comedian weigh up the pros and cons of being raised in a forest by wolves in the style of Eddie Izzard, or, like Stewart Lee,  spend a good five minutes talking about why the word ‘crisps’ annoys them. Truth is female comediennes don’t need to be interesting. They’ve got a niche and, for the most part, they’re more than happy to stay within its bland, uninspired parameters.  Mainstream female comedy will have to break free of these self-imposed shackles before it’ll ever hold a candle to the originality and verve seen in the male arena.